Lol man - who at the USGA hurt you? I don't think any of that is obvious at all to me, but to each their own. But in their forward looking opinion, more and more courses are becoming obsolete for all of their tournaments and they're the only organization(s) whose mission statement is to think about the overall state of the game 20+ years from now. Agree or disagree with their decisions here (which is totally fine), thinking that Tour players or equipment manufacturers give one shit about the game 20 years from now is pretty naive. I'm not saying the USGA is necessarily correct, but I am saying they're undoubtedly thinking about the long term future of the game when going through this.
I'm mostly with TFP on this. The key point is that this is forward-looking. It's imperative to me that the beloved golden-era courses are still able to host the world's best players well into this century. It's unknowable if distance will continue to progress at one yard per year, but a clear trend has been established. Distance has already proved to be an issue with long drivers clearing range nets at tournaments and famous holes having all strategy removed, but this has the potential to get even worse. What the USGA and R&A did was simply substitute one set of arbitrary testing standards (club speed, rpm, et cetera) for another.
Yes, this is the original point. The USGA cares about scores on "beloved golden-era" courses. The problem isn't distance, it's forgiveness. And the problem is only with the driver, not the other clubs, so why limit the ball. The objection is not to doing "something", it's to the something they chose to do.
This was the point I was trying to make in my original response.
That's not really the point though. Why make this particular change? If it will have no effect, why do it? If they really wanted to limit distance off the tee, there were lots of other options that don't cause any bifurcation.
You keep asking these questions and they've been answered. You just don't like the answers and are ignoring them.
While this is true (assuming the MGA adopts the rule), it's no different than playing in the wind, in different temps, or different altitudes. Elite players (even at the mid-am level) adjust to distances all the damn time. The pros went to freaking 7,000 ft of altitude in Mexico (a bigger distance adjustment) and absolutely nuked that course.
Shorter driver shafts., smaller driver heads, minimum driver lofts, less driver forgiveness, plant some trees, add some lakes, add some bunkers. pros can only use 10 clubs, maximum lofts, restrictions on club materials, etc. I could come up with a nearly endless way to make golf harder for elite players
These all seem far more intrusive than simply rolling back the golf ball for the elite players. If you touch the technology on one club, you have to touch them all otherwise you'll end up with a messed up scale of clubs. Adding hazards doesn't really address the problem. It's a temporary solution, and a costly one at that. Courses are supposed to spend a ton of money now to re-design to add hazards that challenge the pro's, then do it all over again in 25 years when the distance gains continue and these new hazards are obsolete?
JT, Charley Hoffman, Ben An, Webb Simpson to start.
Forgive another post, but I just read JT's full comments. I had previously only seen the headlines. I love JT but boy does he sound like a dumbass.
And has been stated by the USGA/R&A and us in here, the point isn't to make golf harder for elite players. It's to make the ball go not as far to ease the macro scale burden and cost for golf courses, especially thinking 20 years into the future.
Amen. We don't play the same game or equipment as them. Titleist has Tour only balls (which sometimes make it to market) and Adam Scott is showing off his new 1 of 1 set of Miura irons at the Players. We also dont play the same courses, tees, or conditions as them (except in very rare times). It's a different version of the same sport.
I really don't get why there is so much complaining for the Tour pro's. Realize he is a LIV guy but here's Bryson:
I'm confused as to why so many of them think they are losing the distance advantage they worked hard to get. They aren't. The guys who hit it the fartherst will still hit it the farthest. It's not like they are handing the ball only to players who average more than 315 off the tee or whatever and the rest of the field can use the non-rolled back ball. JT is still gong to drive it past Kevin Kisner by 30 yards. It's just going to be 300 - 270 instead of 330-300.
Bubba rolling it back in 2015 is a nice touch.
Exactly. What's Pebble Beach supposed to do if/when guys are hitting 400 yards off the tee? Here's a look at 18. The tee is in the lower right, next to the 17th green. The green is on the left, right in front of the clubhouse.
Par is just an easy, shorthanded scoring tool. Changing par on a course doesn't impact the difficulty a coure or a hole plays, it just means the score in relation to par will be higher.
Ok, so what's the right score to finish Pebble? Tiger destroyed the field 23 years ago with -12 in a US Open setup (par 71). What should he have shot? Was the ball too hot then?
THAT is my point ^^^. These courses run out of real estate. You can't turn every par 5 into a par 4, and half the par 4s into par 3s. I mean, you COULD, but then you'd have the US Open being played to a par of 60. If we care at ALL about things like history and tradition (and maybe we don't, I don't know), it's just not really great to have this situation. But Pebble (as just one example) literally has nowhere else to go to accommodate ever-increasing power.
Exactly. You can deaden the ball or the clubs, or you can add clown mouth trees or other hazards to change the look of the course, but that will screw it up for members and other players the other 51 weeks of the year.
If there was a problem with the professional product the PGA Tour wouldn't be raking in money. And if there was a problem with the professional product the professionals should be deciding how to address it.
Why would a ball that's rolled back for PGA pros have ANY effect whatsoever on us amateurs, who would be allowed to use whatever juiced up ball we want? It's always been proposed that the PGA Tour be like MLB - equipment is limiting for THEM, but not for everyone else. High school kids can use all kinds of crazy bat technology, but Mookie Betts can't. Limiting the pros tech has literally nothing to do with what amateurs use. There's no reason why we amateurs can't use crazy flight balls. It's just that Jordan Speith and Jon Rahm and Tommy Fleetwood can't.
That's not really true. Sure, some people have talked about bifurcation in the past but the governing bodies haven't supported it until now. Golf loves its history and the same rules and equipment for all is a dearly held aspect of the game for some people (who have power). That seems to be why the governing bodies are framing this as a Modified Local Rule rather than talking about bifurcation. It's bifurcation without the word's baggage!
I don’t really care about what the right score is. My point was that changing the par only changes the scores relative to par. It doesn’t make a hole or course harder. And the point of the ball roll back isn’t to make it harder so it’s basically a red herring.
I'm confident that there isn't enough daylight for me to get the ball out of that.
