Just over 20 years ago, the USGA issued either a bold or foolhardy request, but one that made clear its intentions to roll back the golf ball. Having spent several years studying the rapidly improving technology in the game, and most specifically that of the golf ball, even modernizing the way golf balls were measured, the USGA’s technical department took the next step in determining how it might consider future equipment regulation by asking golf ball manufacturers to submit prototype balls that flew as much as 25 yards shorter.
Even though it might have sounded like asking death row inmates to select the type of gun that would be used in their execution, the vast majority of golf ball companies responded with samples. That may have been the last time the debate over reducing distance in golf was cordial. Now, two decades later it is on the verge of getting as ugly as it’s ever been, and the adversarial relationship between those trying to govern the game and those trying to, for lack of a better word, enjoy it, may be pushing things to a breaking point.
It’s a crucial moment that the R&A’s new CEO Mark Darbon will face when he steps to the microphone ahead of the British Open next week at Royal Portrush to answer questions about the state of the game. His answers, well-rehearsed as they might be and not all that dissimilar from those of his cohort Mike Whan at the USGA last month at Oakmont, likely will do little to change the tenor of the debate.
Said Darbon on a recent appearance on Gary Williams’ 5 Clubs podcast, “As a ruling body, it’s our job to stand in the future and do what’s right for the sport over the long term. Having analyzed all of the data that we collected through this extensive process, we decided that doing nothing was not appropriate for our sport right now. The data is unequivocal. … For a number of reasons, we therefore felt it was important to act. We felt it was important for the long term for our sport, and therefore we’re very focused on implementation.”
Despite assurances from Darbon and Whan that all sides are talking to each other, there remains almost no indication of a resolution. It’s a situation one who’s been in the room called “a murky, emotional pool.”
Those rough waters seem laden with ominous portent, with three basic scenarios percolating from this moment. Each seems like its own kind of doomsday for a game that currently is setting new records for interest and participation. The ball rollback threatens everything, whether or not it goes forward.
Scenario 1: The rule goes into effect as scheduled, with the PGA Tour and the PGA of America giving up and signing on.
While this likely means an immediate reduction in average driving distance on the professional men’s tours by 10-15 yards, it seems almost as likely that whatever is lost early might be regained within a decade or less.
Meanwhile, average golfers likely will see a wide degree of effects simply because the range of clubhead speeds in recreational golf stretches from driver swing speeds in the 60s to even tour-like 120s. Slower speeds might see nothing, while the fastest speeds will likely distinctly notice a difference.
The ultimate impact of that effect is likely to be chaos. There could be lawsuits, and while that is unlikely to be a winning strategy, it could garner injunctions and delays of implementation and generally more infighting and less certainty for all levels of the game.
The bigger issue is with those who don’t choose to play balls legal under the new rules. That includes LIV Golf, which likely would do anything to increase its entertainment proposition, but it also could involve the recreational golfer. Because the rule goes into effect for handicap scoring in 2030, there are two years of balls being sold and made under the older test standard. Obviously, no average golfer will choose the shorter, conforming version to play in his regular game and use in club events. There will be hoarding and there will be confusion, even down to the balls used in state and local tournaments.
Finally, we don’t even know for certain that the rollback test guidelines will have the intended effect. One manufacturer recently showed us prototype testing with a super fast swinging tour player who thought he could easily overcome the shorter ball’s lack of speed and flight with swing and equipment tweaks (like a much lower loft driver, for example) and he could do so immediately. Also, with swing speeds at the elite level rising at the fastest rate ever recorded, maybe a ball that conforms to a test at 125 miles per hour will still perform exceptionally when tour swing speeds reach 130 miles per hour. (As a cautionary tale, the average swing speed on the PGA Tour now is 116.54 miles per hour. The average swing speed for long-drive competitors is 145 miles per hour. The USGA believes that number is less a fantasy and more closer to a future reality at the PGA Tour level and they may be right. So far this year, 28 PGA Tour players have recorded a clubhead speed of 130 miles per hour.)
Scenario 2: The rule’s implementation is further delayed, perhaps to the point of non-adoption, or maybe bifurcation.
The infighting currently blanketing the golf ball distance debate may lead back to where things started. The USGA and R&A originally proposed the rollback would only apply to elite men’s golf before the industry rallied against it, saying it wasn’t traditional and would lead to confusion where the line for elite competition might be drawn. But without any kind of distance rollback, the trendline in the current men’s game is clear. Distance will drive all future player development to the point where the game at the men’s tour level could become cartoonish, kind of a cross between world long drive and TGL. That’s clearly what the governing bodies fear most, and making courses increasingly longer is not ultimately a constructive solution. While the average driving distance increase on tour is not the nearly three yards a year we saw at the turn of the century, it’s still increasing more than a yard a year. Moreover, the percentage of 320-plus yard drives is double what it was 10 years ago, happening nearly 18 percent of the time. Golf’s stars are popular to its fans because they can do things the recreational player can’t do, but when that game becomes so disconnected from the game its fans play, it risks turning off its base.
Scenario 3: Elite golf is played by two different sets of equipment standards with three of the four major championships (U.S. Open, British Open, Masters) played under the shorter ball standard, while PGA Tour events, the PGA Championship and selected other events like the Ryder Cup are contested using some yet-to-be determined equipment guidelines.
This seems the most dangerous outcome of the golf ball distance debate. While major championship golf has been played by different rules in its past (the Open Championship allowed a smaller ball until 1990), a split set of rules at the top of the game unnecessarily confuses its potential participants, let alone its fan base. It also puts the PGA Tour and/or the PGA of America in the equipment rule-making business. That’s something neither wants a part of. Both organizations even co-opt the USGA to do random driver testing instead of fully funding and operating mandatory full-field testing on its own. Trying to manage golf ball testing, which is decidedly more complex than the driver test, would involve the tour in the same headaches and anxiety that the USGA’s Whan talks about when he talks about how “governance is hard.” With the LIV question still unresolved, the tour might not be able to handle such an undertaking and farming it out to another unknown regulatory group will spark confusion and rules questions it doesn’t want any part of.
Of course, this kind of bifurcation also leads to confusion in player development. What equipment rules does top college golf play by and who enforces them? Further, it creates a level of discord between the one-time rulemakers at the USGA and R&A and the defacto rulemakers on the PGA Tour and PGA of America. There very well could be a sense of who’s in charge, and if consumers are confused, so will be retailers. Confusion at retail is not usually the straightest path to growth and financial success. Fact is, golf’s wonky infighting—whether it be LIV or different golf balls—starts to weigh down the attention span of its intended audience.
The R&A’s Darbon knows this is a problem from his past experiences with the London Olympics and Premier League Rugby. Golf is at a critical juncture with its fan-base, he said in a recent article in the Times of London. “For a sport to be successful, the shop window at the top of the game needs to be strong. And I don’t think our shop window has been as strong as it could be in recent years. I’m really keen to move that forward. The sports that don’t get their proposition right for fans are going to be drowned out.”
Darbon, of course, is new to his role, new to golf and its history and the adversarial relationship the R&A and USGA often have when it comes to making equipment rules. Maybe that fresh approach is what the game needs. It’s telling that every one of the original thinkers behind the urge to study, reconsider and roll back distance no longer is in a position directing golf’s future. It’s new thinkers like Darbon and Whan—as well as the PGA of America’s new CEO Derek Sprague and new PGA Tour head Brian Rolapp, a decided golf neophyte—who are charged with navigating this “murky, emotional pool.” As Whan said last month, “We’re not not open to new data, something that we would be provided. But it was eight years to this decision point. So I love it when people say, ‘Why the rush?’ I’m like, ‘Why the rush? I mean, how many more years do you think we should have taken?’”
In truth, of course, it’s already been 20, and the clock is ticking, louder than it ever has before.
