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In one corner are the rules makers. In another corner, the equipment manufacturers.
Across the octagon cage match are the pros, positioned opposite the amateurs. Course operators, architects, real estate developers, the voices on podcasts, Instagram influencers, the lady in the beverage cart, even the kid selling lost Top Flites from a shoe box in the yard on the side of No. 13 fairway – it seems everybody is ready to duke it out in the tangled mess that is the modern distance debate.
Different perspectives. Different goals. Different priorities, sometimes conflicting. None of them are necessarily wrong, but that doesn’t mean they’re all right, either.
One thing is certain: The vast majority of recreational amateurs – I dare say almost all of them – do not hit a golf ball too far. Except, perhaps, when they skull a bunker shot.
The U.S. Golf Association and the R&A released their Distance Insights Project on Tuesday, possibly laying the groundwork for reducing hitting distance in golf. The report speaks at length about the distance achieved by elite male golfers – mainly touring pros – leaving classic courses obsolete for top-tier championships.
It’s true: Cameron Champ, Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy and a handful of PGA Tour stars can send a ball unbelievable distances, reducing almost all par 4s and many par 5s to nothing more than a driver and a wedge. Bobby Jones said of a young Jack Nicklaus, “He plays a game with which I am not familiar.” That was 1965. What would the Georgia gentleman say about today’s professional power game?
But to you (pardon me if you’re a Tour pro), me and all the folks we’re likely to find in our weekend foursomes, Brooks Koepka’s overpowering of Erin Hills with a 3-wood in the 2017 U.S. Open means little when we’re on the tee.
The pros play a different game.
The PGA Tour is, at its core, entertainment. A traveling circus, stopping in a new town each week. Pitch the corporate tents and blow the fans’ minds with feats of daring and strength. It’s Cirque du Soleil, minus the feathery costumes. And just like a high-wire act, most of us have no real idea how they do it, or the years of sweat equity involved. We can enjoy it without comprehending the physics involved.
So yes, of course, elite pros might make the shot values of classic courses obsolete, but only for the week those million-dollar-earners are in town. They’ll be on their way to next week’s Tour stop soon enough, and those classic tracks can return to their glory for the most important golfers of all – those who pay the green fees and club dues.
Tour pros are unbelievably talented outliers, 100 yards or more to the right side of the distance bell curve. The USGA and R&A acknowledge that in their Distance Insights Project. The mere use of the word “elite” states the simple case that there just aren’t that many of them. If everybody hit the ball too far with precise control, we all would be elite. And inversely, none of us would be.
The report makes brief mention that recreational golfers have achieved distance gains over the past 100 years. Well, one would hope so. We have YouTube tutorials, online lessons, slow-motion smartphone video for our totally unqualified friends to analyze and 460-cubic-centimeter drivers designed by artificial intelligence. Not to mention golf balls that travel too far, except for when they don’t.
The Distance Insights Project offers that “today’s average drive distances for recreational men are in the range of 185-240 yards.” Those numbers are roughly backed up by Shot Scope, makers of GPS golf apps and shot trackers. Shot Scope reports that players with handicaps of 9 or under drive the ball an average 237 yards. Players with a handicap of 10-17 drive it 216 yards as a group, and players with handicaps of 18 and over average 199 yards.
Based on information on the USGA’s website, only a quarter of golfers have a handicap index lower than 9. That information, combined with Shot Scope’s distance data, means most golfers don’t hit the ball past 216 yards. Not exactly overpowering. Certainly not enough to render a classic golf course obsolete, as most players would be left with an approach shot of 200 yards or more on any par 4 that brushes past 400.
The Distance Insights Project rightly says some courses are too long for many amateurs, even that vast majority who never see the back tees except from the passenger side of the golf cart. As stated in the report, shorter courses offer tangible benefits: a smaller environmental footprint, lower costs to build and maintain, possibly quicker rounds. All very good points and admirable goals, but they do not necessarily mean recreational hitting distances must be reduced. It does not have to be an either/or approach.
Even at a modernly modest 6,400 yards or less, solid and creative golf architecture can withstand just about any amateur effort, especially when considering that most players don’t send the ball screaming past 200 yards off the tee. A few relatively powerful low handicappers might sneak in a couple extra rounds near par, but that hardly would indicate a course’s obsoletion.
The traditionalist in me – I have four old Bulls Eye putters and two persimmon drivers in my bedroom closet at home, so that counts for something – hates to say it, but the best part of the Distance Insights Project might be a proposed solution in the conclusion to the report that would allow tournament committees to enact a local rule requiring shorter-hitting equipment in select events. Such a local rule surely would be used mostly in elite competitions, allowing the rest of us to keep hitting our aerodynamically enhanced golf balls 15 yards short of the target.
That is much favorable compared to the second proposed solution, which would be to implement new equipment standards across the board. The ruling bodies state in the report that they don’t want to go that route if it “would produce substantial reductions in hitting distances at all levels of the game.”
That leaves solution No. 1 as a betting favorite, and it’s bifurcation, pure and simple. For years, that was a scary term that evoked a sense that golf would fall apart if regular players ever learned that Tour pros really are better at golf. But as the USGA presents its suggestion as a local rule, it’s simply two sets of equipment standards rolled into one set of rules.
In reality, as Mr. Jones said in ’65, Tour pros play a game with which we are not familiar. The PGA Tour already enacts a web page’s worth of local rules almost every week, further separating the game they play from the game we play.
Why should equipment standards be any different?
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