Ridley doesn’t want the Masters to play more than 8,000 yards, but fears that may be the case in the future.
AUGUSTA, Ga. — During his annual media appearance ahead of the 2024 Masters at Augusta National Golf Club on Wednesday, chairman Fred Ridley said the club supports the golf ball rollback spearheaded by the USGA and R&A in an effort to curb the growing distance problem in golf.
In his opening statements, Ridley talked about how for years the tournament was played at less than 7,000 yards, but noted this year’s yardage had extended to 7,555 yards. He also said one day this week the course could measure more than 7,600 yards.
The most notable comment the chairman made was that he doesn’t want the Masters to play more than 8,000 yards, but fears that may be the case in the future if distance isn’t diminished.
“I’ve said in the past that I hope we will not play the Masters at 8,000 yards. But that is likely to happen in the not too distant future under current standards,” said Ridley. “Accordingly, we support the decisions that have been made by the R&A and the USGA as they have addressed the impact of distance at all levels of the game.”
Last December the USGA and R&A announced they were changing how golf balls will be tested for conformity to reduce the effects of distance in the sport. Starting in 2028, for a golf ball to be deemed conforming and be legal for play, it will be tested using a robot that swings a titanium club at 125 mph and hits the ball on an 11-degree launch angle with 2,200 rpm of spin. The shot can not exceed the Overall Distance Standard (ODS) of 317 yards of combined carry distance and roll (with a 3-yard tolerance).
Currently, balls are at 120 mph with a launch angle of 10 degrees and 2,520 rpm of backspin, so the change increases the robot’s clubhead by 5 mph, increases the launch angle by 1 degree and decreases the spin rate by about 300 rpm.
Nearly every golf ball being sold today would go too far and fail the new test because manufacturers design their balls to go right to the current distance limits. Increasing the test speed by 5 mph and hitting shots at low spin rates and higher launch angles would make all of today’s balls go too far and become non-conforming. Balls that had previously been legal but failed the new test will be removed from the Conforming Ball list, making them illegal for official play starting Jan. 1, 2028.
According to Thomas Pagel, the USGA’s chief governance officer, using golf balls that pass the new test will result in a loss of distance, with the fastest-swinging players being affected the most and recreational golfers being affected the least.
Ridley said he hopes the PGA Tour and other golf tours and leagues will adopt the regulations and join Augusta National in its support of the USGA and R&A’s initiative.
“I certainly hope they will be, were they not it would cause a great deal of stress in the game it doesn’t need right now,” Ridley explained.
He also noted how, even if the regulations are implemented, other aspects of technology within the rules and the physicality and technical ability of the players will allow them to catch up and make up the difference in distance. Ridley doesn’t envision new tees closer to greens and he plans on “holding that 8,000-yard line.”
“We have some more room,” he added, “but we don’t have a lot.”
Distance has been a highly debated issue in golf – both the PGA Tour and LPGA immediately spoke out against the new regulations – and Augusta National’s support of the USGA and R&A’s efforts marks a significant step in the process to curb distance and make the game more sustainable.
If you’ve been to the Tour’s stats page, you know it’s a rabbit hole where golf nerds can spend hours.
The Tour Championship is in the rearview mirror and with that, the PGA Tour has closed the book on its statistics for the 2022-23 season. If you’ve been to the Tour’s stats page, you know it’s a rabbit hole where golf nerds can spend hours exploring the numbers.
There are plenty of eye-popping numbers, including the massive increase in earnings, but many will use these stats to determine the PGA Tour’s Player of the Year.
For example, Jon Rahm had the most wins (4), with Viktor Hovland winning the final two stops of the year to finish second with three victories. There were seven others, including Scottie Scheffler, another POY candidate, with two wins.
But it was Scheffler who dominated many of the Tour’s stats this season. He finished first in the Official World Golf Ranking, FedEx Cup regular-season standings, Ryder Cup standings as well as all of these categories:
Shots gained: Off the tee
Shots gained: Approach the green
Shots gained: Tee-to-green
Shots gained: Total
Greens in regulation percentage
Scoring average
Bogey avoidance
Let’s take a look at some of the more interesting statistical leaders on the PGA Tour for the 2022-23 season. Many of these will seem obvious, but there’s probably a few here that are surprising.
The deadline for manufacturers, industry insiders and stakeholders to send feedback was Sept. 2.
Sunday marked the end of the first LIV Golf season, and whether you are a fan of the upstart tour or not, there’s no denying player defections, the massive payouts that LIV golfers have received and Greg Norman’s squabbles with the Official World Golf Ranking system were big storylines in 2022. Looking ahead, the continuing saga of LIV Golf will assuredly be a huge part of the golf narrative in 2023, too, but it might be eclipsed early in the season by news coming from Far Hills, New Jersey, and St. Andrews, Scotland.
The USGA and the R&A, the governing bodies of golf, proclaimed that they feel distance is a problem for the game in February 2020, and since that time, they have slowly and methodically been studying equipment testing methods, equipment designs and different aspects of the game to come up with a solution.
The deadline for manufacturers, industry insiders and stakeholders to send the USGA and R&A feedback, information and research was Sept. 2. Now, with the holidays approaching and just two months remaining in 2022, the USGA and R&A are reviewing submissions and developing concepts they could announce soon to reduce distance.
Here is where we are in the distance debate, what we know and what we don’t know:
This is the list of the longest drivers on the PGA Tour for each season since 1980, when the stat was first kept.
The PGA Tour has been keeping average driving distance stats since 1980.
In 2003, the mark of 321.4 yards was achieved by Hank Kuehne and was the standard-bearer for almost two decades. During the 2019-20 season, Bryson DeChambeau broke Kuehne’s 17-year-old mark. One year later, DeChambeau broke his own mark.
Go back to 1997, where John Daly was the first to surpass the average distance of 300 yards. In all, Daly led the Tour in driving distance 11 times.
Being a big hitter doesn’t always lead to victory. Only seven of the 20 golfers on this list won a Tour event in the same year that he led in driving. In case you were wondering, neither Tiger Woods nor Phil Mickelson ever led the Tour in driving distance.
This is the list of the longest drivers on Tour starting in 1980 through the 2020-21 season.
The swing coach and former CBS golf analyst feels the root of the distance debate is misunderstood and equipment should not be changed.
After years of looking at golf swings through the trusty Konica Minolta BizHub Swing Vision camera, I have learned to see things differently than most people. So, with the distance debate raging once again, it should come as no surprise that I see things differently than a lot of people.
About a year ago, the U.S Golf Association and the R&A announced that they feel distance and the trend toward bigger golf courses is a long-term problem for the game, and they want to take steps now to reduce the impact of distance on golf.
I live and teach in Scottsdale, Arizona, so I understand that water is a precious resource, and no one would argue that using more fertilizers, chemicals and water and increasing the cost of maintaining golf courses is a good thing. Still, I think one of the central premises of the USGA and R&A’s argument for reducing distance is entirely backward.
Most people think golf courses in the United States got longer over the last few years because technology advanced and equipment got better allowing players to hit it farther. The courses had to get longer to keep the shot values and the challenge, right? I think it’s the other way around: Equipment was forced to get better and enable golfers to hit longer shots because courses got longer.
The third hole at Pinehurst No. 2 (Courtesy of Pinehurst Resort)
Consider this: Pine Valley, Cypress Point, Augusta National, Shinnecock Hills, Pinehurst No. 2, Oakmont, Pebble Beach, Winged Foot and Merion were all built before 1932 during the golden age of golf course design. They demand creativity, the ability to hit shots in different directions and dictate golfers maintain control of the ball at all times. Their designers, men like Alister MacKenzie, Donald Ross, Charles Blair Macdonald, Seth Raynor, George Crump and Harry S. Colt, concentrated on making amateur golfers solve problems and think. That’s why those layouts can be so challenging. Riveria Country Club, which hosted last week’s Genesis Invitational, is another example of a classic venue with an original, unique style. The players loved it again this year, as they do every year.
Peter Kostis
Unfortunately, starting in the mid-1960s, when courses started being ranked by publications based on their difficulty, things changed. Golf course architects felt that to make courses harder, and therefore more prestigious, they had to make them longer. The people who wrote the checks for those courses also started coveting those rankings and the chance of hosting elite events. They wanted bigger, longer courses too, and in the 1970s, developers learned to love bigger venues because they created more room for houses.
But a huge reason why golf courses got longer in the ’80s, ’90s and 2000s, which rarely gets discussed, is the rise of “player architects.” During the golden age, designers made courses to challenge amateur players like themselves and members of local clubs. When big-name players and former pros started designing courses, they typically prefer to build things that challenge the world’s best players. In their minds, that means the course has to be stretched to “championship length”. All of this happened while we were using Persimmon woods and balata golf balls.
For years, I’ve said that if you want golfers to learn how to hit the ball farther, put them on bigger courses. They’ll learn, they’ll figure it out. That’s precisely what happened. As courses got longer, players started to emphasize length more than shot shaping and accuracy. Like Formula One race teams that modify their cars to suit that specific week’s track, golfers developed swings and manufacturers made equipment that launched the ball higher and made it spin less, maximizing distance to attack long straight holes.
So, in my opinion, that’s the origin of this issue, and it is essential to understand that if we are going to consider potentially changing the game.
To put all the blame on manufacturers and advancements in technology is wrong. Consider this: In 2019, Bryson DeChambeau had a driving distance average of 302 yards. Last season it jumped to 322 yards, and heading into last week’s Genesis Invitational, his driving distance average was up to 329 yards. Now, with all due respect to the companies that make Bryson’s driver and golf ball, there has not been a game-changing technology advancement over the last two years that can account for his 27-yard increase off the tee over 24 months.
So, while technology is better, it is just one thing that elite golfers now rely on to hit the ball farther. Improvements in fitness and nutrition, better coaching, launch monitors and better custom fitting are also helping pros hit the ball farther. Are the USGA and R&A planning to govern those things too?
While I don’t have a problem changing the maximum length of clubs from 48 inches to 46 inches, I don’t understand why the USGA and R&A want to change how they test golf balls. They recently proposed optimum testing between launch angles of 7.5 degrees and 15 degrees with varying amounts of backspin (2,200-2,500 rpm).
No one, not even Bryson, Rory or Bubba, can hit a ball with a 15-degree launch angle and only 2,200 rpm of spin, yet, under proposed test conditions, if a robot can and the ball goes too far, the ball will be deemed non-conforming. Personally, I think this is a way for the USGA and R&A to lay the groundwork for a ball rollback.
There is also a proposal to adopting a Local Rule that would allow tournaments to mandate that elite golfers use distance-reducing equipment in specific tournaments. Ultimately, that would be expensive for brands and recreational players. Think about it, pros like Adam Scott, Jon Rahm and Tiger Woods would not have to pay for distance-reducing gear, but manufacturers would have to spend a lot of money to research, develop and manufacture those clubs and balls. In 45 plus years of teaching, I have never had a student say that he or she wants to hit the ball shorter, so I can’t imagine weekend players will buy that stuff. That means brands will pass the added costs associated with reduced-distance gear on to consumers in the form of higher prices on the clubs and balls that amateurs want to play.
By the way, if the ball is rolled back or changes are made that reduce distance for everyone and golfers all move to more-forward tees, what are local clubs expected to do with abandoned areas? I have yet to hear the USGA or R&A’s thoughts on that. There are about 40,000 golf courses worldwide, and I would suspect all of them would still need to water, mow and maintain those areas to some degree, so golf’s “footprint” would not shrink by much.
Look, for obvious and terrible reasons, golf attracted a lot of new players in 2020. Many people also returned to the game because it’s fun, safe, challenging and a great way to spend time with your friends. Why on Earth would we want to make it tougher just for the sake of maintaining the challenge for pros on 50-75 courses around the world?
If the PGA Tour, the LPGA Tour, European Tour and all the other professional tours ceased to exist because the style of golf was boring and fans didn’t want to watch it anymore, “golf” would continue. The sport is in a great place. Please be careful to not mess it up.
A rookie currently leads the LPGA in driving distance. Unlike Bryson DeChambeau, Bianca Pagdanganan didn’t seek out extra yardage.
A rookie currently leads the LPGA in driving distance with a 287.462 average. Unlike Bryson DeChambeau, Bianca Pagdanganan didn’t seek out extra yardage. In fact, she can’t really even explain where her power comes from.
Her mantra, repeated throughout a recent phone conversation, is “I try not to force anything.”
Pagdanganan’s coach at Arizona, Laura Ianello, points to “insanely” fast hips and use of the ground as key to her power. She’s 4 yards longer than Maria Fassi on the LPGA stats list and 5 yards ahead of Anne van Dam.
Pagdanganan – who for the record isn’t really a fan of protein shakes – consistently carried the ball 275 yards in college, but really doesn’t keep track of how far she’s hitting it now. LPGA courses often force her to keep driver in the bag. Pagdanganan carries her 3-wood 245 yards.
Like a Major League pitcher with the God-given gift of a fastball, Ianello marvels at Pagdanganan’s rare talent. It’s why they called her “the unicorn” in college.
“(Bianca) is eventually going to make a ton of money on the LPGA once she can dial in those numbers with her short irons,” said Ianello.
Not to mention her length advantage on the par 5s. At the Marathon Classic in August, Pagdanganan made back-to-back eagles on the closing par 5s in the second round to shoot 67.
The 22-year-old, who carded an NCAA record-tying 61 in college and helped the Wildcats win the 2018 NCAA Championship, has teed it up in four tournaments so far on the LPGA and made the cut each time, her best finish coming at the Drive On Championship at Inverness where she tied for 28th. She’s got a good chance of making it into next month’s KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.
Bianca Pagdanganan (Photo submitted)
Pagdanganan gets excited each time she checks the pairings at an event to see who she’ll get to meet the next day. She particularly enjoyed recent rounds in Portland alongside Mo Martin and Sarah Kemp, commenting on their kindness and taking notes on the meticulousness of their pre-shot routines.
The petite Martin plays a game that is foreign to the long-hitting Pagdanganan, but the rookie is wise enough to understand how much she can still learn.
“You just start to realize that there are other parts of your game that you need to polish,” she said.
While still in college, Pagdanganan played alongside long-hitting Angel Yin in the first two rounds of the Marathon Classic and routinely outdrove her 10 to 20 yards, said Ianello, who was on the bag that week. It was clear then that Pagdanganan would be among the longest – if not the longest – on tour.
The biggest takeaway, however, came when she played alongside a very pregnant Stacy Lewis in Toledo and was outdriving the former No. 1 by more than 50 yards. Lewis shot 6 under that day, and Pagdanganan finished even par.
Pagdanganan is not a technical player. Driver is her favorite club in the bag and late in high school, she started to gain distance. It wasn’t until college, when people started to comment on her length, that she began to take note.
She asked her coach in the Philippines how she should respond to questions about her length.
“I literally just try to hit it as hard as I can and it goes far,” she said. “I guess the reason, they say, is the lag in my swing.”
Two-time LPGA winner Jennifer Rosales was Pagdanganan’s idol growing up, and she’d often see her giving lessons at Wack Wack Golf and Country Club in Manila.
Ianello says Pagdanganan, a humble player who is now living her childhood dream on the LPGA, wants to put the Philippines on the map. There was never a lazy day for her back in Tucson. The inner drive was obvious.
Bianca Pagdanganan hits into a net while stuck at home.
Because of her father’s heart condition, Ianello said, Pagdanganan sat tight in San Diego during the LPGA’s extended break, choosing to quarantine rather than get out and play in mini-tour events. She was perfectly content with that decision, knowing that her game would keep until her rookie season could reboot.
“That alone right there shows you the lack of ego that she has,” said Ianello.
Her father bought a Swing Caddie and net for the backyard in San Diego so that she could work on her distances. No drivers though.
“I don’t want to scare the neighbors,” she said with a laugh.
If you think Bryson DeChambeau’s emphasis on distance is misguided, you will have a hard time making an argument after seeing his results.
NORTON, Mass. – Golf is about getting the ball in the hole using as few strokes as possible. Easy, right?
For decades golfers blended course management skills acquired through experience with finesse and power to do that, but over the past few decades, power’s importance has ballooned. The USGA and R&A are not keen on the increase in distance, and the sport’s governing bodies were compelled to say so in a report released in February.
To that, Bryson DeChambeau says, “Hold my protein shake.”
Before this season, the 26-year-old had already won five PGA Tour events, including the 2018 Northern Trust, and he ended 2019 ranked No. 14 on the Official World Golf Ranking. Sure, he was bigger and more muscular than when he arrived on the PGA Tour in 2016, but lots of guys fill out as they go through their 20s.
Little did we know that a long-term plan was well underway. After a three-month hiatus from the PGA Tour during the coronavirus pandemic, DeChambeau has unleashed the most power-focused game golf has ever seen, and he is becoming a fixture near the top of the leaderboard.
Three years ago, DeChambeau asked his trainer, Greg Roskopf, a question. “What is the end game in all of this, in all this neuromuscular training and working out?'” Roskopf replied that he wasn’t sure because no athlete had ever, “gone the distance.”
To that, DeChambeau said, “I’m willing to go the distance, and we went the distance. We built an amazing foundation to where I can go in and work out and tolerate all these forces. I found tools, unique tools that allowed me to repair my body to where I can train every single day and recover each and every day.”
So, what we see now is the result of work that has been going on in the background since 2017, his second year on the PGA Tour.
Bryson DeChambeau at the 2020 Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village Golf Club. Photo by Aaron Doster/USA TODAY Sports
Consider this: In 2003, Hank Kuehne averaged 321.4 yards per tee shot, becoming the only golfer to finish a season with a driving distance average over 320 yards. Entering this week’s Northern Trust, the first event of the 2020 FedEx Cup playoffs, DeChambeau is averaging 323.9 yards, up over 21 yards from last season.
“I truly felt like I started to become an athlete probably around December of this past year,” DeChambeau said during a pre-tournament press conference Tuesday. “I started moving weights up quite a bit, and when I was with Greg in Denver, we just kept upping the weight, and I’m like, ‘Man, I did not think I would be able to tolerate all these forces going through my body,’ and I kept recovering well after that.”
If you think DeChambeau’s emphasis on lifting weights, chugging up to six protein shakes a day and concentrating so much on distance is misguided, you will have a hard time making your argument after seeing his results.
DeChambeau has played seven events since the PGA Tour restarted in June and earned a top-eight finish in five, including a win at the Rocket Mortgage Classic and a T-4 two weeks ago at the PGA Championship.
This season, DeChambeau is also the PGA Tour’s leader in scoring average at 68.8, which is down about a shot and a half from last season (70.2) when he ranked a very respectable 20th.
And here’s the scariest part of all, Bryson thinks the best is yet to come.
“I wake up every day and feel like I can go faster, I can swing it faster,” DeChambeau said with a smile on Tuesday. “Just last week, I got my 6-iron up to 112 miles an hour swing speed. My ball speed was 160, and that was me going after it. But I don’t know where the limit is on this, and I’m excited about that because I keep looking forward to each and every day to go down this rabbit hole to see how far I can go.”
Golf’s distance debate will continue in March of 2021 as ruling bodies delay any announcements in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Will golf’s ruling bodies roll back the distance golf balls travel, or take other steps to contain yardage gains at the elite professional levels? As when watching Bryson DeChambeau hit tee shots, you’ll just have to wait a little longer for the next stage of distance studies to land.
The United States Golf Association and the R&A have delayed any further release of information in their study of the distance debate in golf until March of 2021, the governing bodies announced Monday.
The USGA and R&A released the initial phase of their combined Distance Insights Project in February of 2020 with a report that determined that distance is playing an excessive role in the game and causing the sport to go in an unsustainable direction. That Distance Insights Report signaled potential changes in the equipment rules could come in the next several years, with significant time for research and evaluation before any action.
But the global coronavirus pandemic put all those plans on hold as the industry works to stabilize.
The ruling bodies released this statement Monday:
“Given continued health concerns and the impact on golf worldwide, the R&A and the USGA are now targeting March 2021 for the release of equipment research topics. We will continue to monitor the recovery of the golf industry and may update this target date accordingly. In accordance with the Equipment Rulemaking Procedures, the time for golf equipment manufacturers and other interested parties to participate in this research will also be amended to account for the delay.
Until then, the R&A and the USGA will continue to monitor the effects of distance on the game.
The incredible distances that top male professionals hit the ball was on full display at the PGA Championship that concluded Sunday in San Francisco, with 320-plus-yard tee shots a fairly common occurrence. Much of the buzz in golf over the past several months has centered on DeChambeau’s transformation into a monster driver of the ball.
The ruling bodies have stated they want such focus on distance to end. Citing the Rules of Golf, the February report stated, “golf is a challenging game in which success should depend on the player’s judgment, skill and abilities.”
And beyond the PGA Tour, there are other considerations such as the use of more land to build longer courses and the consumption of natural resources such as water to maintain more acreage of grass.
On the flip side are some who believe distance attracts more fans to PGA Tour coverage. They also point out that recreational players have not gained the kinds of distance seen at the elite levels. Several golf equipment manufacturers also have expressed skepticism at rolling back yardage that was gained under current rules.
Bryson DeChambeau crushed Tiger Woods’ old mark for the largest average driving distance in a week that ended with a victory.
Bryson DeChambeau spent the months of quarantine bulking up, drinking a ton of protein shakes, and perfecting a powerful swing that is proving to be a cheat code on the PGA Tour.
On Sunday, all of that work (and protein shakes) paid off as he rallied to win the Rocket Mortgage classic by three strokes over third-round leader Matthew Wolff.
DeChambeau, who fired a 7-under 65 on Sunday, destroyed the course all week long with a driver that is proving to be one of the biggest weapons the game has seen in quite some time. He did it in record-breaking fashion, too, as he crushed Tiger Woods’ old mark for the largest average driving distance in a week that ended with a victory.
Check this out:
Longest average measured driving distance in a win, recorded PGA Tour history:
That 350.6 average is just ridiculous. What’s even more ridiculous is that DeChambeau’s wedge game has been terrible so if he can lock that in and combine it with his driving, the rest of the PGA Tour will have a monster on its hands.
DeChambeau now has six PGA Tour wins in the past four years, which puts him in pretty good company:
Most PGA Tour wins last 4 seasons:
Justin Thomas – 11 Dustin Johnson – 9 Bryson DeChambeau – 6 Brooks Koepka – 6
It’s going to be really interesting to see how his game is able to get even better and how much of a force he is going to continue to be moving forward, especially in the majors. I mean, he could destroy Augusta National at the Masters in November.
Right now it’s looking like he’s going to be pretty darn dominant for quite some time.
