Regulating Driver Head Size?

Reader BillS writes:

In my opinion, the easiest (and cheapest) way to control distance would be to limit the size of the head.  Back in the days of persimmon, there were guys who could hit it a mile but the small margin of error made bombing it a risk.

With giant heads, the bombers can swing for the fences without penalty.

So I'm curious what everyone thinks about the driver head's impact on the 10-yard PGA Tour increase since 2002 when the USGA and R&A drew the line in the sand (well, on paper anyway)?

Significant?

Would regulating driver head size on the PGA Tour make a big difference?  

"Do. Nothing."

The Golf Digest Bomb and Shill Gouge boys are at it again! This time with "5 suggestions for the USGA on the spin issue," and like the good ole boys at USGA who believe the ball is going too far and not spinning the way it should, every conceivable solution must avoid dealing with...the ball!

Here's Bomb. Or Gouge, does it matter?

I'd like to think we can come up with five ways to combat the spin issue WITHOUT touching any of your clubs under 50 degrees.

Because even these two know that when the USGA bans U-grooves in all irons, everyday golfers will be saying, "Gee, wouldn't it be easier to just tinker with the ball or make the Tour pros play by a different set of rules."

And since you're the Gouge part of this operation, I'm gonna need help on a couple. But here's a couple on my end:

1.) I know it sounds like a broken record, but just grow the darn rough. And I'm not talking about some wimpish 3- to 4-inch grass but some real salad of 6 to 8 inches. Get in that and you could have grooves sharp enough to saw through one of these and you still wouldn't get any spin.

Brilliant! Pass the cost and burden on to the golf course operators of the world, and inflict misery on the player! This is  vital to health of the game. Eliminate the fairway, I say! Socialize the cost and privatize that profit! (Though I would recommend that the Bomb and Gouge guys read Golf Digest's own Frank Thomas, who says grooves don't matter at the 3-4 inch rough height. I'm guessing that would also include 6-8 inche hay.)

2.) Sorry Philly Mick, but lofts on wedges have kinda gotten out of hand. And I don't just want to keep the 64-degree that Lefty had in his bag for a while out of play.

Hey, 64 degree wedges only make up a tiny portion of the $17 billion club industry, so they're fair game!

GOUGE: I'll give you two more and I'll bet we can combine on a third.

Oh these bloggers have bonded! Do share more pearls of wisdom...

3) There is no doubt that grooves are better today at channeling out grass juice than they used to be. And dirt and grass make golf balls not work right. The volume on the new grooves has increased, bottom line. Second, grooves are better with modern balls in that the urethane covers are able to get gripped by the sharper groove edge radius. You could attack this issue around the greens by making all clubs with lofts higher than 50 degrees be furnished with v-shaped grooves only. And there cannot be any additional face roughness either.

So the ball is playing a part in this extra spin stuff and distance. Well then, we should...have different grooves for different clubs? Oh yeah, that'll be easy to enforce.

4) Shhhhh. But the real answer everyone is afraid of (unnecessarily so) is bifurcation. It's time for the ruling bodies to seriously consider backing off their stand against separate rules for elite competitions. The best golfers in the world are freaks that are even better in real-life than they are in their video games and letting them play with equipment designed to help average golfers isn't like cheating, it is cheating. The soap box derby gets pretty high tech, but none of those vehicles would make it much farther than down the driveway. Tour players should compete with the crudest tools possible, not the most advanced. With two different sets of rules (only in the area of equipment), you could make every club v-grooved. You could even reduce driver sizes to 260 cc if you wanted to. Hmmm. Might be what all that talk at Muirfield Village was all about earlier this year.

Wait, did I just read that? Warning boys, this kind of common sense stuff will prompt an email from you-know-where.

Of course, bifurcation wouldn't be necessary if you just made a few changes to the...oh that's right, anything but the ball. I keep forgetting! 

BOMB & GOUGE: And then there's this.
5) Do. Nothing.

Nice mop up. And they speak as one. Peace at last, peace at last.

Maybe there won't be an email from you-know-where. 

Distance Now And Then

Thanks to readers Mark, Ken and Chris for the head's up on George White's column on distance changes in the game.

The normally eloquent White draws no conclusion, ends the piece abruptly and in general, dances around the cause of the problem, but what's more interesting is that it's been a long, long time since anyone wrote one of those silly pieces about how distance hasn't changed much in recent years. Glad we finally cleared that hurdle. 

Here V Go Again

The table of contents for Golf Digest's November issue has been posted and this caught my eye:

Here V go again: The USGA eyes a ban on U-grooves.  By Mike Stachura

This reminded me of an interesting bit from Frank Thomas's "Frank Talk" column in the October Digest (not posted).

Now, the USGA is looking at banning U-grooves because they are afraid of addressing the distance issue, afraid to acknowledge that there has been a significant distance increase since they issued their "Joint Statement of Principles," and still too angry about players hitting driver-wedge even when they present silly-narrow fairway widths in the 21-25 yard range.

So to stop the players from bombing drivers and hitting wedge approaches, they apparently believe that changing the grooves will force players to lay back off of tees, and voila, distance issue solved!

Ignoring the ridiculousness of advocating high rough and narrow fairways as a partial solution to the distance problem (that cat's out of the bag), just consider the logic and science of claiming that grooves are actually allowing players to spin the ball out of tournament rough.

Here's what Thomas said about balls, grooves and spin (underline added for emphasis):

From light rough (up to two inches), a ball will spin 40 percent less than it would from dry conditions. This is because the water in grass serves as a lubricant between the ball and the clubface. Because the cover never penetrates more than .005 inches into the groove, which is limited to a depth of .02 inches, this is the only condition in which groove configuration matters. Out of light rough the groove depth can carry away more water and decrease the effects of lubrication on spin. However, from rough of four to five inches, it doesn't matter what type of ball or grooves you are using.

So the USGA is going to have to make a strong case that U-grooves are spinning balls out of the rough.

But even then, they still won't address distance and spin of the ball, so it's all really just a big bluff. 

"It's something we put in place to protect our brand"

David Westin reports on a fine moment in Ping history:

A prominent golf equipment company's stance against retailers discounting its products has angered two area golf shops that give military customers a break

Because of the military discounts, Bonaventure Discount Golf in Augusta and Gordon Lakes Golf Course on Fort Gordon no longer receive Ping products. And even if they could, they would refuse to sell them now.

Karsten Manufacturing Corp. of Phoenix, Ariz., which has a registered trademark on the Ping brand, discontinued its Bonaventure and Gordon Lakes accounts in August.

In a letter to the shops, Ping said Bonaventure and Gordon Lakes discounted Ping clubs below Ping's "Improved Fitting, Internet Transactions and Price Policy."

Both shops give 10 percent discounts to military members on all purchases. Gordon Lakes does it for active and retired servicemen; Bonaventure gives the discount for active servicemen.

Wow, a whopping 10%! How dare they do something nice for our underpaid, overworked solders and take money out of Ping's pocket. Wait, no, this doesn't cost Ping a dime. Oh, but I'm so naive, what about the brand? 

"It's something we put in place to protect our brand," said Bill Gates, Ping's director of distribution and associate general counsel.

And what great counsel he's providing.

According to Mr. Gates, no exceptions can be made when it comes to shops selling their clubs under the suggested price listed in their agreement (there is no contract).

"It's something we apply to all of our accounts consistently, and we don't have exceptions to it," Mr. Gates said. "We don't sell direct to the public; we sell to retailers, and we do have certain policies in place with them. Those policies are confidential between us and the account."

Mr. Gates did say that once a retailer buys Ping products, they own them, but must abide by their unwritten agreement with Ping.

If Mr. Waters and Gordon Lakes have been discounting Ping clubs to the military, why have they been cut off now, and both within 15 days of each other?

"It's something that's been in place for several years," Mr. Gates said of the no-discount rule.

"They have had it for years, but didn't pay attention to it because their business has been off," said Mr. Waters, who believes Ping is now enforcing the rule because "they've been hot the last few years."

The discount doesn't cost Ping a dime. Oh, there I go again, forgetting about THE BRAND.

Gosh greed is fun!

Make sure you read the entire piece.

It's The Shoes, Vol. 2

Now Nike and Tiger are joining Padraig Harrington in claiming his shoes have added distance to a player's game.

BEAVERTON, Ore. (September 20, 2006) - Last month's PGA Championship set the stage for eventual champion Tiger Woods to debut Nike Golf's SP-8 TW Tour footwear, which is available in stores this fall. Since donning the stylish new design, which incorporates Nike's newest ground-breaking footwear technology, the Nike Power Platform, Woods' results have been astounding.

Not only did Woods go home with the Wannamaker Trophy after putting Nike's newest technology on his feet, but his average driving distance has since increased by nearly 10 yards. Prior to wearing the SP-8 TW Tour, Woods averaged 304.3 yards off the tee. Now, since wearing the SP-8 TW Tour, he is averaging 313.8 yards off the tee, according to PGA TOUR statistics. Also, among his recent five consecutive victories, three of them were with his Nike SP-8 TW Tour shoes.

"My right foot is grounded, my left foot has rolled forward and I'm in good balance," said Woods about his new footwear. "I definitely feel like I have more traction at impact."

Take that Hank Haney!

Kostis: Golf Will Survive!

Titleist Golf Products Design Consultant Peter Kostis weighs in with one of those mysterious columns he pens on occasion to reminds us just how difficult it is to balance the whole pro-golf ball technology position while acknowledging the ugly stuff that comes with the whole deregulation mindset.

From the days of English aristocracy and class warfare, through racial and gender inequalities and to today's technological world,

 Oh Lordy...jumping ahead:

Some people consider today's golf to be boring. They say it relies too much on power and technology while reducing the skill requirements of the player. But that's a simple, easy conclusion to a much more complicated issue.

And shame on Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Greg Norman and all of the other greats who have said so! They don't understand margins.

Today's golf isn't better or worse than the golf played 20, 50 or even 100 years ago. It's just different, just as our lives and our world are different.

Ahhh...here comes the point of this column, which, oddly, does not include a disclosure of Kostis's corporate affiliation... 

To try and roll back golf to some better time is like saying that life in the 1950s was, across the board, better than it is today. In some cases maybe it was, but in many other cases today's world is far preferable. This concept of yearning for a return to better times has been around forever and coincides with a reluctance to accept change. Dismissing all change as bad is stupid.

While we're doing cliche's, how about not confusing change with progress? Naw, that doesn't fit.

Funny too, but I guess he's referring to the USGA thinking about taking away our grooves, because most people would just like to see a little ball rollback, and let all of the other "change" stand.

Anyway, time for Kostis to break out into full Gloria Gaynor mode:

When steel shafts were in the process of replacing wooden shafts in the 20s and 30s, traditionalists of the day cried out that equipment was going to reduce the skills required to play the game.

Golf survived.

When the Haskell ball replaced the gutta-percha, traditionalists cried out that this was going to make golf courses obsolete and the game too easy.

Golf survived.

I swear I've read this speech before. Hmmm, but where?

With metal shafts replacing wood shafts, was there any doubt that eventually metal club-heads would replace wooden club-heads? No! Neither was there any doubt that traditionalists would bemoan this innovation as bad for the game.

But golf survived.

Finally, graphite is replacing some steel and the solid-core, muti-layered golf ball has replaced the wound, balata ball, and, you guessed it! Traditionalists are saying golf has become too easy and courses obsolete.

Golf will survive. It will just be different.

I wonder how Peter would feel if he paid an assessment at a club because they had to renovate their course, all because the ball can't be rolled back a bit...eh, why am I wondering?

Ah, but then the conflicted view of supporting equipment on steroids clashes with that stuff about people on steroids. 

Golf has, seemingly, been proactive only when it comes to preserving traditions. Golf should be proactive against performance enhancing drugs too, but it won't happen. The, bury your head in the sand, "we have no evidence to indicate a drug problem," philosophy will prevail and golf will lose another opportunity to be a leader. That's a reality that I find revolting and at the same time, laughable.

We need to be diligent in protecting the game of golf. We also have to realize that just as the world around us changes; the game of golf will reflect and not lead those changes. Golf is not a social game. It is society's game. Look to the way we lead our lives and the way the world is evolving, if you want to see what the future of golf will be. There are many who claim golf to be the beacon of civility and reason and, as such, steadfastly reject change. Those people feel strongly that tradition is a commodity to be protected. That thinking kept women from clubhouses in Great Britain, blacks from the PGA Tour in America, and will allow for drugs to invade the game in the future. Golf, because it changes so stubbornly, will always be a follower and never a leader. That is the price to be paid for traditions.

Wow, that was a lot of work. Hope the pay is good!

"Golf has never been exclusively about length, but that seems like the emphasis now"

Robert Thompson blogs about a story he's written quoting Nick Price about the state of the game and his likely final appearance in the Canadian Open.

Unfortunately, in a professional golf world increasingly dominated by players who hit their tee shots remarkable distances, shot makers like O'Meara and Price have quickly become relics of a bygone era.

"It has been very tough for me to be competitive out here in the last few years," Price said. "I've been very vocal about this. The way the game is going -- especially the USGA and Augusta -- and the way it is focusing on length, they are keeping a lot of players from being able to win major championships."

And Thompson writes that Price is actually looking forward to the Champions Tour:

"I'm tired of playing 7,600 yard golf courses," he said. "I'm sick of that. Golf has never been exclusively about length, but that seems like the emphasis now."

But both golfers have different takes on why the game has changed so much in recent years. O'Meara credits it partially to equipment, but also points out that most players are far more physically fit than they were two decades ago. But Price isn't buying that explanation.

"If you looked at Greg Norman when he was 32-years-old, he was as strong as an Olympic athlete," Price says. "So was Faldo. I think it is a slight on them to say the current guys simply work out and that's why they hit the ball further."

Given his nearly three decades of professional experience, Price says he knows the solution to the distance problem.

"Simply change the equipment," he says. "I don't care what the average Joe plays. In fact, let him play equipment that helps his game. Can you imagine what would happen in baseball if they gave Barry Bonds a titanium baseball bat? The pitchers would go berserk. But that's what we did in golf."

It's The Grooves, Vol. 329

The Bomb and Gouge boys are back and as always, they write about the equipment issue like Nuke LaLoosh pitches.

Bomb (E. Michael Johnson) writes about reading the USGA's 104 page paper laying the groundwork for making everyone's U-grooves illegal so they don't have to regulate the ball. (A strategy that I welcome because it will absolutely enrage golfers to the absurdity of the current USGA way of thinking).

Aggressive grooves have played right into the strategy employed by several tour players of bashing the ball as far off the tee as possible and rough be damned. Take them away, and perhaps they start sacrificing a tad of distance for a few more fairways. Or maybe not. Old habits, after all, die very hard. But there’s little doubt distance is at the heart of the USGA’s research. As Rugge has said repeatedly, “The correlation between accuracy off the tee and success on the PGA Tour is almost non-existent.”

Bomb nails it. The USGA was humiliated by the flogging approach and is determined to stop it, even if it means deeming most grooves on the market today illegal (after having approved them!).

I don’t dispute that contention, but I’m still a big believer that distance is not ruining the game of golf as it currently stands. And I certainly don’t want to be writing for the next few years about motions filed on behalf of the manufacturers by noted legal eagle Leonard Decof, as was the case back in the 1980s and ’90s. But when ShotLink stats reveal that more than 40 percent of all approach shots on the PGA Tour are hit with some kind of wedge, I can at least see why the collective brains at golf’s governing bodies are whirling faster than a ball coming off one of these clubs.

That number is still just staggering to me. 40%! Yep, it's the grooves.

GOUGE: I do not want to agree with you. But there is a reason for the fairway. If the rough is not a hazard, then something must be done to make it one. Grooves might be one way, it might also be the most impractical solution to a problem in recorded history. If we all want to play by the same rules as the USGA wishes (humor me), then a groove change rule would force us all to buy new irons and wedges. That in a nutshell is a definition of a class-action lawsuit.

Actually, rough is a product of the modern game to offset poorly regulated equipment. Old Tom Morris was not out mowing and layering rough. Anyway, the otherwise sane reasoning from Gouge (Mike Stachura) ends there...

The USGA’s Executive Committee clearly is ticked off at how elite players are changing the game. Read the report Jim Vernon, chairman of the Equipment Standards committee, gave to the Executive Committee and it's obvious there is a real fear on their part that the game is out of control. But the truth is all they have to do is look at their own championship to realize they’ve solved the difficulty/skill algorithm quite simply. Layered rough makes crying babies out of all the great pretenders out there. And it’s the only thing that’s beaten Tiger Woods in the last three months.

Sigh. Oh yes, it was the rough at Winged Foot that did Tiger in. Couldn't have been that his father had just died weeks before and he was not ready to return. No, it was the rough.

Where Does The Game Go From Here?

Having had a few days to digest Walter Driver's ESPN.com remarks and to read your comments, it seems a bit of a assessment is necessary.

First, the key lines from the Statement of Principles are important to remember:

Golf balls used by the vast majority of highly skilled players today have largely reached the performance limits for initial velocity and overall distance which have been part of the Rules since 1976. The governing bodies believe that golf balls, when hit by highly skilled golfers, should not of themselves fly significantly further than they do today.

Today being May, 2002 when the PGA Tour Driving Distance average was 279.4 (the end of 2001 number)

...any further significant increases in hitting distances at the highest level are undesirable. Whether these increases in distance emanate from advancing equipment technology, greater athleticism of players, improved player coaching, golf course conditioning or a combination of these or other factors, they will have the impact of seriously reducing the challenge of the game. The consequential lengthening or toughening of courses would be costly or impossible and would have a negative effect on increasingly important environmental and ecological issues. Pace of play would be slowed and playing costs would increase.

Should such a situation of meaningful increases in distances arise, the R&A and the USGA would feel it immediately necessary to seek ways of protecting the game.

So instead of the anticipated debate over the meaning of "significant" or "meaningful" increases, Driver's remarks make it clear that such a discussion will not take place when the USGA is unwilling to acknowledge the driving distance average around May 2002 (and remember, the PGA Tour average is the key number for them). Driver on ESPN.com:

The facts are that the tour distances are nearly flat the last 3 years. It went down somewhat a few years ago and then leveled off. So the facts show that there hasn't been much increase to show us that we need to act from when we made those statements.

He's right, the numbers are "nearly" flat the last three years, but not the last four. And we'd be giving the USGA the benefit of the doubt by using the 2002 PGA Tour Driving Distance average (279.8), when the 2001 number (279.4) would seem closer to the Statement of Principles issuing. But since the numbers are so close, either works, right? Well, not for Driver.

His statement about the number going down at any point in recent years is pure fiction and he should be embarrassed to peddle such nonsense, especially when preaching like this:

We have a great deal of facts at the USGA upon which we make our rule making. Many of the people that talk about the game are passionate about the game, but they don't have the facts that we have.

There will be no discussion about the meaning of significant from 2002 to 2006, just a shift to discussion about grooves so the USGA doesn't have to take a tough stance and can keep harvesting rough to mask the problem.

So where does the game go from here? How can the USGA be taken seriously when they post such strong statements and then turn their back on those words?

Your thoughts? 

Googling Golf

MacWorld's Rob Griffiths suggest ways that golfers can get the most out of Google Earth, and includes a pretty cool demonstration video.

"Golf is a power game"

The September 4 issue of SI opens with the traditional "Scorecard" piece, this time with Alan Shipnuck writing about the emergence of golf as a "power game." He then lays out the perks headaches coming with the power shift.

Golf is a power game, a point driven home by a recent confluence of events in Ohio that rocked a sport that has always been resistant to change. In Springfield on Aug. 22, the Ohio Golf Association held a tournament in which competitors were compelled to use identical balls that had been engineered to fly roughly 10% shorter than the average rock. (dead-ball golf is what headline writers at The Columbus Dispatch called the attempt to put the toothpaste back into the tube.) Then, in Akron last week, Tiger Woods took time out from winning his fourth straight tournament, the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, to stump for the implementation of performance-enhancing drug testing in professional golf. It was a public rebuke to PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, who has staked out a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil position on steroids.

And after considering the recent events and Tiger's feelings on the matter, Shipnuck reminds us that Woods pushed for a pro-active stance on driver testing. And of course not mentioned here but equally as important to the topic at hand, Woods has advocated changing the spin rate of balls.

On the OGA event, Shipnuck writes:

It was an open-minded band of volunteers that showed up when the OGA staged its one-ball tournament, bringing to life an idea that for years has been kicked around by everyone from Jack Nicklaus to recently retired Masters chairman Hootie Johnson, who grew weary of annually having to tear up his golf course to keep pace with advances in equipment. (Augusta National has grown more than 500 yards, to 7,445, since Woods's overpowering victory in 1997.) OGA president Hugh E. Wall III said that maintaining the relevance of older, shorter courses in his jurisdiction was the primary motivation for testing the restricted-flight ball. "[We have] great courses, but many don't have the resources or the real estate to expand to 7,400 yards," Wall told GolfWorld. "[We want] our member clubs to see there may be another option ... other than bulldozers."

Thus every competitor at Windy Knoll Golf Club received a dozen balls with an OGA logo and a side stamp of CHAMPIONS 08222306 (the name of the tournament and its dates). All other details about the ball were supposed to be top secret, but by tournament's end word had leaked that it was manufactured by Volvik, an obscure Korean company. (A U.S. manufacturer examined the OGA ball for SI and reports that it was a three-piece, dual-core construction with a Surlyn cover and 446 dimples.) These instant collector's items left most players pining for their regular ball. Derek Carney of Dublin, Ohio, typified the conflicted attitude: He agreed that something has to be done to protect older courses but said that he didn't like the OGA ball "because it doesn't benefit me."

Oddly, such a selfish attitude in other sports would be laughed, but in golf, such an attitude is seen differently. Shipnuck explains:

Such grumbling merely previews the howls of protest that would accompany any efforts to roll back the ball on the PGA Tour, where players have spent years using launch monitors and computers to find optimal combinations of balls, shafts and clubheads. The irony of the OGA event is that it is PGA Tour pros who threaten to make a mockery of classic courses. Yet bifurcation is a dirty word in golf. Differing rules for pros and amateurs would destroy the business model of the $4 billion equipment industry, which is built on stars like Woods being paid handsomely to peddle their gear to weekend hackers.

Golf is still grappling with the ramifications of the boom-boom ethos that has redefined the game, but the almighty buck remains the sport's most influential force. When it comes to reigning in the power game, steroid testing will be an easier sell than dead-ball golf. Especially when Woods is the salesman.

Trevino: "The USGA has dropped the ball on the golf ball"

Ron Kroichik features these quotes from Lee Trevino, who is playing in this week's First Tee event at Pebble Beach:

-- On the chance of future tour players relying on a homemade swing, as he did: "There won't be any more homemade golf swings, because power is everything. My swing was powerless; that's one of the reasons I hit the ball so straight."

-- On technology's impact on golf: "The golf ball has ruined the game. It doesn't bend as much as it used to. The USGA has dropped the ball on the golf ball -- they won't admit it, but they know."

"The phone hasn't stopped ringing"

Thanks to reader Scott for noticing that Worldgolf.com features a story/press release on the Volvik "Prospect" PROsPECT golf balls attracting interest following the Ohio Golf Association Champions event.

Company President Chuck Womer:

 "The phone hasn't stopped ringing since the news came out at the end of the competition in Ohio. Golfers are calling asking where they can find the ball. Retailers are calling asking how soon they can get more of the ball. We're also very happy to have been able to help the OGA to make history again.

 And this is beautiful...

This is our second tournament win as the PROsPECT ball won the Gate City Classic earlier this year in the hands of Keith Reeves on the National Golf Tour Piedmont Series. Keith continues to play the PROsPECT and is at the top of his series and national points list."

Uh, of course you got a win at the OGA event. It was the only ball they played!

The release also includes contact and ordering information.