"It would be relatively simple to turn down the distance on a driver by 25 yards."

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I've been pondering a purchase of a violin to carry around when golf's leaders, scientists and manufacturers suggest a distance rollback via the ball would be a difficult, if not impossible task. It really is quite the heartstring pulling story, so much so that they all have a jillion patents on this ball they really haven't given much thought to.
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Hank On Tiger And Others: "A lot of them are benefiting from not having to hit many drivers"

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Last year I wrote in Golf World about the death of the driver caused in part by course setups and shorter major venues at Olympic, Lytham and Merion rendering the big stick useless, but one element of the equation that I heard all about this year in talking to Champions Tour players this week was the 3-wood and the amazing strides made of late by manufacturers.
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"The environmental question is really the one that is difficult for the manufacturers to refute."

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Richard Gillis files an interesting WSJ piece (thanks reader John) about distance where Nike's Cindy Davis preaches the joys of pursuing longer drives and selling the next great driver.

Thankfully, my colleague Gil Hanse brought some sanity to the discussion.

"We're at a point where something has to be done," Hanse said. "We're talking about a tiny proportion of golfers where distance is an issue, a small handful of tour players and accomplished amateurs. Whether its bifurcation or rolling the ball back I don't know what the answer is, but the environmental question is really the one that is difficult for the manufacturers to refute."

The new normal in golf course design is the 8,000-yard layout.

"Two hundred acres is the new standard for a golf course compared to 150 acres a few years ago," Hanse said. "And 120 of those acres have to be maintained and watered as opposed to 80. You really are going down an unsustainable path. From a manufacturers standpoint, how can you argue against that? They can talk a lot about marketing, about player endorsements and how there's always been the same set of rules, etc., but the environmental argument is the winning one."

SwingTip Gets CES Launch

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John Strege wrote about it in more detail last September, but it's still interesting to see the potentially cool SwingTip data collector get a launch at the Consumer Electronics Show and backed by $4.4 million in financing.

Tiffany Hsu of the LA Times reports on the $129.99 one-ounce device that latches on to your club and can last 18 holes before sharing the data with your smart phone. Roll your eyes, but Hogan would have been all over this!

But for its Santa Clara maker, the selling point is the gadget’s ability to track and analyze users’ golf swings using motion sensors. SwingTip then wirelessly transmits 3-D animations of the golfer’s movements via Bluetooth to iOS or Android mobile devices.

The tool can gauge swing path and speed, club face angle, impact zone and more. The metrics are broken out individually into a scorecard and also used to compile an animated video tutorial showing the swing from three different angles.