The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
R&A and USGA breaking ranks?
Bifurcation. A word truly to set your heart racing on an overcast, dreich Tuesday morning in March.
But no apologies for that, because last week we had the first clear signs that the bifurcation of the golf ball is finally on the agenda as a possibility to reining in the unsustainable distances the golf ball is travelling.
A couple of weeks ago, it seemed the R&A and USGA were ever more intransigent in their insistence that driving distance is not ballooning as they published their latest data on the issue.
Instead of the distance boom we all feel we’ve witnessed since the turn of the century, the governing bodies’ data showed what they called instead a “distance creep”. Marginal gains instead of huge ones. Nothing to get worried about here folks.
The figures, robustly defended by Martin Slumbers at the recent R&A media round table as “hard data rather than anecdotal evidence”, nonetheless were met with reactions ranging from raised eyebrows to contemptuous laughs.
No-one who sees Rory McIlroy or Dustin Johnson or Bubba Watson or Jason Day reduce 600-yard par fives to a couple of lusty blows believes driving distance has “plateaued” in the governing bodies’ description. Instead they see figures collated prior to 2003 – after the most significant leap in distances was recorded – short on actual detail. What club? What wind conditions? What was the player hitting at?
Most people’s suspicion is that the governing bodies don’t want a fight over this with the tours, the top players, and also the manufacturers just itching to slap a lawsuit on what they would no doubt regard as restrictive practice.
What does every commercial for any golf ball detail first, after all? Golf ball technology gives lip service to “feel” but the selling point is if the thing flies further. Every time.
Bifurcation – which in golfing terms means one, limited distance ball for the elite, and another for the punters – was always dismissed before as being contrary to the ethos of the game.
You know, the one where we schmucks are supposed to get the same tools for the sport as DJ, Jordan, and Rory. As if that has actually ever happened.
Yet Mike Davis, executive director of the USGA, surprisingly flew a kite at the North American Golf Symposium last week on a bifurcated ball.
It was amusing to see Davis lauded for “new ideas” when all of it, including his arguments in favour, have been oft repeated by those concerned about driving distance for over a decade.
“If you think about it, we already bifurcate distance,” said Davis. “We play from different tees.”
We also play with very different balls that the manufacturers don’t like to talk about, but carry on, Mike.
“What if I want to play with Dustin Johnson and he has an 80% golf ball, I have a 100% golf ball and we play from the same tee?” he added.
But he wasn’t just talking about proams. Davis went on to express the obvious environmental and maintenance issues of the great golf courses being perpetually lengthened because … well it couldn’t be because of the extreme distances the ball is travelling, could it?
“Think about any other sport. Have other sports allowed their equipment to influence their playing field the way that golf has?” added Davis.
This was almost word-perfectly the question asked by a colleague of mine at the R&A round table and dimissed by Slumbers.
I seriously doubt Davis spoke without knowing the views of the R&A. We know that the 80% golf ball he speaks of has already been thoroughly tested on the quiet by both the R&A and USGA.
The chorus of voices calling for attention to the ball includes most of the great names of the game – Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Arnold Palmer, when he was still with us, represent a fairly formidable vanguard.
Personally, my own preference for a reined in ball is that it will stop the constant drive to build back-breaking over-long “championship courses” that will never hold a championship, and thereby the utterly unnecessary land grab by rich golf clubs.
But I also concede one crucial issue. There’s no question that the watching public love it.
Trackman technology has made distance hitting even more glamorous. And I got an inkling of that on the nightmare Saturday of the 2015 Open at St Andrews, when myself and some friends waited seven hours on my day off to see some golf due to the R&A’s foul-ups with green speeds.
Finally, the group of Dustin Johnson, Jordan Spieth and Hideki Matsuyama appeared in front of a packed stand at the 15th tee.
These people had waited all day in breezy but not unplayable conditions to see the players. And it became clear who they’d waited for.
Johnson’s hit was greeted with gasps, laughter and applause. Nobody looked to see where his ball had gone.
Golf’s about more than brute power. But neglecting to address that might mean it’s already too late.
Davis’s “new ideas” have been repeated by those concerned by driving distance for over a decade