done with a club that fans can’t buy, so how can it be promoted? Will Callaway, Acushnet, TaylorMade, Cobra, Ping, and other club manufacturers, who spend millions on player endorsements, allow their business plan to be made obsolete? It will certainly bring into question paying millions of dollars for endorsements, if they can’t sell the new clubs. How does restricting driver performance affect club technology innovation? The quest for improved designs, materials and engineering is both expensive and time consuming. Without a profitable way to connect the “restrictedtech” clubs, used by professionals, with the new “latest and greatest,” allowed for recreational golfers, a whole new marketing strategy must be implemented. What will be done with the golf ball for elites? “Rolling back” the ball may have been a consideration, but discarded to concentrate on drivers. Changes to golf ball performance will be another minefield not easily negotiated. The USGA and The R&A have said little regarding improved player fitness and athleticism, not to mention extensive use of computerized swing analysis and training. Performance gains in this area are almost sure to continue. What happens if elites’ driving distance continues to increase even with restricted equipment? Driving distance is also influenced by course conditions such as firmness of the fairways, which has also not been addressed. Today’s manicured fairways roll like the greens did 20 years ago. Elite golfers train to take advantage of this with drivers dialed-in for the best launch angle and spin rate for the maximum carry distance and roll. Many of the courses, played by the PGA TOUR have generous fairways with little rough reducing any premium on accuracy and giving distance a disproportionate role. How will the professional tours react with this curbing of players performance? The PGA Tour is in the entertainment business and may not want to hurt their product by reducing the thrill and fan interest in long hitting by complying with the USGA and The R&A. We might see certain drivers allowed in regular Tour events but not allowed in the U.S. Open, or THE Open Championship. Wouldn’t that be a mess! The USGA, and The R&A have seemingly set their minds on the idea that the ball goes too far. Trying to avoid a repeat of the square-groove debacle, they have taken a more calculated approach, asking for golfer’s feedback, to give the impression the subject was open to debate. This raises the larger question of the USGA and The R&A relevance to recreational players and our opinion of splitting the Rules of Golf segregated by classes of players, or sex. The USGA and R&A are again venturing into the great unknown and it’s a void labeled, “Does Anybody Care?” Their desire to turnback the clock reflects a prejudice against future progress and innovation. While these changes can be bullied through, we wonder if the cost may be too high for the overall good of the game? Indiana Golf Journal
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