I read recently in Golf World that some part of Ohio is going to require all participants in their tournaments to use the same ball. I personally think it is a good idea. Why shouldn't it be like all the other sports where everyone plays with the same ball. I think it would take away from the equipment craze to fit clubs to a players game. Why not make players fit their game to acomplish different shots. Where are all the shotmakers these days? I guess the tour guys don't really need to be shotmakers when you can bomb it 300+ on every hole. I know the fans like to see birdies, but even par isn't even a good score anymore.
One ball for all
- Thread starter NickT
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bbftx
New
Interesting.
I found this tidbit about ball selection for the Ohio tournament:
"Though no ball has been selected, both Fadel and Popa revealed that the group is close to selecting one that likely will not significantly favor clubhead speeds over 105 m.p.h. as today's balls tend to do. It will be a 3-piece ball, with a compression of around 70 with a soft cover."
I found this tidbit about ball selection for the Ohio tournament:
"Though no ball has been selected, both Fadel and Popa revealed that the group is close to selecting one that likely will not significantly favor clubhead speeds over 105 m.p.h. as today's balls tend to do. It will be a 3-piece ball, with a compression of around 70 with a soft cover."
Interesting side note. Did you all know that the Pinnacle Exception has the exact same inside as a ProV1. Not bad for a ball that is $20.00 a dozen. I'd be interested in knowing how many of the larger companies produce exact balls at low cost. e.g Wilson/Top Flight, Titleist/Pinnacle.
Jared Willerson
Super Moderator
So I guess the person who takes the time and effort to maximize their swing speed and work hard to have a swing that hits the ball harder is punished?
This seems to be a rule that wants everyone to play on the same level and does away with the physical skill of some golfers.
This seems the anti-thesis of what golf was intended to be.
This seems to be a rule that wants everyone to play on the same level and does away with the physical skill of some golfers.
This seems the anti-thesis of what golf was intended to be.
birdie_man
New
Interesting....the cover on the ProV gives it more bite with the short clubs tho no?
I knew you could change the ball pressure, I didn't know you could actually choose a ball with different material composition. If this in fact the case, I stand corrected. But, I still think there are way too many things that golfers can use to equal the playing field without improving their games. Drivers with oversized heads (even though a limit was set). Replacable weights to encourage a fade, draw, high, low. Different shafts with different flex points, frequencies, torques, etc. Wedges with shaved hozels, different bounces, metal compositions, etc. It goes on and on from the equipment in your hands to the ball you hit. Pretty soon, the best property you'll be able to buy on the course will be 100 yards from every tee and green so the course continually has room to expand. Where does it stop? Or where do you think it should stop? I'm not saying you have to make the one ball rule an amatuer rule, but it sounds good for the major tours.
There is no way to come up with one ball that will be fair for the entire field. It will suit one or a few peoples games far better and then you have created an unfair advantage. Make all balls roll back maximum ball speed by a set percentage and then you still experiment with spin rates and feel and other issues to still get the best performance for your individual game.
tourdeep
New
April 6, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Golf's Power Failure
By FRANK THOMAS
Orlando, Fla.
THE standard drive of a year or two hence will be approximately 300 yards — so the more conservative are claiming there is a need for calling a halt, else the necessity for remodeling all the present courses will be imperative." While that quotation is from a United States Golf Association bulletin of 1907, the sentiment is one we will hear often this week during the Masters Tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club: the prodigious distances that professional golfers hit the ball today are ruining the game.
Panic over the distances the best players can hit a golf ball has been with us nearly as long as envy over the same thing. At its best, golf calls for a balance of skills: power, precision, finesse and touch. With recent gains in technology, however, many feel that power has taken undue precedence. Thus in recent years Augusta National officials have repeatedly lengthened the course in an effort to keep the players from turning Bobby Jones's pride and joy into a pitch-and-putt tournament. Yet, as Tiger Woods himself has pointed out, lengthening the course only increases the advantage to the long hitter.
Now officers and elders of the golf association — which, along with the Royal and Ancient Golf Association of St. Andrews, Scotland, writes the game's rules — have asked manufacturers to study the feasibility of a ball that would travel on average 25 yards less than those used now.
This idea is wrongheaded in several ways. To begin with, mandating such a ball would affect all players, and the vast majority of golfers don't hit the ball too far. (Nor do we hit the ball nearly as far as we think we do; well-supported data indicates that the average golfer hits a driver 192 yards — while thinking that he hits it approximately 230.) It's safe to say that for most of us the great layouts created a century ago still provide plenty of challenge.
Even before addressing the ball, the rule-making bodies took several foolish steps. They instituted limits that allowed some spring-like effect from the club faces of high-tech titanium drivers (a phenomenon that let the club itself enhance the ball speed at impact for the first time), while restricting both the length of a driver (which will affect few players) and the permissible height of a tee (which is downright silly). They have also explored limits on how much a club can resist twisting at impact; such a change, like the reduced-distance ball, would have a much greater effect on the average golfer than on those who play for prize money.
The goal should be to keep professionals from mindlessly bombing away while not unnecessarily hurting the average player. I have two suggestions. First, tournament courses should be set up to punish long but wayward hitters by narrowing fairways and growing higher rough (the longer grass along the margins of the hole).
The other major change would address the imbalance that today seems to favor power so strongly over touch and finesse. To place greater emphasis on the old skills required to work the ball and to hit less-than-full shots, professional players should be restricted to 10 clubs in their bags instead of the current 14.
The 14-club limit was adopted in 1938 in reaction to players who were carrying as many as 30 clubs to cover every possible occasion. The limit has remained at 14 through the eras of Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan to Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.
Reducing that number would again force players to make tough decisions several times in each round about what kind of in-between shot they must hit. (It would also make it almost impossible for Phil Mickelson to carry two drivers — including one that allows him to hit a power draw that moves from left to right — as he did in cruising to victory at the BellSouth Classic last weekend and said he will again at Augusta) In sum, it would put a new emphasis on the touch and finesse that we should want from our champions.
This change will work only if the players' organization, the Professional Golf Association Tour, goes along with it. But since the goal is to broaden the range of skills needed to succeed on tour, it should make the game even more attractive to the viewing public, which is the P.G.A. Tour's main concern. And manufacturers will have nothing to fear from this proposal, because no special standards are being created for the equipment used by the pros.
Most of all, this proposal won't take a thing away from the average golfer, who might otherwise respond to further limits on technology by ignoring them altogether. By tightening courses before tournaments and limiting the number of clubs the pros use, the United States Golf Association can deal with concerns about the game played by the top echelon of golfers without ruining it for the rest of us.
Frank Thomas, the United States Golf Association's technical director from 1974 to 2000, is the chief technical adviser for Golf Digest and the Golf Channel.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/06/opinion/06thomas.html?_r=1&th=&oref=slogin&emc=th&...
Op-Ed Contributor
Golf's Power Failure
By FRANK THOMAS
Orlando, Fla.
THE standard drive of a year or two hence will be approximately 300 yards — so the more conservative are claiming there is a need for calling a halt, else the necessity for remodeling all the present courses will be imperative." While that quotation is from a United States Golf Association bulletin of 1907, the sentiment is one we will hear often this week during the Masters Tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club: the prodigious distances that professional golfers hit the ball today are ruining the game.
Panic over the distances the best players can hit a golf ball has been with us nearly as long as envy over the same thing. At its best, golf calls for a balance of skills: power, precision, finesse and touch. With recent gains in technology, however, many feel that power has taken undue precedence. Thus in recent years Augusta National officials have repeatedly lengthened the course in an effort to keep the players from turning Bobby Jones's pride and joy into a pitch-and-putt tournament. Yet, as Tiger Woods himself has pointed out, lengthening the course only increases the advantage to the long hitter.
Now officers and elders of the golf association — which, along with the Royal and Ancient Golf Association of St. Andrews, Scotland, writes the game's rules — have asked manufacturers to study the feasibility of a ball that would travel on average 25 yards less than those used now.
This idea is wrongheaded in several ways. To begin with, mandating such a ball would affect all players, and the vast majority of golfers don't hit the ball too far. (Nor do we hit the ball nearly as far as we think we do; well-supported data indicates that the average golfer hits a driver 192 yards — while thinking that he hits it approximately 230.) It's safe to say that for most of us the great layouts created a century ago still provide plenty of challenge.
Even before addressing the ball, the rule-making bodies took several foolish steps. They instituted limits that allowed some spring-like effect from the club faces of high-tech titanium drivers (a phenomenon that let the club itself enhance the ball speed at impact for the first time), while restricting both the length of a driver (which will affect few players) and the permissible height of a tee (which is downright silly). They have also explored limits on how much a club can resist twisting at impact; such a change, like the reduced-distance ball, would have a much greater effect on the average golfer than on those who play for prize money.
The goal should be to keep professionals from mindlessly bombing away while not unnecessarily hurting the average player. I have two suggestions. First, tournament courses should be set up to punish long but wayward hitters by narrowing fairways and growing higher rough (the longer grass along the margins of the hole).
The other major change would address the imbalance that today seems to favor power so strongly over touch and finesse. To place greater emphasis on the old skills required to work the ball and to hit less-than-full shots, professional players should be restricted to 10 clubs in their bags instead of the current 14.
The 14-club limit was adopted in 1938 in reaction to players who were carrying as many as 30 clubs to cover every possible occasion. The limit has remained at 14 through the eras of Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan to Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.
Reducing that number would again force players to make tough decisions several times in each round about what kind of in-between shot they must hit. (It would also make it almost impossible for Phil Mickelson to carry two drivers — including one that allows him to hit a power draw that moves from left to right — as he did in cruising to victory at the BellSouth Classic last weekend and said he will again at Augusta) In sum, it would put a new emphasis on the touch and finesse that we should want from our champions.
This change will work only if the players' organization, the Professional Golf Association Tour, goes along with it. But since the goal is to broaden the range of skills needed to succeed on tour, it should make the game even more attractive to the viewing public, which is the P.G.A. Tour's main concern. And manufacturers will have nothing to fear from this proposal, because no special standards are being created for the equipment used by the pros.
Most of all, this proposal won't take a thing away from the average golfer, who might otherwise respond to further limits on technology by ignoring them altogether. By tightening courses before tournaments and limiting the number of clubs the pros use, the United States Golf Association can deal with concerns about the game played by the top echelon of golfers without ruining it for the rest of us.
Frank Thomas, the United States Golf Association's technical director from 1974 to 2000, is the chief technical adviser for Golf Digest and the Golf Channel.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/06/opinion/06thomas.html?_r=1&th=&oref=slogin&emc=th&...
If you roll back the distances, you still have a 'relative' advantage as a long hitter over the rest of the field.
If the average player only hits it 192, that's fine - that is why there are multiple tee boxes.
The problem isn't that the average player needs more distance, they are likely playing the wrong tees, it is that the pros need tees that are farther back for the courses to play as the architect designed. Courses are designed with an 'average' drive/distance in mind for each set of tees/abilities.
All of this is 'fixed' if the 'average' drive distances are held stable, and in accord with the architects design for each ability level.
You can try to lengthen the pro tees on every course, but at some point it becomes absurd for the equipment sales to win out over common sense and limited resources (land and all of the other impacts of lengthening).
It is important to keep the CORE GOAL in mind - that the average drives should land in the average range the architect designed for each ability. If the architect expected a 4 iron second shot, then that is what the average player (for that set of tees) should hit.
So look to the PGA tour average drives over the years and keep it stable.
But no... sales, sales, sales.. the race to the bottom... there is no common sense in such a unsustainable approach.
If the average player only hits it 192, that's fine - that is why there are multiple tee boxes.
The problem isn't that the average player needs more distance, they are likely playing the wrong tees, it is that the pros need tees that are farther back for the courses to play as the architect designed. Courses are designed with an 'average' drive/distance in mind for each set of tees/abilities.
All of this is 'fixed' if the 'average' drive distances are held stable, and in accord with the architects design for each ability level.
You can try to lengthen the pro tees on every course, but at some point it becomes absurd for the equipment sales to win out over common sense and limited resources (land and all of the other impacts of lengthening).
It is important to keep the CORE GOAL in mind - that the average drives should land in the average range the architect designed for each ability. If the architect expected a 4 iron second shot, then that is what the average player (for that set of tees) should hit.
So look to the PGA tour average drives over the years and keep it stable.
But no... sales, sales, sales.. the race to the bottom... there is no common sense in such a unsustainable approach.
birdie_man
New
Thanks for the article.
I don't agree with his first point there.....just because the pros use a rolled-back ball obviously doesn't mean that amateurs have to as well.....amateur baseball players still use aluminum bats.
I don't agree with his first point there.....just because the pros use a rolled-back ball obviously doesn't mean that amateurs have to as well.....amateur baseball players still use aluminum bats.
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