Golf has a problem: people are hitting the ball too far
npr.org
npr.org
That has got to be the biggest nonstarter I've ever heard. If players use different clubs than the fans, it would undermine all of the money behind the equipment manufacturers, advertising and merchandising.
Racing fans seem content to perhaps maybe drive a vehicle made by the company that sponsors their team; but they don’t actually race. Golfers (and I suspect some large percentage of viewers are also players) really like buying the equipment the pros use even if it’s not really appropriate for their skill level.
It’s a story so old that PH Wodehouse references it in his books.
Personally I think courses just need to change. There are already huge disparities in courses. Pros already demolish 99% of golf courses because they’re tuned for average players.
I can't see any reason why a better club wouldn't be preferred, so long as it is available.
Edit: thanks for the thoughtful responses. I understand now. Providing different ball difficulties like squash does seems like a really elegant solution.
Are you sure?
Imagine if MLB used aluminum bats or allowed the pitchers to grease the ball. A game if endless home runs or endless strikeouts would be boring.
That's not really true at all. Look at swimming again for example, they have lots of rules related to what you are allowed to wear and how you're allowed to swim that all lead to slower times, but (hopefully) a more fun event to watch. The Olympics keep changing and tweaking the rules of all kinds of sports simply to try to make them more interesting and/or increase their popularity and viewership.
While it is a professional sport, they can't afford to pay high player salaries, so it has to be fun to play, too, to attract talent. But they definitely do care about how it looks, and have said in interviews that this was their main focus during initial play testing. They've actually changed the rules very little over time (they reduced the rest period between chases from 30 seconds to 25, but that's about it); instead, they've focused their attention on tweaking the quad, the structure on which the game is played. Small tweaks to the positioning of bars can subtly alter the balance of power between chaser and evader. They've deliberately nerfed some developing strategies they decided they didn't like (by adding obstructions behind the Mountain, for example).
There are some sports where they have a similar problem (tennis and table tennis) where the speeds have become ridiculous, but no one wants to limit that (via limits on equipment sizes etc.) because people don't want to see long tedious technical exchanges. They want to see "wack" and "boom 200 kmh"
https://www.lovetennisblog.com/the-spaghetti-racket-a-docume...
And for ground strokes, the net and court size restrict how much power you can give a shot--spin and control are more critical. Pro-level racquets are generally less powerful than those used by amateurs. If a company were to come out with a racket that could hit twice as fast, approximately zero pro players would use it.
I wonder if there was at least some scaleback (I haven't followed tennis in a long time).
Since then the equipment changed, the players changed, but the course hasn't (much as I'm sure the grass has and that plays a part too).
But if they change the course, that won't affect me. I (and others like me) will never get to play at Augusta but those who do get to play, will continue playing there.
So win win?
Want people to upgrade more frequently?
Tweak the definition of a 7 iron so 10% of clubs become illegal.
On a given hole, you don’t want everybody to get a birdie (or everybody to get a par or everybody to get a bogey, etc.). You need there to be some risk/reward that leads to some getting a birdie, some getting a par, some getting a bogey, etc. This is what adds drama and strategy as a tournament goes on. Which option will the guy in second go for? What will the leader do?
If you remove this separation and have almost everybody taking birdie/par and nobody taking bogey, then all the scores will be bunched tighter together and the end result is a tournament that’s less exciting to watch.
There’s also something about a sport that becomes not a question of doing excellence but instead becomes all about not being the person to make a mistake.
If the golf course has the same name but the course and equipment are different, it’s really a different game.
In fact every sport tries to muddy the advantage of the favorite. Look at tennis, how exciting would it be if it were just a race to 100 points?
As a serious (but only B-level skilled) player, I hate the ball changes, but the bat changes I think are good (except for the cost of replacing now-banned bats).
Softball changed primarily for player safety, but I think there could be an analog here. Hitting a marshmallow-feeling softball sounds and feels worse. Hitting a regular ball with a bat that’s slightly less engineered still sounds and feels good and I think lets the better players separate their performance from the rest of the field.
That’s probably the key: make changes that help the best players showcase and differentiate their skill.
If the rule is removed, runners would be unsure if they need to stay on base or advance. It would depend on if the infielder caught the fly ball (which is like 99% in their control). The batter would wait just before first base. The fielder would catch the ball if runners were far from their base. But what should the batters do? It seems like the lead runner should always stay, but the man on first should advance if he’s a worse runner than the batter.
I actually really like your idea. It introduces a lot of complexity that might lead to some convention that simplifies the situation, but also leaves room for good playmaking from the fielders and runners. Makes me think of a run down. Although I also wonder if it’s too complicated in which case it would result in strictly following a convention or pure chaos (which might sound cool but players, coaches, umps, mlb would hate it).
The problem are rules that are judgement cases called AFTER the play is done.
The biggest ones I can think of that are in baseball are the balk rule and the baseline path rule.
Even with upright bikes, though, there have been a bunch of iterations. I especially like the saga of Obree developing two new positions and having them both banned for being too good https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_Obree
Golf has history, but that history isn't in the current ball.
Mangling ancient golf courses or removing them from pro play due to distance is silly, it's a game, adapt.
That said, I agree with many professional golfers that the way to address the distance issue is through the clubs and course design. It's a simpler solution for the game.
The thing about golf though, is that it's one of the few sports where you're in the same stadium (venue/whatever) as the pros. As in the exact same place, not a mini stadium for amateur athletes or a random football pitch in the park, or a boxing ring in some gym. So you can feel that in most sports, you are not really like one of the big boys.
I wonder how much players care about that.
In any case, why is there this line between the ball and the clubs? Why is it better to change one but not the other?
>If it helps, think of it in baseball terms. There's a wooden bat used in the major leagues, and a metal bat used in college and recreational play. The wooden bats require that extra bit of skill to send the ball 300-plus feet.
The reason college and recreational play doesn't use wooden bats is because they break and they'd have to travel with more bats every time, adding weight and $$$. The metal bats are changed to have the same pop as wooden ones. In fact, NPR has the story about this. [0]
That said, here are some main points I about the rule change.
1) Bifurcation, where pros and amateurs play different balls, is not good. There are people who'd be playing in events one week where you can play the current ball tech, and the next have to change. Those are people who'd be screwed to have to spend more time and money on equipment. Similar to juniors, who go up in the ranks and suddenly need to change. That part can really hurt.
2) Golf distance won't increase much more than it currently is. What's happening and is going to happen is like height in the NBA. Where it became so clear that being tall is beneficial, and so the average height shot up. But it's not like humans can grow any taller. The current golf rules for drivers do put a limit on how far humans will be able to hit it. To compete on Tour, it'll become more of a prerequisite to hit the ball far, just like more of a prerequisite to be tall.
3) That distance is different than how courses were designed and the game had been played in the past. Augusta National has changed a ton over the years to lengthen the course.[1] You can look up stories after Tiger came in '97, and all the way to this year where they lengthened #13, quite a famous hole. That hole will play much more like how the hole was played back in the days pre-Tiger. a) Most courses don't have the money or land area to make these changes. That's the problem the USGA going with. That's the argument the NPR article is saying too, how public courses need to change. But do they? The argument made by the USGA is that public courses and players will _not_ need to change equipment. b) How bad is it that games are played differently than when they started? NBA is quite different with dunks and 3s, MLB changed this year with the pitch clock and no shifts, NFL has forward passing and quite needed body types to play positions meaning genetics is a huge factor in whether or not you can turn pro. The distance changes is golf advancing like all the others.
4) The USGA kind of has a bad reputation. I play in USGA events and the people who run them are kind of, well, they think they're gods and know all. This causes conflict between the guys on PGA Tour and who run PGA Tour events week after week. Should the USGA be making these decisions?
I'll stop here, but there's much more to say, especially with the amount of unanswered questions. Things like, how much different equipment will be needed if you play the new ball vs the old one? Will the ball change make it even _more_ important to have length?
People think length reduces the skill in the game, and that's just not true. The ability to swing hard with control is a great skill, and is trainable. Those who say they don't want to have to do it are doing it to themselves. Golf is an athletic endurance sport. It's taken much longer than others for people to understand this.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2012/02/27/147523340/new-baseball-bat-st... [1] https://www.golfdigest.com/story/complete-changes-to-augusta...
It is like Tennis, when I was young we used regular size rackets. I stopped for a few years and I noticed people were playing with rackets that the string area was larger. At first I said they were using "cheating" rackets only to find out these were the new regulation.
So I agree, time to tone some things down. Pros should be challenged. Now I wonder if this happens if the tournament will supply the balls. (do they already do that?).