Edit: thanks for the thoughtful responses. I understand now. Providing different ball difficulties like squash does seems like a really elegant solution.
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.
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).
If the golf course has the same name but the course and equipment are different, it’s really a different game.
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.