Is Your Driver Making You Play Slower Golf? It May Be!
by Ryan Ballengee on Jun 2, 2009 12:28 AM EDT
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PrintIf you've been a reader or listener of mine for some time now, then you know that I'm an adamant believer that the golf ball is really to blame for the radical increase in distance on the PGA Tour in the last 15 years. I also believe that the ripple effect of technology has caused a ton of damage to both the style of play on Tour and also to many of the golf courses that make golf's lore so amazing.
In the last week or so, there have been a couple of pieces written comparing older technology to today's technology. Taken together, they draw me to a couple of radical conclusions about technology.
First, Mike Stachura of Golf Digest (of Bomb and Gouge) filed a piece using data from Adams Golf pertaining to Chad Campbell and Vijay Singh's experimentation with persimmon woods, Titleist Tour 100 balata balls, modern equipment (ProV1x and Adams A4 driver), and a launch monitor to capture it all.
Bottom line from the results of the Campbell blast to the past:
Campbell averaged 291 yards with his current setup. When he switched to the old Byron Nelson persimmon driver but kept the current ball, his average driver was 37 yards shorter. When he switched to the Tour Balata and the old driver, he hit that combo 44 yards shorter.
The old combination for Campbell tended to launch the ball lower and with dramatically more spin. Low launch and high spin is a good way to hit the ball shorter. By comparison, Campbell launched the ball a degree to a degree and a half higher with 25 to 40 percent less spin in his current driver-ball combination.
His swing speed with the old Byron Nelson driver, a 43-inch steel shafted model, hovered around 106 miles per hour. Switch to the modern graphite shaft and the swing speed jumped to 113 miles per hour.
In a much less technical piece, John Paul Newport went and played a round using a persimmon driver and old, somehow pristine balata balls. Newport noticed what you might expect as significant deviations from modern technology - sound and forgiveness. Newport's results weren't as scientific as those supplied by Adams Golf, but John Paul gained about 40 yards between eras: 230 yards with persimmon and balata, 270 yards with titanium and multi-piece. They basically mirrored those of Chad Campbell.
His conclusion was much more philosophical than Stachura's, but well worth reading.
Much of the straightness advantage of modern equipment is nullified by the problems created by added length—including, not inconsequentially, the big problem of having to expand golf courses to contain that length, which we golfers ultimately pay for in extra real-estate and course-maintenance costs.
Taking the pieces together and consulting friend and club master Tom Wishon's work on golf club engineering, I began to wonder if there is a Circle of LIfe to golf technology. Follow me on this one. (Disclaimer: this is not intended to be taken as my true opinion. It's just a thought experiment.)
In the 1980s, golf club companies were working to find ways for golfers to do two things: (1) hit the ball further with less effort and (2) develop golf balls that flew with less spin and lasted longer. Along came the innovation of the medal wood - first steel, than titanium. The ball started going further.
Around this time, modern computer-aided design technology began to take shape. This allowed manufacturers to design clubs with much less work and a lot more precision. The computer could tell them exactly what would happen before they built the club. This allowed manufacturers to design titanium clubs. Then, it allowed them to learn how to spread out the weight of the materials in the club to create spring-like effects, big and forgiving club heads, and lighter clubs.
Don't forget the impact of shaft technology as the graphite shaft was evolving. Again, CAD played a huge role in making shafts lighter, that respond in ways that steel could only dream of doing with various kick points. In other words, the driver shifted from a club that was manufactured with quality parts to a working system of technologies all fine-tuned to work with each other in ways unimaginable before the modern computer.
Could this club help you play faster?
Then, a few years after, the multi-piece construction golf ball came out - many thanks in part to CAD. Engineers could play with materials and designs that would respond to these perfected clubs with higher lauch angles and longer carry. They produced balls like the ProV1 that went a long way and could spin on command.
The combination was an average of a 15 yard gain for professional players over that whole decade and change in which the golf product design and engineering cycle was revolutionized. Players could light it up from the rough with balls that didn't spin as much from deeper grass. Driving accuracy became more optional on wider courses.
The Tours were slow to respond to the massive gains in distance and spin. They're still catching on in some ways. Pins are tighter to the green edges. Fairways are tighter. The Tours are still figuring out how to make rough work for them against technology. They're lengthening courses to 7200, 7300, or 7600 yards.
Courses that are being built or refurbished these days are constructed with instructions from land owners to resemble PGA Tour courses - long, tight, and tough. They are to be seeded with Tour grasses and manicured at Tour course costs.
Meanwhile, the driver grew 2" longer on the average and the head got bigger. A longer club is tougher to hit, even with a lighter shaft. A bigger head is still tough to hit even with how forgiving off center hits are now.
The result for you and me is that we have technology that we can't really handle on courses that are too long for us and cost too much to maintain.
In other words, technology is to blame for why golf costs too much, is too hard, and takes too long for many people. How's that for circular logic?
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You're pretty much right...
…the technology gains in distance only help people who can keep the ball in play. The club length is probably the biggest problem people have controlling the ball – and that’s just play physics. The wider the arc, the more difficult it is to target a specific spot. It’s amazing what 2-3" can do. It takes a lot of practice to control a 46" driver consistently. The temptation is to want to swing the club “harder” instead of finding out how to make the club do more of the work with centrifugal force.
The only club designer I know of who doesn’t fall into lockstep with the marketing weasels is Jesse Ortiz and his Bobby Jones line of drivers. (BobbyJonesGolf.com) He goes with a 440cc head at 44.5" in length. His reasoning against the square backed clubs makes good sense, too.
Most people would do better with a shorter shaft with a little more flex than a longer club and a stiffer shaft. Look at what Anthony Kim does with his clubs. He chokes down on every club almost 2".
(Just a quick semantic point – Golf balls have been “multi-layer” since the end of the gutta-percha era with the wound balls. What we have today are solid core balls with one piece layers on top that were developed by the Bridgestone company – pretty amazing what these designers have done)
Excellent point on how longer courses have forced greens fees higher.
"this ball will fit in that fairway"
Also in that category
I’d put Tom Wishon in that category too. He dispels a lot of the marketing weasel myths in his books and is also a big proponent of shorter drivers.
by Double Eagle on Jun 2, 2009 10:25 AM EDT up reply actions
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Golf is getting slower – I think the comments are solid, but there has also (my opinion only) been an increase in the use of golf carts. In many places walking a round is no longer allowed. In theory, this should increase the speed of a round. Unfortunately, many courses have simply increased the number of duffers on the course at any one time. Much like an air traffic, one delay will slow everything down-particularly by the afternoon.
The shift in course design has also been a problem. A large number of new golf courses in the past two decades have been set in master-planned communities. Developers are interested mostly in creating as many housing lots as possible in order to maximize profit. This often leads to the golf course being much narrower—played between houses and back yards. Wayward shots that once landed under a tree canopy or a neighboring fairway now end up along a fence or bounce off someone’s patio.
Golf is more expensive – I recall a section in Tom Doak’s “The Anatomy of a Golf Course”, probably the finest book on golf course design in the past 20 years. To quote:
A newer breed of superintendent maintains his course at a championship standard year-round, but is forced to use every chemical at his disposal (much like an intensive-care physician treating a critically ill patient), because such turf is very much living on the edge.
Golf course developers and club members must understand that there is a Law of Diminishing Returns that operates in the field of golf course maintenance. On the typical course in a year-round golfing climate one might spend $300,000 per year (1992 numbers) to get the turf 85% perfect, another $300,000 to improve it the next 10%, and another $300,000 to improve it only another 4% to near-perfect status.
The concerns are the same as in 1992, only the price and expectations have gone up. What would be best is if expectations by golfers on course appearance and quality were reduced, then prices could go down. This is easier said than done: on a private course, if you’re a member shelling out five-figures for a membership, you probably would be unhappy to see a noticeable decrease of aesthetic appearance on the course. Either a compromise has to be made across the board to make the cost of an average round go down, or there needs to be a new market to develop lower-quality courses that allow the young and blue-collar duffer play a round. I remember as a kid playing 9 holes for $10 at a local hard-pan course. It may not have been pretty, but I did learn how to play the game at a price I could afford.
you want slow?
Force all players to use a cart, then declare the day: CART PATH ONLY!
Truth has a well-known liberal bias.
on the other hand...
…in a lot of cases, it’s the old question from the woman to the man…“does this dress make me look fat ?” There is no way to give an honest answer and live.
“Does this driver make me longer ?” The REAL answer is “of course – you’ll be 20 yards further in the woods – can I interest you in a few dozen new balls ?”
I’m pretty sure that I could pick up 40 yards if I could fix my slice – and no new club is going to do that for me.
"this ball will fit in that fairway"
Then again...
…I have played with people who can’t break 100, but they finish in under 4 hours.
There are too many possibilities to come up with one answer to slow play. Everybody has been right on target.
"this ball will fit in that fairway"
6 hole golf.
Interesting. I’ve never considered that before. There’s nothing in the rules of golf that states that a round of stroke play golf has to be 18 holes or 9 holes. Even the slowest round of 6 hole golf would only take 2 hours. It might be a tight fit, but you could set up a course with three loops of six holes. Imagine the scenario: you and three buddies arrive at the course at 5:30 after a day at the office. Your tee time is at 6:00 – a popular time, but there are tees at 1, 7, and 13 near the club house so foursomes can start at three locations instead of two. No one tees off at 6:00 for an 18 hole round so there’s limited overlap in foursomes. You can your buddies finish your round at 7:45 and grab a late dinner at the brewery just down the road and head home at 9:30. That’s doable.
definitely an interesting idea – but I can’t think of an 18 hole course that has 3 greens close to the clubhouse. Courses with three 9’s have to go through some big time calculations on how to start groups using all three 9’s. It would be even harder to do for three 6’s on 18 holes.
"this ball will fit in that fairway"
You would just need to put the tees and greens a bit further away from the clubhouse.
Granted, that would be wasted space at a prime location.
I would suppose the 6-hole rounds could be restricted by time—you could only do it after 5 PM or something. The other downfall would be that it would preclude a lot of people from playing 9 holes. Maybe you do 12 hole rounds before 5PM or something? I think the details may take what’s a great idea and make it a practical headache.
It looks like this is not a new idea. A quick search found this article from 1951 on the matter:
http://turf.lib.msu.edu/1950s/1951/511112.pdf
Wow, that’s a heck of a pull. My influence on liking the 6 hole round idea was Frank Thomas, former technical director at the USGA.
Email me any comments or questions at ryan@thegolfnewsnet.com.
by Ryan Ballengee on Jun 2, 2009 1:48 PM EDT up reply actions
Love everyone’s comments on this. Modern course design goes a long way in slowing the game because of how they’re a part of real estate developments instead of standalone courses. The courses are almost impossible to walk. A lot of courses are cart only or cart path only and that just makes everything worse because so many people have no idea how to actually handle cart golf efficiently.
I’ve def played with people who don’t break 100 but can finish in four hours. Those people can keep the ball in play within reason and always keep moving forward. They may not make many pars, but they’re quick to play and keep the round moving. They’re a treat to play with.
Email me any comments or questions at ryan@thegolfnewsnet.com.
BTW, here’s a great piece on the impact that this whole technology-golf-real estate cycle has created (or soon will create) for the European Tour.
Email me any comments or questions at ryan@thegolfnewsnet.com.
I rarely use my driver and it works great for me
As friends of mine will out-drive me and be happy yet they will be 20 yards further yet in the rough while I am 20-30 yards shorter yet constantly in the fairway
It isn’t a coincidence that I beat everyone by 5-6 strokes daily
Most of the time, I do the same thing. I’d much rather hit my 3 hybrid out there 230 or 240 and be in the middle of the fairway. 50 yards isn’t that big of a difference to me.
Email me any comments or questions at ryan@thegolfnewsnet.com.
by Ryan Ballengee on Jun 2, 2009 4:23 PM EDT up reply actions
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