I don't seem to recall outrage when the small ball was legal for 17 years under R&A rules, outside British Open.

Move the tees up 5 yards. Problem solved.

Would they have to adjust all the course ratings and all that after the ball roll back or would it just stay the same?

Interpolating my home course blue/white yardages and ratings, about a quarter shot.

Slope ratings in theory should go down, as loss in driver distance is biased against better players.

The rollback is long overdue for professional golf.

It just doesn't affect amateurs enough to be worth worrying about and any effects can be offset by playing different tees.

It’s just a lot of expense and carrying on to allow, what, 15 courses to be able to host majors. Absolutely absurd decision

There is literally not a governing body, organizational body, etc in or around Golf currently that couldn’t make better decisions simply by clicking buttons

What are the expenses? Titleist puts millions of dollars every year into tweaking and developing and optimizing the ProV1. Now they just do that with a different set of regulations.

As a consumer, If you have enough golf balls in your house that you're concerned you will have some left over in 2030 then that's a you problem.

It's mostly the professional game, but I'm a 5 handicap who probably averages around 275 off the tee. I'm now at the point where courses need to be longer than say 6600 yards to where most par 4s aren't just driver and 9iron or shorter. It's not to say that courses are unplayable or I'm driving the green on a lot of holes, but if I go to a course like Ravisloe, a great Donald Ross design that plays like 6250 and has multiple par 4s in the 350-380 range It's just Driver or 3 wood off the tee and some sort of 3/4 or less wedge from there.

This entire golf ball "rollback" has to be the silliest click bait media over hype ever.

The small ball was outlawed in 1990 and nobody cared. I could hit my 3W using a small ball 25 yards longer than 3W 1.68 ball, easily.

At the highest level any change to the golf ball is a huge deal. Everything comes into play, distance, launch window, penetration, spin, descent angle. Everything.

The small ball was outlawed in 1990 by the R and A, it had always been illegal in the US under the USGA. Starting in the 70's the Open Championship required the 1.68" ball to be used.

The small ball was legal in ROW for 17 years when it was illegal only at the British Open. Nobody put up a stink when it was banned because they all knew the small ball went too far, which I noted above. Players had a choice when they played the British, and virtually all went with the small ball even with less desirable spin characteristics, and poor roll quality on slow greens.

Good players adjust to what is presented to them. They will obviously figure out changes in playability. That is what golf is all about: no 2 shots are ever the same, each is unique and the better players win out.

Give it 3 years and nobody will GAF.

When did I ever say the small ball was legal in US?

Easy for the 5 cap hitting it 275 off the tee to say it doesn't affect amateurs enough to worry about. I hit it more like 220 and don't like the idea of losing 5-10 yards so that members of a private club I will never get to play have the ego stroke of hosting major championships.

My dad is 70 and hitting it more like 170 off the tee and hits his 5i like 130, and having him lose any yards is absurd, and he's already playing up tees so now what?

Also, most courses have 6-700 yards between boxes, so moving up 700 yards is an overcorrection. I also hear "just move the markers up 10 yards each" as if each course has giant 30y square boxes and is simply placing them at the back now. Also every course should theoretically re-rate/slope every box they have after the rollback, which isn't nothing in terms of cost/time/effort and some obv won't, which will make caps less accurate, etc. For literally zero benefit to the massive majority of people playing the rounds.

Also def gonna be annoying to pay equal/more for a dozen balls that you are explicilty told aren't as good as they could be.

I hope you realize that the current ball is governed to 317 yards @ 120 mph/2520 rpm/10 degree launch, meaning it is not "the best it can be".

And how many mid/high handicap players you describe play a tour quality ball which will be most affected by these changes?

I don't know how you came up with 700 yards between tees, thats 40 yards per hole.

If it ever came to that, I don't recall any course where tees cannot be moved up 5 yards to account for the expected difference to average golfers drives.

The average amateur (which I'd guess that if you're hitting it 220 you're probably around their benchmark for average amateur male) will lose 3-5 yards of distance with driver under the new guidelines. Mike Whan (USGA President) said that even for elite male golfers a lot of the rollback effects are decreased by the time they get to a 5 iron.

Even for me, it takes me like 3-4 rounds to figure out my distances at the start of each season. Last year my 8 iron number was like 160. This year it was 165. I sure as **** won't be able to tell if my 8 iron is going 1.5 yards shorter with the new ball.

Yeah I don't think it will be a huge deal. I'm like a 8HC I hit it between 220-240 with a driver.


Honestly if you care about losing distance that much you could do more off the course to gain distance, If you're hitting it 220 and don't have any hinderances (age/disabilities/etc) then you're probably not anywhere near maxing out. If you don't want to do that then imo you don't really care all that much.

Anything that causes an amateur to even perceive that they are losing a single yard is a horrible move for the game. Full stop.

All I know is I'm taking a break from playing with randoms in 2030.

Not gonna go out there to see my playing partner chunk one 20 yards short in the water and say "You know, if I had just had the old golf ball that woulda cleared it"

Oh its going to be a negative overall I don't disagree. I was just mentioning if you care that much and enjoy golf go make yourself better but overall, I get as a society that ain't going to happen in general people will stay the same and blame equipment.

Yep in a weird way this will bother the long hitters less I think. If you drive 300 and now it goes 285 then you're still way out there.

But when you drive like 210 like a lot of weekend hackers and now it's going less than 200... that's just depressing.

I tried to count the number of reasons why a golf ball would travel one yard less.

I lost count after around 20.

Isn't the projection that this impact will be proportionally smaller at slower ball speeds, so that a 210 drive is going to 203, not 195 yards?

Yes, that's true. I don't think they have real numbers yet, but the 210 drive might be affected barely at all.

But I don't think the reality of the numbers is going to matter at all. The same psychology that induces people to spend hundreds of dollars on a new driver to get "10 more yards" or "20 more yards" or whatever even though they never get that.... is going to operate just as well in reverse.

IRT perception on driving distances, unless an average player is doing an A/B comparison on course with several identical out-of-the-box golf balls driving on an open fairway, I doubt there will be much discernable difference. With iron play 6i-wedge the difference will be almost nil.

IRT equipment, I understand there will be modified regulations on drivers. This could reduce sales on new drivers, unless there is some form of bifurcation for amateurs (similar to "square groove" wedges years ago).

6-700 yards might be fairly uncommon, but playing a tourney this weekend and the boxes are 6450, 5900, 5350 so it isn't wildly out of range at lots of courses, particularly those with 3-4 boxes.
My favorite course on earth has boxes of 6700, 6200, 5700, 5000, 4000. I played 5700, so move up for me would in fact be 700 yards. Second favorite has 6800, 6250, 5750, 5100, 3900. I played 5750, so 650 yard move up there.

I'd love to see more courses use the "blended" boxes which doesn't require any extra maintenance for courses (meaning you have for example blue/white box which indicates some holes you play blue and others you play white).

And yeah, I understand the ball already has performance restrictions baked in. It's more that I'm paying, say, $50 for a box now with X performance, and then will be paying $50-60 for a box with less than X.

And I have played TONS of courses where the entire teeing ground is 5-7 yards front to back, so I don't think every course can just move the markers forward 5 yards each hole.

I wouldn't say I "care all that much", it's just annoying to have golf made incrementally harder for me just to appease a few egos of very rich people. I'll be entering my 50s as this goes into effect, so will likely begin naturally becoming shorter. I did get The Stack System this year which provided some benefit. The issue is adding more expense/effort/etc just to stay the same rather than to actually improve. I would say I'm somewhere in the middle on that. I bought the Stack, have been working on improving technique, but also do still use a 2010 or so driver.

Yeah, exactly. I'm not trying to come across as outraged or that I won't love golf or that this is a massive deal or whatever. It is just annoying and the equivalent of changing rules at a $1/2 cash table for something that only affects super high roller games. I do also recognize that it is entirely possible, given my lack of skill, golf variance, etc., that they could have silently done this and I would have never noticed. But the fact is they have told me "we are going to make golf incrementally harder for you because of reasons that have literally nothing to do with you and benefit you exactly zero" and it's annoying/frustrating, especially when I've been dealing with my dad already struggling with distance issues, etc.

There are several issues which have arisen that do not benefit a preponderance of golfers.

The world is a changing place. I feel happy that the game still exists, quite frankly.

Padraig H was on twitter talking at length about length. His argument was that the limit of long hitting was not near to being reached and a lot of small local courses were likely to be rendered irrelevant by the next generation of golfers. He also pointed out that in smaller courses long inaccurate drives were hazardous to golfers and course neighbours. So he thinks that the line in the sand has to be drawn and more action taken later if required.