https://www.wsj.com/sports/golf/ball-rollback-new-rule-eb979284?mod=hp_featst_pos5
overhaul
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Golf’s governing bodies announced a drastic overhaul that will affect the game for both the game’s biggest stars and everyday hackers: golf balls will fly less far.
The sweeping changes were unveiled Wednesday by the R&A and the United States Golf Association, which jointly write the rules of golf, and come after years of consternation inside the sport over increasingly powerful drives, particularly among top pros. The new rules change the standards on what conforms as a legal golf ball, upending the game’s dynamics.
While the rollback was widely telegraphed and will take years to come into effect—it isn’t set to apply to pros until 2028 or recreational players until 2030—the decision to apply it to all golfers marks a pivot. Previously, the R&A and USGA had proposed a rule that would only apply to elite competitions. That would have spared recreational players from the upheaval, but it would also have created a split in which top players would use different balls than everyone else.
In a letter to golf industry stakeholders, the heads of the R&A and USGA wrote that the switch came in response to feedback they received that “stressed the importance of unification in the game of golf.”
“We are convinced that this decision is one of the key ways of achieving a sustainable future for golf, protecting the integrity of the game and meeting our environmental responsibilities,” R&A chief executive Martin Slumbers said. “The measure we are taking has been carefully considered and calibrated while maintaining the ‘one game’ ethos deemed to be so important to the golf industry.”
The decision to deaden golf balls for everyone will assuredly draw blowback as recreational players anticipate a future when their tee shots suddenly go less far. The governing body cautioned that for most people, the change will have a “minimal distance impact” of 5 yards or fewer.
For elite players, it will be much more significant. The governing bodies said that the new guidelines will result in a reduction of as much as 13 to 15 yards in drive distance for the longest hitters, and that average professional tour players may see a drop of nine to 11 yards.
The PGA Tour has already issued a statement coming out against the new standards, saying it believes the change is “disproportional” to what it sees in the data on Tour.
Golf balls are tested under certain conditions for conformity. The current standard calls for balls hit with a club swung at 120 miles per hour at a specific launch angle and spin rate to travel a maximum of 317 yards, with a three-yard margin for error, The new rule keeps the same distance limit while raising the clubhead velocity to 125 mph with additional tweaks to the spin and launch angle. It’s a technical way of saying it will take a harder swing to hit a golf ball as far—or the same swing will send it shorter.
Decision makers in the sport have long been concerned with how the best players in the world have rapidly supercharged tee shots. As data has shown the value of distance, top golfers have worked tirelessly to turbocharge their swing velocity and lengthen their drives. What’s known as “bomb and gouge”—sacrificing accuracy for power to crush balls off the tee, even if it sends more of them into the rough—has become an increasingly popular strategy in the professional ranks. These days, the average drive on the PGA Tour is about 300 yards. That’s way up from 286 yards back in 2003.
In response, organizers have engaged in a repetitive cycle of lengthening holes in an attempt to keep up with the growing power. This year’s Masters, for instance, was 255 yards longer than it was two decades ago, more than the length of two football fields.
“We restate our desire to see distance addressed,” Augusta National Golf Club chairman Fred Ridley said in April.
That idea was once known as “Tiger Proofing” because of the power Tiger Woods brought to the game. The new decision to change the rules on golf balls for everyone wasn’t supported by Woods himself, who saw no issue with pros and weekend warriors using different balls for the first time and compared it with the different equipment used in tee ball versus the major leagues.
“Just like wood bats and metal bats,” he said.
Write to Andrew Beaton at andrew.beaton@wsj.com
