Ohio Golf Journal March 2020

traditions are being skewed to overwhelm common sense and rationalize the idea tee balls ought to go less distance. The history of golf is filled with technological advancements - the rubbery ball, sand wedges, the wound ball, steel shafts and metal driver heads just to name a few. The current solid core ball and high rebound clubfaces were merely the next step. Will future technological advancement for golf come to an end, or be discouraged? The DIR admits average golfers may not be the problem, noting driving distance last year for the average male recreational player was essentially unchanged from 2005. Thus, golfers hitting it too far are the professionals and elite amateurs. These are the bigger, stronger, faster athletes smashing the ball unimaginable distances. They have the physical attributes, training and ability to take maximum advantage of the low-spin solid core balls and clubs with the trampoline face. This DIR seems to ignore several basic facts. Frank Thomas, inventor of the graphite shaft and former Technical Director of the USGA puts it succinctly, “Fortunately, the laws of nature are playing an important part in governing the distance the ball will travel, while the athleticism of the elite golfers – about 0.1% of the golfing population– has changed, as it has in all other sports. Unfortunately — for most of us – this has not been as significant a change.” This is analogous to the argument more length and more resources are necessary to contain the longer hitting elite golfers, a situation which has already been resolved for virtually all the layouts used for top-level tournaments. The Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee tweeted after the Genesis Invitational, “Riviera proved this week, just as Merion did at the US Open in 2013, that courses designed in the golden age of architecture are not made obsolete by today’s equipment. Firm conditions and green speeds that allow the use of interesting contours is all that is needed. And trees.” Courses may be closing because of too few players, but none have locked the doors due to too few yards and certainly no players are leaving the game because they hit the ball too far making the game is too easy. New layouts and renovations, few of which will ever hold an event for the elites, may simply have fallen for the developer/architect ego-boosting Ohio Golf Journal