Dawson: Players hitting ball further not true
Tuesday, July 19, 2005 at 10:02 AM Lawrence Donegan in The Guardian and others write about the R&A's post Open press conference. Besides announcing that the 2010 Open will be at St. Andrews and the course will not change between now and then, Royal and Ancient Club have been collecting data (but they refuse to use the PGA Tour's revealing ShotLink). They believe there won't be any more distance gains.
"We and the United States Golf Association wanted a line drawn in the sand and hitting distances have plateaued," Dawson said. "This is definitely happening - all this discussion that players are hitting the ball further is not true."
Not true they are hitting further? Compared to when? Round 3 versus round 4?
The Open driving distance average for those making the cut was 27 yards longer in 2005 than it was in 2004! Did he not hear that all but three players averaged OVER 300 yards off the tee?
Donegan writes of the added length, rough and other setup ploys: "all these 'innovations' may have kept the scoring higher but they fundamentally changed the character of the Old Course. Nothing is more likely to send the lay person to sleep than endless musing on the minutiae of course architecture, but behind the wearisome chitchat there is a big, big story: the Old Course is at its limit, and so is golf itself, because advances in technology - the ball, in particular - now mean the era of the 400-yard drive off the tee is upon us."
Mike Aitken reports on the same press conference and includes this rationalization from Dawson on the 17th hole setup, which Dawson admitted they may have misjudged: "In retrospect, what we did there was perhaps not the smartest thing, though I think it would be a wrong analysis to surmise that was the reason people stopped using driver," he said.
Really? You have a fairway basically ending with a rough checkpoint at the 315-yard point. That’s the average tee shot length of the field, but the rough did not impact their decision-making? I wonder if he even blushes when making these claims?
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