Diaz: Big Ball
Regular visitors to this site know I've been calling it flogging for a year now, thanks in large part to Johnny Miller's comments at the 2005 Doral (wow a lot has happened in a year!). And I wrote about it here, here and in the 2006 season preview, declaring this the year that flogging goes mainstream. Shoot, I even proposed on a book on it exploring the causes, ramifications and other good stuff. (Hint: it won't be coming to a bookstore near you anytime soon!)
Well I feel a whole lot better now that Jaime Diaz writes in Golf World about what he's calling "big ball." I do like Tigerball better (New York didn't!).
Increasingly, the PGA Tour has become the land of driver-wedge.
Not just piping it and pinching it, but even spraying it and flaying it. The majority of players have decided that most weeks, a sand wedge from the rough beats an 8-iron from the fairway. What's different is that more than ever, "big ball" is the percentage play in which even long and wrong can be right.
The movement's founders are Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh who, it's safe to say, arrived at their conclusions independently. (Their forerunner was John Daly, but he made too many 11s to be a model.) Mickelson went overboard in 2001 when he came out talking about trying to birdie every hole and seemingly rebutted himself by eventually riding an educated cut to his first two major titles. But his current experimentation with a 47-inch driver shows where his heart has always been. Singh has never vacillated in letting the big dog eat.
With Hank Haney's encouragement, Tiger Woods has bought in.
And...
Like all drastic style changes in the history of the game, this one started with advances in equipment.
Oh, it wasn't the athleticism that led to the new equipment?
Specifically, multilayered balls that go farther and curve less and 460cc clubheads that increase distance and mitigate misses (Holmes frighteningly claims the driver is his straightest club).
The new tools have emboldened players to attack from the tee, knowing that even if their ball does end up in the rough, their increased strength and the latest square grooves will usually allow them to get the wedge or short iron they have to hit to stay on the green. At the same time, firmer greens with increasingly remote pin positions have raised the incentive to make the approach shot as short as possible.
But maybe if they just narrow the fairways some more...eh, we know that's doing a heck of a job!
Here's the fresh material:
Statistics from ShotLink further tell the tale. Average PGA Tour driving distances keep going up, reaching 288.9 yards last year, when for the first time, more than a fifth of all measured drives (22 percent) traveled more than 300 yards.
Average driving accuracy keeps going down, reaching a low of 62.9 percent in 2005, with the numbers in the last two seasons representing the biggest single-year drop since the tour began keeping such stats in 1980.
And according to extensive information gathered from their caddies for the past two years, most tour players hit some kind of wedge to an average of at least four of the 10 par 4s on a par-72 course.
An average of 40% of the par-4 approaches are with "some kind of wedge." Wow. Now that's a juicy stat.
But my favorite, the dreaded tennis analogy that is so commonly scoffed at by our Far Hills leadership and manufacturer shills. And this time, from of all people...
But still monster-long Davis Love III said that during last year's U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2, he got frustrated watching 7-iron approaches fail to hold greens and successfully switched to a long-ball strategy on the weekend to produce as many wedge approaches as possible.
"It's a lot like the way tennis players today really need to burn that serve," he mused. "Sure, [Roger] Federer has all the shots. But if he didn't have a big serve, he wouldn't be winning. In our game now, it's try to get it down there as far as you can, and if you have a good driving week, you should make a bunch of birdies. If you hit it in the rough, you might get by anyway. It all starts with hitting it long."
As the tour heads to Florida, and soon to the further-lengthened Augusta National, the analogy with a sport made less interesting by the proliferation of power should give pause.
Not one reference in the piece to this happening because of improved athleticism.
Oh times, they are a changing.
Thursday, March 2, 2006 at 08:48 PM
Reader Comments (12)
Do you deny that golfers are more fit now than they were years ago? If so, then you're not reporting all sides of the story. Perhaps having thin fairways leads people to say "hey, if I can't hit the fairway very often trying to hit the ball 270, why not try to miss it just as often hitting it 330?"
This - and almost every other article like it - ASSUMES that technology is the sole and driving (pardon the pun) reason behind increases in driving distance in some sort of self-justifying loop. Technology caused the boom in driving distatnce because of technology. Real logic doesn't work that way.
And come on, 8I to sand wedge? That's a 50-yard gap or more. Be realistic. Pros wouldn't have to throttle back 50 yards to hit the fairway more reliably.
"Don't mistake all this for mindless bombing. The best players know where they have room to miss and where power most easily translates into birdies. They also have the improvisational skills and short games to compensate for egregious tee-to-green mistakes. Woods in particular excels at this combination of brawn, brains and touch."
Huh, so I guess it isn't all about power. There are actual shots AFTER the driver is hit that take real skill?. Also, you glossed over this:
"...knowing that even if their ball does end up in the rough, their increased strength and the latest square grooves will usually allow them to get the wedge or short iron they have to hit to stay on the green."
Increased strength? So conditioning does help these guys not only hit it long, but get it out of the rough? Nobody has been complaining about the advantages of square grooves since the Ping Eye 2's so I think Diaz just had to toss that in there.
Crankpot is right. I'm not going to throttle back 50 YARDS just to hit a fairway. That is absurd.
I think I speak for some of us when I say:
What?
Would J.B. Holmes have developed the swing and game he has with 1990s equipment? Or is he in part a product of lighter shafts and bigger driver heads?
The notion that there is "bias: in the Diaz piece could only be believed by a shill for the manufacturer obsessd with "bias." Diaz is writing about something that has been out there for a year, and simply validating the notion with comments from some of the greatest players in the game. And some pretty juicy stats too.
Come on Crankpot, you are dangerously close to revealing a bias of your own...except, unlike so many others, you manage to share these thoughts with signing your name to them. Kind of pathetic. But that's just my bias. :)
I think Hogan would be longer than he used to be if he used today's equipment, and I also think that Tiger Woods would outdrive Hogan substantially if both were using Hogan's gear. Especially if Tiger had enough time to figure out what loft, balls, etc. worked best for him.
JB Holmes likely did develop his swing using 1990s equipment.
And for someone so obsessed with the spelling of his own name, Geoff, one would think you could get Diaz right... :-)
Why do the guys on the Senior (oops, Champions) Tour hit the ball further than they did when they were 25? Because they're in better shape? If you believe that, I've got a few boxes of Titleist Tour Prestige balls -- which will go just as far as my Pro V1s (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more) -- in my locker to sell you.
What I don't understand is this blind resistance to facts about the effects of huge distances the balls traveling being a problem. . .
Where I disagree is on a few key points that Geoff and others like to make. I disagree that technology has ruined the game. I find no evidence that links the flatlines in participation and the decline in TV viewing to technology alone or even primarily. And I know that driving it longer isn't much of an advantage, because stats back me up on that.
Of course technology has added distance. But Ben Hogan played with 42" steel shafts, a tiny persimmon head, and a lame ball. Heck, simply extending his driver to 45" and magically reducing the weight by 1/3 or more might add 30 yards to his drives!
Technology has always improved. It was improving in 1900 and it was improving in 2000. And every point along the way. Golf has survived. Why all of a sudden is the game in "ruins" and why do certain people (named Geoff and otherwise) feel that they are so enlightened that they can determine the time when "golf was at its best." Do we use 1990 technology? 1995? 1975? When?
How about we stick to the rules we have now? They do exist. Golf technology doesn't existin some lawless, limitless vacuum that lacks simple concepts like limitations on exactly what physics can and can't do on this Earth.
You said "What I don't understand is this blind resistance to facts about the effects of huge distances the balls traveling being a problem."
What facts show that the distance a golf ball travels today is a "problem?" None. You can't link flat rounds played or declines in TV viewing to the distance a ball travels, and attempts to do so are futile. They're unrelated, and linking "technology" to either of those things leaves a lot of other (and more valid) options aside. Every sport has seen a decline in viewership.
Or did the distance a golf ball travels ruin the NFL, MLB, the NBA, the NHL, and the Olympics, too? Because you can apply the same "facts" you've used to justify the position that "technology is ruining the game of golf" to those sports too. They're just as appropriate.
"Ruins?" Oh we've given ourselves away! Can you find where I've said that? And post it on your blog? ;)
FYI all, Crankpot here just resorted to the dead-giveaway manufacturer talking points. As tech savvy as he is, he apprarently doesn't know that his IP address is in his wacked out emails and here with his posts! Nice irony eh? Pro tech, not very tech savvy!
Geoff
I have read the "Balance" thread. If technology has not ruined the game, how do you explain Sean Murphy's reference to "Cheating"? If manufacturers are in fact dialing in face give, with golf ball core give as Sean has indicated, and in this process produced an effective super human spring effect for Tiger, Phil, Vijay and others with a club head speed great enough for only them to produce these results, then where in the hell are the ethics in this approch? Sean is one sharp ball striker on this topic. And to once again reference Sean, how does manufacturing specific golf balls for the few, and then leaving other professional golfers stranded to just make the best of the situation, again equate to being ethical? Crankpot, this would be one hell of a great example to what's ruining the game at the professional level. Its certainly given me one tremendous insight as to the huge driving distance disparity being witnessed on the PGA Tour today that Geoff's statistics keep revealing. L.Silver, if you are an attorney, there could be quite a few professional golfers in need of your services.