Mac Agrees With USGA: The Grooves Must Go!
The USGA Executive Committee will be comforted to know that Mac O'Grady wholeheartedly agrees that V-grooves must be returned to stop the flogging we've seen a recent majors.
The Detroit News' Krysten Oliphant turned on her tape recorder and let Mac do this thing after Monday's Buick Open qualifying. First, on Tiger's driving and grooves.
"When Nicklaus and Palmer played, when (Ben) Hogan played and Sam Snead played, on a scale of zero to 10, they were a nine-plus," he said. "Tiger Woods is not even a one-plus."
O'Grady said technology is the reason for players' success today. A change in the drivers' grooves from a V shape to a box shape allows golfers to hit the ball farther with more spin.
When in the rough, players go straight for the hole instead of just trying to reach the green. This, he said, has ruined golf.
"The reason why (Woods) can hit it on the green is because he has square grooves," he said.
"He doesn't have that, he's dead. He cannot do it -- it's impossible. For him to go after Nicklaus' records is cheating. This is like steroids."
Mac, do you really think that Tiger would have approached Augusta or Oakmont differently this year had his grooves been V-shaped? Maybe he wisely lays up on 15 at Augusta Sunday(he was in the second cut, right?)? Maybe.
"Balls used to have what he called a concentric arc dimple configuration, meaning their indentions were in a circular shape and each dimple was the same size, allowing for even dispersion of air across them. Now dimple sizes and positions vary, eliminating the balls' curve.
"It allows all these guys to come into the game that ordinarily couldn't do it," O'Grady said.
"This ball is designed for the 30-handicap. It's not designed for the pro tour. The 30-handicapper hits the ball and it goes up to the apex, it comes down straight. It doesn't slice. So when the Tour pro gets it, it's robbery. It's not fair."
And he'll be glad to know he shares this opinion with his good buddy, Deane Beman:
He said there should be a special ball for PGA Tour players with the concentric arc dimple pattern, which he said showed who had natural ability and who did not.
"The degree of athleticism has changed," he wrote in notes he took during qualifying. "What was humanly impossible is now technologically possible."
Come admit it, no matter what you think of Mac, you have to love his honesty...
"I still love the game," he said.
"I don't enjoy the technology because what's happening is these kids now are shooting 63s, 62s. What Michelle Wie is doing is not humanly possible. It's technologically possible because the balls go too straight, they go too far."
O'Grady said in the Champions Tour, what he called former "powderpuff" players such as Jay Haas, are defeating "dinosaur guys who had the best technique."
"All those big players, they can't say anything because they're being paid by the manufacturers (for sponsorship). But they know it's wrong. This is the worst dark chapter in the history of professional golf with this technology.
"Steroids (are) not in the athletes today -- (they're) in the balls and the drivers. Guys don't have to hit it far. The equipment is going to do it for them."
Tuesday, June 26, 2007 at 08:10 AM
Reader Comments (33)
Has Mac already been added to the list of people in favor of a ball rollback? Or is this his coming out party, er, article?
1. "Driver grooves" are irrelevant. Persimmon drivers had grooves. The latest titanium drivers are smooth in the hitting area. It's not "driver grooves," it is iron and wedge grooves.
2. Tiger Woods would be among the very first to say that Hogan, Trevino, Nicklaus, et al, had ballstriking skills that he doesn not possess, and it is all due to equipment. Equipment dictates to Tiger that he play a different way to win. Trevino would agree.
But to claim that any of Tiger's "success" is due to technology is not just wrong, it is the opposite of what would be the case with more retro-equipment. Tiger would be MORE dominant with rolled-back technology. Tiger might not hit driver farther if he played with a high-spin ball and a 260cc Cobra steel driver with a DG X100 steel shaft; but he'd be hitting a lot farther than his competition.
We need a ball rollback, yes. But it would be to protect the courses, not to stop Tiger Woods.
just like Nicklaus never remembered missing a putt on 18...made 'em all as far as he was concerned.
I got a kick out of the fact that Tiger blamed the long bunker shot on 17 on a rock getting between his clubface and the ball...whatever. (looked to me like he simply hit it too hard)
ES
I don't hear many people talk about how much pro golfers have improved in other areas beside "technology". ie:
1. Sports shrinks. They really do help you focus and play better. I almost consider a good caddie - as Hunter Mahan had this weekend - a physiologist.
2. Super slo-mo breakdowns of swings. A great player has become someone who can take an image on a screen and translate it into a feeling in a swing. That was a skill that didn't even exist 50 years ago.
"all those big players"....just crazy. If anything, the technology has leveled the field - Last Sunday we had players in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s all on the first page of the leader board. I agree the reason to scale back technology is to save the golf courses, not to identify the best players. To defend the golf courses, they have to tuck every pin, speed up the greens, thicken the rough, etc. If anything, its easier to have a upset winner than to say Tiger would be an average pro. Just crazy.
technology has been offset by much tougher courses, today the courses are longer, the rough is thicker, the fairways much narrower, the greens firmer, the pins tucked more etc. That is why scores aren't much different than during Nicklaus time.
Nicklaus used to hit sand wedge into number 7 at Augusta, Woods hit 8 iron into number 7 this year (number 7 is now 455 yards)
I can't stand these old timers who act as if everybody hit 4 iron approaches into par 4's all the time back then and today's players only hit wedges, it isn't the case at all.
He's right. I haven't sliced a ball in years. Just ask my wife . . . Morgan Fairchild . . .
I can't stand these old timers who act as if everybody hit 4 iron approaches into par 4's all the time back then and today's players only hit wedges, it isn't the case at all."
Ace, Joe!!!
Nicklaus, Augusta, 3rd round, 1965. Tee shot on 18 (markedly uphill) went 320. Faded. (I'm not making it up, it's per Jack's own account of the round in his autobiography "My Story.")
The fact remains that because the modern ball goes so far and straight, the young players of today are great at hitting the ball hard, but not at playing shots. That's the core of O'Grady's rant, but he is clearly off base by attempting to criticize Tiger -- as Joe correctly notes above, if the players were forced to use the equipment of yesteryear, nobody would come close to Tiger. Watching him hit 135 yard 8 irons, with that little dead handed swing, is one of the reasons he is so great.
As for Mr. Nicklaus, in his day he could dominate with his ability to hit the ball further than the rest of the players. He might have been Fat Jack, but the big guy was far more athletic than he looked, and when he needed to hit it deep, he had another gear.
You simply cannot compare those two eras. You can, however, compare Nicklaus' level of domination over hios peers to Tiger's.
Woods not even a one-plus? This stupid thinking is what those California 'shrooms 'll do to you.
4p
In every sport where there's objective measurement, we take it for granted that people keep getting better. Better training, better technique, better nutrition, faster, stronger, higher. We don't want to acknowledge it about the games we love, but it's likely that Jim Furyk could give Hogan or Snead one a side.
I don't know about that, obviously no way to tell and thus a pointless argument, but how do you figure? I mean, what does Furyk do better than those two in their prime?
It's interesting, how and why we hold up the past. We should be happy to be part of the present where such advances are being made and being able to witness the depth of skill there is on the PGA Tour and elsewhere. Yet there are those of us who idealize what it might be like to watch a bunch of amateur golfers who play part time with hickory shafts hack the ball around in the 1920s. Is it because we think the golfers were "better"? More entertaining?
I really don't know, I just know that I'd rather watch Bob Jones swing a golf club than anybody else, I'd rather watch Hogan and Snead than Jim Furyk.
I'm just wondering where the disconnect is. I'm certainly no Mac O'Grady and I think he's way off base in his above comments, but I feel his pain.
Also: agree about Furyk giving Snead and Hogan one a side. For one thing, he's had Hogan's book to read his whole life. Mr Hogan had to dig it out of the ground for himself.
Part of it is what you could call "relate-ability." Because they're safely in the past, we don't have the same sense of the distance between what Hogan/Snead/Jones could do and what we can do that we have with Woods and Lefty and the rest. Sarazen hit a 4-wood into 15 at Augusta; we probably would too -- ignoring that with those clubs and those balls we probably wouldn't be reaching the green in two in the first place.
Hogan was considered a freak in that he practiced so much. Player was considered a lunatic because he worked out. Today's average Tour pro probably does as much of both of them as those rare exemplars did. Isn't that going to have an effect?
If we lived in the day of Hogan and Snead, we'd be muttering that they couldn't hold a candle to Jones and Hagen, or maybe Vardon and Ray.
The main thing I want to say is to be very wary of listening to the opinions of players from the past, with few thoughtful exceptions. We've heard what Nicklaus has to say, and a lot of us saw Nicklaus in his prime, and we know that he's not the most reliable observer of his own past game. (Unless you actually believe that he used to go deep into July without a single three-putt.) I'm not picking on Jack, or Jacklin or Mac O; it's the nature of athletic recollection, and always has been.
OK< maybe I'm picking on Mac. And maybe I'm just being provocative about Furyk. Though what he can do better than Hogan or Snead is putt, and I suspect his ball-striking is a lot closer to them in their primes than we want to recognize. (But of course, that's just the equipment! No, it's the egg! No, it's the chicken!)
But in some ways, part of the appeal of the "golden age" for me is that players didn't practice as much and didn't work out.
To me, it's cool that Jones was the best golfer in the world while at the same time being a student/real-estate salesman/lawyer for 9 months of the year. And doing all the golf stuff without being paid. Can you imagine that today?
I think that kind of atmosphere breeds more characters. Guys like John Daly and Bubba Watson draw attention because of their long drives, but also due to their I've-never-had-a-swing-coach attitude and I've-never-been-on-a-diet physiques.
The guys that are hitting the gym and have teams assembled for every element of their games are the ones I'd least like to watch, and I'm talking about within the current era. Tiger excepted.
Ah well.
I've noticed that, while in general you're right, it's not 100% true. At the ceremony at the Memorial this year, Dow Finsterwald went out of his way to praise the ability of the modern players, going so far as to say that all the talk about equipment has overshadowed how great these guys are.
Of course Dow was not a great champion, and probably doesn't have an ego the size of one, either.
The carping by many 'past champions' is, at least in part, the anguished cry from the bruised egos of those who see themselves as no longer relevant.
Bill James does a fantastic job of blowing out of the water these myths about the greatness of older generations of baseball players.
I am on an alumni board at my alma mater, and when I visit the school I am astounded at the work the student's do. It's much better than the work I did there 20 years ago.
Time marches on.
I've noticed that, while in general you're right, it's not 100% true. At the ceremony at the Memorial this year, Dow Finsterwald went out of his way to praise the ability of the modern players, going so far as to say that all the talk about equipment has overshadowed how great these guys are.
Of course Dow was not a great champion, and probably doesn't have an ego the size of one, either.
The carping by many 'past champions' is, at least in part, the anguished cry from the bruised egos of those who see themselves as no longer relevant.
Bill James does a fantastic job of blowing out of the water these myths about the greatness of older generations of baseball players.
I am on an alumni board at my alma mater, and when I visit the school I am astounded at the work the students do. It's much better than the work I did there 20 years ago.
Time marches on.
They showed a bunch of players hitting it out of the rough onto the greens, especialy Jack Nicklaus who almost reached the green from the rough on a par 5 with his second shot.
There were also several times where Jack and other were hitting wedges into par 4's, yet all you here from these old-timers is how terrible it is that modern players hit wedge approach shots from time to time.
I thought everyone hit 4 irons into par 4's back then, and had no chance of reaching the green from the rough?
And one other point- would Jack Nicklaus be advocating a rollback of the ball if his company currently had a top-selling modern Pro VI type ball on the market? The answer is no.
The guys now chip and putt better yes.Shells world of golf(hogan vs. Snead) that is ball striking. Control the flyers and the curves.Not many flyers out here on tour much. My wegdes spin out of the thick stuff.
All you have to do is hit it as far as you can and hit short irons on the green most of the time.That is the core of the message.
Funny thing is MrMac would fix Tigers swing in 5 mins.
the notion that all you have to do to score well is hit as far as you can and have short irons is complete nonsense
Tiger is an example, he hits driver on maybe 5 of 14 driving holes a round, he hit driver once at Hoylake in 72 holes, hit driver 5-6 times a round at Medinah, 4-6 times at Oakmont, 5-6 times a round at Muirfield Village.
Tiger won at both Hoylake and Medinah hitting mid and long iron approach shots into most of the par 4's. Jack Nicklaus used to hit more wedge approach shots at Augusta in the 60's and 70's than Tiger does now. Jack used to hit sand wedge into number 7 and number 17, and Tiger now hits 8-iron into both of those holes. Jack used to hit wedge into number 1, Tiger hit 7 iron into number 1 this year.
Tiger's swing needs fixing?
Tiger has won 17 of his last 45 tournaments including 4 majors, in his last 10 majors he's finished outside the top 4 only once (and that was after a 9 week layoff)
Tiger is winning at a higher rate under Haney the last 2 and half years than he has previously. His record in the last 10 majors is so far ahead of anyone else it is rediculous.
Why would he need to fix his swing? Since the start of 2005, Tiger is on one of the best runs in golf history.
And yeah he would fix Tigers driver swing.In fact his Dad asked Mac to be his coach when he went pro, Mac said he needs to just play.
Mac's swing won six times on tour last year too mind you.
Fondly,
Brian H
Curious--what would Mac fix in Tiger's swing.
My analysis-for what it's worth-is that his wild drives happen when he swings too hard. I hardly ever see him put that extra grunting exertion into his 3 wood and 2 iron tee shots, which miraculously always seem to end up in the fairway.
But with the driver, we see a bit extra, usually tipped off by a funny follow through/finish position.
JMHO