Freakonomics Guy: Forget Anchoring, Distance Is Golf's Real Problem
Thanks to reader Bertie for sending the link to best selling writer and economist Steven Levitt calling the governing body anchoring ban a "distraction" and make a case for something that reduces the footprint of golf courses.
It'll be interesting to see what how his readers respond to a question:
So, I’m wondering (without knowing the answer) if there might be a third approach. Basically, what we need is a ball that goes about as far as the current ball when a golfer with a slow swing speed hits it, but goes less far than the current ball when a guy like Bubba Watson hits it. With current technology, every extra mile per hour of clubhead speed translates into an extra three yards of distance. What I’m looking for is an alteration to balls or clubs such that someone who swings the club 100 mph still hits the ball the same distance as now, but someone who swings 130 mph hits it, say, 60 yards farther than the guy who hits it 100 mph, instead of 90 yards farther.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012 at 09:06 AM
Reader Comments (42)
The Pros need a ball that will go ''correct'' distances TBA, and let AMs use whatever the marketing geniuses are peddling his month. As to the clubs- let it be, and let the manufacturers start working on clubs that put ''control'' back in the contact- newer golfers (played less than 15 years) will be AMAZED at how exciting it is to WORK THE BALL!--- and marketing and the sales departments will have years more ''new improved'' clubs to sell!
Next week : world peace solved.
Still: If there is no urgent competitive distortion, and if the USGA is (rightly) sympathetic to the plight of Keenan Bradley and Webb Simpson and Adam Scott and Bernhard Langer and Carl Petersson and all the rest, for having innocently relied on the USGA's longstanding inaction, there is a solution. It won't be fast, but it will be fair. Just build the next generation of competitive golfers under no-anchoring rules. Disallow anchored putting in all junior golf events. Ban it in high school play, and then in competitive amateur and NCAA play (all via a Condition of Competition as with the groove rule), so that no young players ever begin to rely on anchored putting. And let that rule follow the generation up until the time they reach a professional tour, before banning anchored putting on all of the tours. That will give everyone a long time to adjust.
Hockey did something similar with its helmet rule. New players in the league had to wear helmets; veterans who had not previously worn helmets were allowed to go without if they wanted to. Eventually, all of the no-helmet veterans retired, with or without helmets as they chose.
I wouldn't personalize a rule of golf as to a player's birthdate; I'd make it a competition-wide rule. (Per a condition of competition.) But the Keegan Bradleys of the world would have six or eight or ten years to adapt under my rule. Anchored putting would be an anachronism, and there would be no more motivation for aspiring youngsters to copy Keegan as they learned to be competitive players.
Back in the day, Nicklaus was 30 yards longer than the club champ, today Bubba is 100 yards longer than the club champ. Jack and a decent club player were effectively playing the same course, Bubba is playing something today different..
And some of the posts here a getting a bit ridiculous-Bubba Watson hits it 100 yards further than the Club Champion??
Bubba's averaging 315yards in 2012, let's say a good scratch club player is 270-280yards.
Bubba's clubhead speed, which is the fastest on tour is 124.6mph.
I attended a lecture by Dr. Levitt ~ 25 years ago. Both the subject and the lecturer were as funny as any I've ever heard. No one fell asleep during his presentation.
Shorter would just mean a bit shorter, while still allowing for an all-out, no-control smash.
Spinnier ball ... or, what we talked about before on here ... and I can't remember which it was (but someone smart will enlighten me, I'm sure) = either a smaller/bigger ball, which brings back the effects of yesteryear.
They're pro's set the courses up alot harder... That will take the driver out of the bag.
Between the ball and the equipment ( drivers), distance is the key issue.
Setting each course up like a US Open will only make the PGA unwatchable.
But many will get upset if you make the game more difficult for amateurs, you cannot scale back the driver size without two sets of rules.
So you change the ball so that a 130mph swing will not make the ball go any further than 300 yards ( for example). If you scale back driver head size to 320cc it will reduce the swing speed as well.
Amateurs go back to playing white tees instead of blues and we move on.
The game will recover just fine, but doing nothing is costing us too much.
The anchoring ban should be done, it was clearly in the rules and not enforced. The idea that people will quit playing because they can no longer anchor is bogus.
If equipment made the average amateur better, we would have seen improvements in average handicaps over the last 20 years. We have not. What we have seen is people taking their 100+ shots from the blue tees instead of the white tees.
100% correct. Nicklaus wrote that it used to be that a club pro could have a game with a top PGA tour pro. Now...forget it, the club pro has no chance.
That would not be the best solution.
1) taking driver out of the hands of the pro's just means making the 3 wood the new driver, that will not solve much as the manufactures would just figure out how to max out the ball to travel further off a 13° 3-wood.
2) It would cost a lot of money for the courses to adjust the course this way.
Better to slow down and make the ball spin more. Lower the COR back to Persimmon level .78 vs the current COR of .83 - heck bring back persimmon!
Class A professionals could try to monday qualify in the 60's (maybe early 70's) also.
Now we have a PAT that when barely passed would not compete in the
championship flight of most clubs.
The PGA mas moved away from playing and teaching to profit/loss and cost of good sold.
Not saying it's bad, but to compare Nicklaus' era and this one is radically different
1) Steven Levitt's father story~ my 2 youngest daughters are pure trouble together....they showed up at Tgiving wearing coonskin caps, and their little secret was the whoopee cushion blow when their grandmother sat down for Tgiving dinner...pretty funny! Leslie Nielson would have been proud! ( I was)
2) a pro ball would take away the need for any equipment bifucking- the Ams will still be playing the same stuff as the pros (yea, right...just like now)
3) Narrowing fairways. etc is what we are tryimg to QUIT doing, and put the driver BACK into the pro's hands...
4) It is OBVIOUS to ANYONE who is watching rather than counting money that the average drive is A LOT farther...irons, FW Woods, and hybrids off the tee have kept the distances flat. WAKE UP you people- You are not idiots, but you act like you are.
5) millions are being lost while ''studies'' continue. Enough.
I'm no expert on ball manufacture but I guess that ball could be on the market for Christmas.
What about FIGJAM, back in his Am days? He had much better control off the tee before Big Bertha and Biggest Bigger Bertha?
We all know that we don't use the same shit as the pros (even though it has the same words on it); we're already bifurcated.
Did no one ever follow up with design and production of the 'Floater' ball that Alister MacKenzie wrote of in the 1920's?
If everyone plays the same ball and equipment, then it's all relative. They all hit 300 yard drives and 220 yard 6 irons (that aren't really 6 irons), so why not have them all hitting 250-270 yard drives and 175 yard 6 irons, and we'll still ave a chance to out drive them.
Shrinking fairways, but let us not forget the dead straight 340 yard RBZ "3" Woods we saw at Quail Hollow last May? Or the 400 yd drives at ???
Surely the point (and the beauty) of golf is that it is played under a handicap system, which is there to level the playing field so that Mr 18 handicapper can go and enjoy a round of golf with Mr 3 handicapper. In general terms Mr 3 handicapper is also likely to hit the ball further than Mr 18 handicapper, just as you would expect Rory McIlroy (as world no. 1) to hit the ball further than Mr 3 handicapper (Luke Donald may ruin this argument!)
The small group of tour professionals live and play in their own little bubble at the top of the pyramid. It takes a huge amount of athletic strength and co-ordination to swing even the most technology laden club at speeds of 120+ and deliver the club head square at impact coordinating the shoulders, arms, hips to work together in-sync. These are physical gifts we all cannot posses and should admire in those that can. We should not be looking at ways to diminish these athletic gifts. It would be like saying to Usain Bolt that it is unfair he can run so fast and make him run in high heels to give the majority of amateur athletes the chance to have a close race with the world's best
Surely the best solution for limiting these distance gifts on the PGA tour would be to narrow the fairways on long par-4s and par-5s creating more risk/reward for bombing it deeper greenside bunkers and tighter pin locations. Some of the pin locations on Thursdays & Fridays are embarrassingly easy for guys that are capable of shooting low 60s. This would create a greater emphasis on short game skills.
Matt A, speaking as a +1 player, about the one thing I could match the tour players on would be driving distance. I'm swinging around 110mph. Where the average tour player would beat me every time is short game, mental skills, course management- basically they're just better golfers. Ultimately they've more talent and work extremely hard to be as good as they are-and I admire their skills.
Mini-Tours are full of guys who swing at 120mph+ and hit super long, but are still miles away from the Furyks, Strickers, Donalds e.t.c. in the pro game.
And tour distances have plateaued in the last 10 years, just to keep things in perspective.
1. Course set-up. The courses the pros play are set-up so different than 99% of courses available to most golfers that its difficult to say that the same game is being played. Pros' fairways are cut so short and kept hard so that there is yards and yards more roll out. Greens are so perfect that billiard players drool. Bunkers so perfect that pros aim at them instead of trying to avoid them.
2. Equipment. The pros are able to have their euipment fitted and tweaked on a daily basis. Amateurs, even moneyed ams, don't have that opportunity.
3. Tee locations. Play it forward. There is an acknowledgment that amateurs shouldn't play the same course. They should plau similiar but shorter and, typically, less well maintained courses.
4. Reality. How many golfers actually play by the rules? A drive is hit down the side of fairway. Upon reaching the ball it is found that it must have taken a bad kick and it is a few feet out of bounds. Will you realy walk back to the tee, a couple of hundred yards away, while the next group is waiting, to play you're third stroke? Or will you move the ball into play near where it went OB and take a two shot penalty?
My point is that the game is always different for different players. The USGA and R&A should set-up rules that apply to golfers - and be less worried about the best few hundred players in the world. The best are going to excel, using the equipment available at the time and the course conditions that exist. Stop building courses for Bubba and build and mainatin courses for the rest of us. Make the pro adapt and not the amateur that fuels the economy of the game.
Golf just like every other facet of life is and will evolve. For example there was nothing wrong with tv when you had 4 or 5 channels as there were no other options. Would I want to go back to that now I have 1000s of channel options and can record, rewind etc at the touch of a button? Of course not.
I appreciate golfers skills of the past and the way Nicklaus etal. would shape the ball around a golf course. However it's not part of my generation. I would much rather aspire to bomb it like McIlroy have the deft touch of a Mickelson and the putting skills of Woods
Reminiscing the past is fine, but just like an old car, with narrow tyres, no power steering and no air-con some things should stay in the past like a glorious memory
But from that point on distances have plateaued. I think that more or less the game is still in pretty healthy shape, although you may well be right that it was more fun and skill demanding playing with balatas, blades and wooden woods.
I'm with Jarvoo on this one though, I think there's a lot of nostalgia here and don't think we need to be going back in time to someome's idea of a golden era of how the game should be played.
Sequestration
"Negotiation"
FRUSTRATION!
Why, in the 21st century of human progress, with all the technology we've invented that allows for instantaneous communication across the universe, does mankind think change requires endless "waiting periods...?"
IT'S THE BALL, STUPID!
Give all the pros one controlled ball to play with -- like in ALL OTHER PROFESSIONAL SPORTS -- and move on!!
The gap between the distance the average tour guy hits and the good scratch amateur hits really isn't that big anyhow. Golf remains, first and foremost, a game of skill.
Actually this could be said about baseball, football, soccer, tennis, etc... And yet in those sports, professionals are handed the ball they will play with at the time of play by officials. And it is not always the same ball that Mr or Ms Amateur buys off the rack of choices at their local sporting goods store. But for an entire season it will be the same ball played in every official competition. And it is regulated by the governing authority of each sport.
And then for those of you who actually believe you "play the same game as the pros," nothing would stop you from choosing the "official" ball from its designated spot on the rack in the sporting goods aisle. You could be just like the playground hoop players who think they play the "same game" as the NBA guys, too...
And we do all play the same game, just that some are better at it than others.
re: <<No pro is gaining an advantage over the field by using a much better ball>>
This is why nothing ever gets done -- "straw man" arguments are set up and then talked into stasis...
No one that I know of said any pro was "gaining an advantage by using a much better ball." The point is that a new "Pro ball" that is dialed back should be created and used by all pros in all tournaments. The rest of the golf world can be left as is. Length problem solved.
I think bifurcation would be a bad and unnecessary move for the game.
Do you think there should be any restrictions on equipment?
Bifircation has been around in a sense for a long time anyways. The old argument that "Amateurs play the same game as the pros" doesn't hold water anymore. If you don't believe me, then get your game in shape and qualify for big pro event. You WILL notice that in the local rules/hard card has some VERY interesting stuff. Things like the one-ball rule, TIO's, pace of play guidelines and fines, groove rule for the next few years, professional codes of conduct, caddy rules, etc..
Then, after reading thru the rules as every pro should do, simply wander/mosey on over to the range and you can get fitted/kitted/bling'd-out in 100% Tour stock quality golf ball whacking instruments that will never see retail stores. After all the exertion, time to go get a free buffet lunch, full massage, and a nap before some more practicing with new ProV1s on the range whilst under the eyes of the latest swing guru celeb teacher who's hanging around the range.
Fact is that there are very few similarities to Pros and Ams these days...and the easiest way to narrow the gap again is to bring in a common spec ball that everyone is issued when they register for a tournament. as well as lowering the CC and MOI of all drivers by at least 40%. Ball wise... I'm thinking Tour Balata's for Harbor Town and then they can use Pinnacles on 8200 yard courses like Whistling Straits and perhaps even re-introduce the classic Spalding TourEdition for Augusta....IF the TDs so wish of course.
Phew...off the soapbox for a bit.
@Digs: LOL about Mr Nieilson being proud. I heard he used to ALWAYS carry a flatulence machine in his pocket to "break" the dreaded silence of public elevators or whatever social situation he deemed too comfortable. He was a classic!
Drivers from 2003 or so on have changed little too-except for adjustability and cosmetics. Lighter and longer shafts work to the point at which the club becomes impossible to control with any consistency-so that's going nowhere for now.
The governing bodies maybe should have done more ten years ago though.
If you believe there should be restrictions on I &B, then why is the current period the best period? Why not roll back the ball to a point when there was more strategy and not every par four was driver wedge?
I grew up playing the tour balata, with persimmon woods and blade irons, and for sure the golfer in me sometimes thinks what we've got now has taken a lot of the craft out of the game. But ultimately it's just natural progress and it's still the greatest game there is!
But surely you'd agree that the continuing lengthening of courses -- sometimes by moving tees OB on grounds that are centuries old and which hosted the game's greats as part of their history -- is evidence of distance being somewhat "out of control" and not merely "unhelpful exaggeration."
Again, setting up straw man arguments distracts from thoughtful discussion of the reality here.
The media and the manufacturers all want to talk up how far everyone hits it now. Course owners and committees respond and think they need to add length-that's what I have a problem with. Talking about 300 yard 3 woods, 180 yard 8 irons e.t.c.-that's just not the reality.
i.e., I watched Phil Mickelson overseas last month hit a blacked out RBZ 3-wood more than 300 yards just about every time he used it in a tournament, often followed by 180-yd 8-irons. And yet you're telling me my eyes are not seeing that...
OTOH, I am NOT seeing the PGA "pushing tees up because they don't want pros to look bad."
Also it's easy to talk about Bubba Watson type length (even though the pros and most knowledgable observers highlight his skill in shaping shots -- like the winner at the Masters -- as the real key to his successes, but how about a more relevant length example to the "more average" hitter like Luke Donald. Since switching to the TaylorMade driver, he's now hitting his ProV1 close to 300 yds on most of his drives, and often more.
I will grant you that there's a feedback loop with the media, OEM's, etc, obsessing about length that then causes a sheep mentality among course owners to lengthen. But this, too, I feel could be broken by the one suggestion that seems to offer an easy, direct, and immediate solution: dial back the ball for pros and have all pros using the same ball -- same as every other professional sport does. One mo' time: simple, problem solved, end of story.