Letter From Saugerties, Wally Uihlein Edition

Former USGA Executive Director Frank Hannigan emailed this letter in response to Acushnet CEO Wally Uihlein's recent interview with John Huggan. I emailed Mr. Uihlein to ask if he wished to respond but have not heard back as of this posting.

What a week of glory it was for Acushnet CEO Wally Uihlein!

First, he gives an interview to the always entertaining golf site, "Golf Observer."  What it amounts to is a tribute to himself and his company.  It is longer than "War and Peace."

Then, better yet, the man accused of blackmailing David Letterman wears a Titleist cap in various photos that surfaced. The whole world sees "Titleist" and it doesn't cost Acushnet a dime. (By the way the USGA handicap processing system shows one Joe Halderman, a resident of Connecticut, as bearing a 16.8 at the Longshore Golf Course,  a muni in the posh town of Westport).   

Wally is special.  He would like it thought that he was found in a manger outside the door of the dean of the Harvard Business School.  In fact,  he was a left-handed New England golfer with a modicum of talent who became somebody's assistant pro.  The USGA welcomed him back by granting him reinstatement to amateur status.  He jumped over to Acushnet where he displayed a tremendous ability to sell stuff.

His company owns more than 50% of the golf ball market plus Foot Joy shoes and a couple of lines of clubs.   It is now more than a billion dollar operation.  Wally is not satisfied.  He thinks he should BE golf.  There is nothing he is unwilling to foresee. He predicts there will be no more successful incursions into the golf equipment business by outsiders.  That's an expression of resentment toward the late Karsten Solheim and the late Ely Callaway who came from nowhere to dominate the club business and kick Acushnet's butt in the process. 

I will now present an abbreviated list of items worthy of comment from the interview:

• On the prospect of rolling back distance,  he says any change is bound to be good for some tour players and bad for others.  How come he didn't weep for the prospective losers when he dramatically changed his ball to the HD line in the early 2000s?

• Wally says there is no precedent for rolling back performance - not in golf or any other sport.  Excuse me, but in 1931 the USGA changed the minimum diameter of the ball in its rule to 1.68 inches - up from 1.62 inches. Writing in the late 1930s, Bobby Jones reckoned that the 1.68" ball was about 5 yards shorter than the ball he played with during the 1920s.

• He says the distance explosion is due in part to bigger and stronger people.  Look, distance was stable on the Tour between 1980 and 1995.  It then shot up every year until 2002 when it again became stable - after the horse left the barn with an overall driving distance increase of about 9%.  For the size of people to matter, you'd have to believe that something dramatic happened to the species for an 8 year period only.  Darwin wouldn't buy that.

• He hints at the possibility of litigation on the heels of any equipment rules change by the USGA. That's odd because a few years ago he told me personally that suing the USGA is very bad for business.  Wally said that both Ping, which did sue, and Callaway, which threatened to sue, were singed.

Is the USGA frightened by threats of an anti trust suit?  Perhaps, even though I make them about a one touchdown favorite in such a clash.

What does scare the USGA is the fear of general non-support, which would render the USGA irrelevant. Just suppose the USGA did muster up the courage to do what it knows is right - roll back distance.   If that were to happen I am sure that Wally and other manufacturers would continue to turn out today's balls.   What would the customer do - buy the ball announced as being shorter?   Sure, the pro shops at Seminole and Cypress Point might only carry the new ball.   How about WalMart?  I can't envision the boys from Arkansas acting on the basis of what the USGA says is good for the game.  There would, for a time at least, be chaos, the exact opposite of the uniformity prized above all by the USGA.

The ongoing tension between equipment makers and the USGA is both sad and unnecessary.  It wasn't always so. I remember the day when an earlier CEO of Acushnet, John Ludes, came into my office at the USGA bearing a $10,000 check as a gift for a USGA building fundraiser.  Mr. Ludes understood that the USGA had created a climate in the sport that put all manufacturers on a level playing field and was doing so without any ax to grind. Naturally, I could not accept the check.    

Equipment gets nearly as much play as instruction in commercial golf media because of ad budgets.  Nothing gets the attention of a publisher quicker than a message saying, "You didn't give us enough space last month.  My money is itching to go elsewhere."

So the consumer is led to believe that his or her search for a driver counts more than the choice of a spouse. The truth of course is that equipment does not determine outcomes in golf on every level of the game. If it were otherwise you would see only one brand of ball in use on the Tour. Hostility is meaningless in that equipment simply doesn't matter.  By that, I mean that the choice of equipment on all levels of golf does not determine who wins or loses.  The performance of today's clubs and balls is remarkably similar with minute variations that are almost impossible to discern.   Why is it you never see blind test results in golf?  Because even the greatest of players can't tell one ball from another if the markings on the balls are wiped out.

For reading this far, I reward you with a tip.  The plastics used in modern golf balls do not decompose.  So if you are in a pro shop that has used balls in a bucket for $1.25 each, don't hesitate to reach down for a few. As for the decay issue,  I do not fear climate change.  My fear is that eventually the surface of the earth will consist of nothing but Pinnacles.

Uihlein says no Tour player will use equipment he does not favor. Right on. Tour players are influenced by how much they can extract in endorsement fees.

Remember when Tiger Woods turned pro in the fall of 1996?  He quickly scored a deal with Acushnet granting him $4 million per year.  In no time at all he was recognized as the best player in the world.  Fast forward a few years.  Nike, which dwarfs Acushnet, snatched Tiger away by doubling or tripling Tiger's fee. Tiger remained the best player in the world.  The same would happen if he developed a yen for Callaway or Taylor Made or whatever.    
 
It's astonishing how much attention is paid to equipment now.   The truth is if Acushnet was gobbled up tomorrow by Nike or Adidas nobody would care other than the players on the Titleist staff.

We have to put up with manufacturers since the game requires clubs and balls. But we shouldn't pay much attention to them and it surely doesn't matter which of them prosper and which fail.

Frank Hannigan
Saugerties, New York

Swimming Is Rolling Back, Why Not Golf?

I finally read up on swimming's governing body realizing their sport was hurt by the hi-tech body suits that led to world records.  Karen Crouse's NY Times story should give you a nice background on the issue, while this Amy Shipley story explains coach Bob Bowman's outrage at the time it will take to implement the ban.

But in light of the groove rule change saga and the desire to do anything but roll back the ball, reader Ryan offers this:

With what could be called swimsuit-gate at the current World Championships, where the EQUIPMENT (ie/ the suits themselves) are being credited with increased performance and world records shattered, and thus the history of the sport being changed, governing bodies have decided to BAN these ultra-buoyant new suits for next year (2010). They are apparently reverting back to standardized suit construction from 1996, and the predicted result is that Phelp will be just THAT much better than everyone else who was falsely lifted (pardon the pun) by these suits (due to sponsorships, Phelps of course, can't wear the newest of the new technology).

The crossover point, of course, is the golf ball, and perhaps adds more fuel to the battle here. If swimming can do it at the drop of a hat, why can't golf? Imagine a world with the 1996 Titleist Professional!

It is fascinating that Michael Phelps will probably be even more dominant with this rollback, just as many of us believe that Tiger Woods (and probably Phil Mickelson) would benefit from a golf ball rollback more than your average professional.

Also interesting is the notion that breaking world records finally made some say enough.

Perhaps a similar boiling point would have been reached in golf were it not for all of the fairway narrowing, hole tucking and rough harvesting of the last ten years?

"We've had plenty of time to make our adjustments."

Not the cleanest transcript ever, but you get the idea. Tiger Woods at Congressional, asked about the groove change going ahead in 2010:

TIGER WOODS: I think it's great. We've had plenty of time to make our adjustments. We've known for over a couple years now what this decision was going to be, when it was going to come down, and we've had plenty of time to make our adjustments.

All the companies have been testing and getting ready for this, and the guys will make the changes. Most of the guys play with big groups brought their irons. Only new groups they usually have use their sand wedges. But guys will make their changes, their adjustments.

It'll be interesting seeing guys catching flyers and not being able to spin the ball back out of the rough. Their decision is how they play par-5s whether they will they try and drive drivable par 4s now. Short-siding yourself is obviously going to pay a little more of a price, and you know, how many more 64-degree wedges you're going to see with the balls being as firm as they are. Are guys going to start going to a spinner ball.

Update on 2009-06-30 18:27 by Geoff

Stewart Cink files this longer Tweet on the grooves issue.

Titleist: "Disappointed"

Boy they work fast up there in Fairhaven. Hot off the presses:

Acushnet Statement re: U.S. PGA Tour Groove Decision

The Acushnet Company is disappointed that the U.S. PGA Tour has decided to adopt the Condition of Competition for the new groove rule effective January 1, 2010.

For the past several months we have communicated with the USGA, the R&A and various worldwide professional tours, our support for aligning adoption of the Condition of Competition with January 1, 2011, the date that manufacturers are required to begin shipping products with the new groove configuration. We believe that alignment of those dates is in the best interest of the professional tours, consumers, retailers and manufacturers. Below are some of the factors that we believe support our position.

Although Acushnet incorporated a new conforming groove configuration into its irons in 2007, we elected to wait to convert our wedges until after the USGA/R&A took final action on the groove proposal. Once the new groove dimensions were finalized, in the rule as adopted in August 2008, we developed a new groove for wedges and began tour player testing in March 2009. We have since tested a significant number of tour players comparing the current and the new groove configurations.

Our test results are consistent with testing conducted by the USGA/R&A that revealed a spin rate reduction of between 30% and 50% for full shots out of the rough. However, our testing also revealed significant changes in ball launch angle, ball trajectory, angle of descent and roll out on the green. The testing also revealed significant differences in performance depending on player club head speed and short game technique. Player reaction to what they saw was dramatic. They were caught off guard by the magnitude of the performance difference and expressed concern about the extent of the transition process.

Momentary pause here to run for my Kleenex box. Continue...

We believe, and players have confirmed, that the conversion process will not be a simple exchange of existing wedges with new grooves. The conversion process may involve different wedge designs and lofts, different shot technique, different golf balls and different set configuration (including drivers). These types of changes are iterative and take time. They also require significant support from players and equipment manufacturers. There are approximately 1,500 exempt tour players worldwide. We don’t believe that this extensive transition process will begin in earnest until late in 2009, when manufacturer tour support is almost non existent. That is particularly true for tours outside of the United States.

The groove rule change is the first time in the history of contemporary competitive golf that equipment performance has been rolled back. Making a change of this precedential significance requires that the conversion process be conducted in a thorough, deliberate manner taking the interests of all constituencies into account. Regardless of how much research and thought went into the development of the rule change, as with any significant change, there are unforeseen issues and complexity, particularly at the point of implementation and adoption. There is no way to predict many of these issues and they only surface during the actual conversion process, as described above. While no one is to blame for these circumstances, the major logistical issues of implementation still need to be taken into account.

Hey, maybe this will force more guys to show up at Kapalua!

One of the most significant consequences of this equipment roll back is that not aligning adoption of the Condition of Competition with the manufacturer sell by date creates a bifurcation between the equipment that the Tours are using and the equipment consumers have available in the market place. That disconnect is also unprecedented. Our research indicates that the majority of retailers and consumers only have an interest in product with the new groove configuration if product with current grooves is not available. On the current schedule that is January 1, 2011. We believe that alignment of these dates to January 1, 2011 is critical as it allows for a thoughtful, orderly and comprehensive implementation of the proposed new grooves for all parties. Non-alignment is not in the best interests of the game of golf and all of its constituencies.

Now that the USPGA Tour has voted to continue with a January 1, 2010 adoption (and we expect all professional tours to follow their lead), we will, as promised all along, make the effort to service all worldwide professional players as best we can. Our irons currently conform to the new rule and we will begin distribution of new wedge product to the professional tours shortly. However, the decision to adopt the Condition of Competition effective January 1, 2010 does not diminish or alter the challenges described above.

"Do we really need to make this game more DIFFICULT than it already is?"

While we wait for an answer on the groove condition of competition, I saw this Tweet on Golfweek's Forecaddie account Monday:

Not that The Man Out Front is a chop, but riddle me this on grooves: Do we really need to make this game more DIFFICULT than it already is?

This is a pretty common refrain about the grooves, the ball, and any other talk of regulation. And nothing speaks better to the ever softening America culture that wants to eliminate any need for skill.

I'd just like to know from those who find all of this equipment regulation so offensive: what would you like your clubs to do for you that it doesn't do now?