USGA Distance Myths, Vol. 8

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USGA Distance Myth #7:

The average distance for 5-irons on Tour is more than 200 yards.

False.  The PGA Tour Shotlink system, which records virtually all shots throughout the season, shows that the average 5-iron shot from fairway to green is approximately 185 yards.  From the tee on par threes, the average 5-iron distance is about 197 yards.

As with all of the USGA distance myths, I'm not sure I've ever heard one person cite this particular example. But let's say it is a prevailing myth that needs to be refuted, author Dick Rugge isn't exactly dispelling this purported myth.

The 5-iron is not a 200-yard club on average, yet it is a 197-yard club on par-3 tees? So yes, it is a myth, but not one that's very far off!

And if I'm not mistaken, if 197 is an average, then that means a whole bunch of 5-irons are being used from more than 200 yards?

A more interesting myth for Rugge to address would have been "Vanishing Loft Disease," as outlined by Tom Wishon in his book, The Search For the Perfect Club. 

However, pointing out changes in standard lofts to show that distance isn't an issue might have led to grumbling from manufacturers, but so what? As the kids like to say, it is what it is.

Tait on R&A and Links Golf

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Alistair Tait writes:
Credit goes to the R&A for remaining loyal to the tradition of taking the Open Championship to seaside links. All I can say is long may it continue. Given the abundance of links golf in these isles, it is sad that the game's top players only play links golf twice a year at most – the Open Championship and the insipid Dunhill Links Championship.

So enjoy the pictures on your TV screen of this year's Open Championship over the glorious links of Royal Liverpool. Revel in the joy of watching the game's elite play the game as it was first played all those years ago on the windswept coast of the Kingdom of Fife.

Too bad we don't see the big boys playing links golf more often. Too bad the game's oldest championship isn't taken to more traditional courses in the British Isles.

Monarrez On USGA Testing

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Carlos Monarrez in the Detroit Free Press reports that the reduced distance balls have been submitted for testing, and more remarkably, Monarrez understands where the USGA is headed on equipment regulation.

The thing that concerns Rugge most about distance is the lack of concern for accuracy it promotes. With a wedge in their hands, tour pros don't care where they are on the course. So now Rugge and the USGA are testing grooves on irons.
Of course, they could just widen out the fairways to a whopping 30 yards and the accuracy numbers would improve. But wait, that might let someone shoot 11 under! And that would reflect poorly on the us! Sorry...I always forget the priorities.
"In fact this was first told to me by Arnold Palmer a few years back," Rugge said. "He said that that's one of the biggest problems, that we need to tighten down on the grooves because it's too easy to get out of the rough, especially for the best players."

Rugge spoke more about the aerodynamic drag of a golf ball that could slow it down at higher speeds. He mentioned how the moment of inertia limit could help amateurs who use today's massive drivers.

Then it dawned on me. By changing the properties of equipment -- more efficiency at slower swing speeds, more forgiveness on off-center hits, balls that slow down at tour speeds -- it seems Rugge and the USGA are standing up for the little guy. Slowly, I'm beginning to understand the madness.
I'm glad someone understands what they are up to.

Open Media Day This and That

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The various British outlets each covered the Open Championship media a bit differently.

Mike Aitken wrote in the Scotsman about the vaunted ball study and the attempt to cajole shorter flying balls out of manufacturers on the one-year anniversary of the original request.

The Royal and Ancient reported yesterday progress had been made with golf's manufacturers on providing prototypes of a ball which will travel shorter distances than the ones currently in use.

A year ago, the R&A invited companies to send in balls for testing which fly 15 or 25 yards shorter than existing models. "We requested sample balls from top manufacturers for testing and progress has accelerated recently after balls - and in some cases clubs as well - were submitted for testing," reported R&A chief executive Peter Dawson . "The next step is testing. But we're concerned if we get a shorter ball someone will design a clubhead which will get back most of the reduced distance."

"Don't run away with the idea that we're going to see a shorter ball by the end of the year," cautioned Dawson. "Right now we're dealing with the scientific side of things. The philosophical aspect is a different question."

David Smith reported that the R&A is attempting to get the other major associations to get moving on drug testing.

Peter Dawson, chief executive of the Royal and Ancient Gold Club which promotes The Open, said: "There is no particular evidence of drugs helping you in golf, and there is no particular evidence of anyone taking them.

"I certainly don't think we've got a sport in crisis but I think golf would be wise improving that rather than just relying on its reputation."

He said: "We've taken the view that it is not possible for the organisers of one event like ourselves, with the Open Championship, to introduce an anti-doping policy in isolation of what goes on in the other 51 weeks of the year."

Douglas Lowe writes about the organizers' desire to not call the host course by its official name.

The club is called Royal Liverpool, but organisers have requested that the championship on July 20 to 23 be referred to as the Hoylake Open, referring more accurately to the town where the club is located with views over the Dee estuary to the Welsh mountains.

And he offered this story from Dawson:

Despite this long history, an American professional is said to have called the R&A to ask if this was a new course.

"He is a senior professional who shall remain nameless," said Peter Dawson, chief executive of the R&A. "You might imagine we were a little bit bemused by the question, but it does show that we have been away for far too long."

And this gem:

There are fears that the world's top players might take it apart, but that is a view not shared by Martin Kippax, the R&A's championship convener, who assured the course would not be tricked up.

"It is like any other links course," he said. "Regardless of length, it depends on the weather conditions. If we get a warm, wet spring and some real growth in the rough, and if the wind blows, it will provide a very stern test.

"Nobody has made a monkey of any of the Open champion-ship courses and Hoylake is no exception."

He must not have seen the Road hole last year.

James Corrigan reports that the R&A seems upset no women have entered qualifying:

Talk about a change of heart. After 145 years of refusing to allow the fairer sex to play in their precious Open Championship, the Royal and Ancient revealed itself yesterday to be now seemingly just as desperate to have a female entrant. It did so by admitting that it is considering sending out letters to the leading women players reminding them that they can now try to qualify.

"We did not open it up to them last year hoping women would not enter," said the Royal & Ancient chief executive, Peter Dawson, at Hoylake, the Liverpool course that will host its first Open in 39 years from 20 to 23 July.

"Having done that, it will be a shame if they do not take advantage. Maybe we should write to them individually."

Hey, what a good idea!

Golf Course Design by Cornish/Hurdzan

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Today I received my paperback copy of Geoffrey Cornish and Michael Hurdzan's new bibliography of golf architecture writings, Golf Course Design. Grant Books (www.grantbooks.co.uk) published it and has created three editions: paper, a limited 425 edition and a 75 leather bound signed edition.

You can poke around the Grant Books website to find the various editions. But just on an initial glance, the book is outstanding (though I'm biased, several of my books are featured and praised).  From the web site:

The book is divided into three sections: Part I: The Architecture of Golf, a chronology which discussses the evoloution of golf course design, architecture and construction. Part II: The Literature of Golf Design, which deals with the literature of golf design, land marks in the literature of golf design, biographies of golf architects, architects who are authors. Part III: The Bibliography which is devided into various sections. Part IV: Arrangements of Large Collections. Part V: Resources. The appendix includes short title index and the index of authors. This is a landmark production in the field of golf course design. The extensive bibliography is graded in both importance and value.

R&A Design, LLC

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Mike Aitken reports on the R&A's not so stellar start in the design business.

You may recall that most links have only seen minor tinkering in preparation for Open Championships, but now that the pesky ball is going so bloody far and scores might go lower if something isn't done, why, driver must be taken out of the players hands.

Therefore, the R&A has begun to inflict assorted design atrocities on the rota links that pale when compared to anything the USGA has ever...well I just had an Oak Hill flashback.

Anyhow, Aitken reports:

...after embarking this winter on the first phase of a programme of improvements which will cost around £250,000 and increase the number of bunkers on the Ayrshire links to nearly 100, Turnberry has been advised by the Royal and Ancient to remove a number of traps and soften others because the test was in danger of becoming too severe.

Peter Dawson, the chief executive of the R&A, believed alterations to the first, 12th and 14th on the Ailsa now demanded too much of the golfer and needed to be revised.

You know how much I hate to be sarcastic, but you may recall this post about Dawson's planned February visit to help supervise these changes.

You see Mr. Dawson, there are people called golf architects who do this for a living and...oh I know, they would tell you to do something about the ball instead of littering Turnberry with rabbit-dropping inspired bunkers. Silly me!

Aitken provides the crime report:

On the first, for example, two new bunkers were introduced down the left and a third, large pot bunker was also added on the right at around the 280- yard mark. Dawson's reaction to this hazard was that it might take the driver out of the long hitters' hands and persuade them to err on the side of caution with an iron or utility club.

"Sometimes you can't fully appreciate the impact of an alteration until it's been built and you have another look at them in reality rather than on a drawing," said Dawson yesterday. "What happened on the first was that when we saw the new bunkering, we were concerned the element of risk and reward in going for the green might be taken away and the players would use an iron off the tee. But we haven't gone back to the way the hole was before. The hazard is just less severe than it was going to be."

On the back nine, though, the R&A did ask for new bunkers to be removed on the 12th and 14th holes. On the 12th, a new bunker was built on the left of the fairway beyond the existing traps. From what will be the new tee, however, the landing area was miniscule.

That bunker has been filled in as was one of the new traps on the 14th, where there were concerns the hazard couldn't be seen from the tee.

Stewart Selbie, the manager of Turnberry Hotel, was happy to comply with the R&A's wishes, though perhaps not displeased with the notion that the Ailsa had become so challenging.

The original plan was to add 30 traps before the Senior British Open is staged in Ayrshire in the summer and as many as 100 by 2009. Before work began, Turnberry had just 66 bunkers, the fewest of any links on the Open rota.

The second phase of upgrading will take place after the Seniors when Turnberry's finishing stretch will also be toughened up. Although plans for the closing holes have not yet been made public, it's thought the 16th could become more of a dogleg to create enough space to build a new tee which would extend the par-5 17th.

With an Amateur Championship also on the horizon, both Turnberry and the R&A are keen to retain a balance between heightening the challenge and retaining the character of a scenic links regularly ranked in the world's top 20. "What we don't want is to end up making the links unplayable for the regular golfer," said Selbie.

Aitken also outlines changes to Carnoustie to deal with "new technology and improved fitness," and the boondogglery continues...

And, on the treacherous 17th, there was concern a bail-out area now existed on the "island" rather than players having to think about laying up short of the burn or going for broke. This will be remedied by the introduction of rough mounding.

"We did feel that a bit of a bail-out area had emerged since the re-turfing of the 17th and so we've done something about that," acknowledged Dawson.

Rough mounding?

USGA Clubhead Speed Report

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Maybe I've underestimated the USGA's recent propaganda releases on distance. I was thinking that they would be easily misunderstood by the golfing public and would only increase member apathy. But maybe they're laying the groundwork for something else? If so, they have Titleist biting, with a post on the corporation's website of the latest position paper.

I've only skimmed it (I see equations on page 1, eh), but reader G. Bayley writes:

The paper starts by giving trajectory formulae, but then never uses or references them again. The paper gives references to experiments showing that COR declines with higher swing speed. The largest portion of the paper then replicates this result with five unidentified tour balls. A clear explanation of the previous results would have been enough for me, why replicate an accepted result. Is that doing science? This replication is the first of three results claimed. The second result being that launch angle decreases with increased swing speed. It is totally unclear as to how this came about. The final result claimed was the astounding (satire) result that ball spin rate increases with increasing club speed.

In an appendix, tour driving distance is charted for distance ranges and implicated to agree with the COR result. Since this data has no controls, no reasonable assumption as to what it correlates to can be made and is of little scientific value. Also, the paper claimed that 2000 data was from pros using wound balls, but a graph on the Titleist website would seem to indicate that at the beginning of 2000 27% of the tour players were using the modern ball and by the end of the year 42% were using the modern ball.

The article could stand a little better writing given that it was referenced as the lead item on the USGA home page. For example, I would appreciate it if someone could explain what the following means, "some specification had to be made in how the ball would be positioned on the tee. The tee position was first set at the highest speed in accordance with the ODS" which gives me visions of a tee streaking through space with a ball sitting on it. Perhaps it has no meaning and is just poor writing.

What I would have liked to see was graphs of ball trajectory predicted by the equations that were presented and then ignored, and graphs of ball trajectory as seen in experiments with balls. I would also like to have seen what the model would predict for older balls.

 

Speaking To The Decision-Makers...

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Reuters offered these Tim Finchem comments on the Tour's return to New Orleans:

 "The PGA Tour is trying to do its part to communicate to corporate America what is happening in New Orleans and what can still happen," Finchem told a news conference after hosting an economic forum attended by around 100 chief executive officers (CEOs).

"Our telecast this week will be speaking to the decision-makers throughout America.

"Our telecasts skew higher than any other sport in terms of reaching CEOs, vice presidents, chief marketing officers, people that would make the decisions to bring groups here, the individuals who make the decision about how to expand their businesses.

"I don't think most people recognise it, but if you add up the cumulative audience of a PGA Tour event it is second only to the NFL (National Football League) in terms of the total number of people that come in for a telecast."

The Lukewarm Reviews Are In

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AP's Chris Duncan reports that the Rees Jones-David Toms course at Redstone didn't exactly remind them of Riviera.

The Shell Houston Open will move to the weekend before The Masters next year, a change organizers hope will lure a more star-studded field.

It's not the date, but the course that could keep many away.

The Tournament Course at Redstone, where Stuart Appleby shot 19 under last weekend to win the event, got a lukewarm response from the players, most of whom were seeing it for the first time.

Vijay Singh won the previous two Houston Opens at the adjacent Jacobsen/Hardy course at Redstone. The event moved to the 7,457-yard Rees Jones layout this year.

Singh said too many of the holes look the same.

"The golf course did not grow on me," said Singh, the 2000 Masters winner. "Normally, the more you play, the more it grows on you. I just hope they go back to the old golf course next year. I think that's the consensus of most of the players."

Bob Estes, who finished second to Appleby, didn't like the distance between holes. The second tee was more than a quarter mile from the first green and though players had carts waiting to shuttle them, Estes said the process backed up play.

"It's just so spread out, the rounds were really long, and that's the downside of it," Estes said.

I'm shocked.  Jim Nantz said it was getting rave reviews!

MacDuff's Post Houston FedEx Cup Points

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Reader MacDuff supplies us with this week's breakdown of where players would stand if this were 2007, the first year of a PGA Tour "playoff" that will be created with a seeding of some sort.  

1    Mickelson    15346.87        9
2    Singh    14021.87        10
3    C.Campbell    12837.5        11
4    Furyk    12712.5        9
5    Glover    12404.16        9
6    Gf. Ogilvy    12237.5        8
7    Toms    11871.87        7
8    Sabbatini    11741.66        8
9    Weir    11459.37        8
10    Pettersson    11333.33        11
11    Olazabal    10875        7
12    Verplank    10725        8
13    T.Woods    10659.37        6
14    Pernice    10625        8
15    Mayfair    10479.16        9
16    Appleby    10425        8
17    Donald    10289.37        7
18    Oberholser    9550        8
19    T.Clark    9547.5        9
20    Van Pelt    9302.5        11
21    Goosen    9162.5        6
22    Cink    8633.83        8
23    Parnevik    8530        10
24    Gay    8500        9
25    Z.Johnson    8475        8
26    Lehman    8350        7
27    Warren    8237.5        8
28    Villegas    8225        8
29    Chopra    8212        9
30    Choi    8050        7
31    Ames    7975        6
32    G. Owen    7975        8
33    Els    7925        7
34    Pampling    7867.5        7
35    Bohn    7770.83        8
36    Love III    7762.5        8
37    Rollins    7675        7
38    Jerry Kelly    7662.5        6
39    D.Wilson    7425        8
40    JB Holmes    7420.83        7
41    Funk    7337.5        8
42    Purdy    7325        7
43    Palmer    7291.66        7
44    Vn Taylor    7237.5        6
45    Garcia    7175        6
46    Jobe    6892.5        7
47    Couples    6825        7
48    Franco    6800        7
49    Beem    6768.75        8
50    Imada    6717.5        8
51    Barlow    6657.5        7
52    Bertsch    6575        8
53    RS Johnson    6525        5
54    Baird    6517.5        7
55    Harrington    6500        6
56    Hoffman    6457.5        6
57    Fischer    6425        9
58    Langer    6354.16        7
59    J.Smith    6312.5        6
60    D. Howell    6262.5        5
61    Pat Perez    6262.5        7
62    Leonard    6220.83        7
63    Bjornstad    6217.5        7
64    Allenby    6187.5        6
65    Watney    6187.5        7
66    F.Jacobson    6075        6
67    Bryant    6050        6
68    Rose    5991.66        6
69    JJ Henry    5875        5
70    M.Wilson    5852.5        5
71    A.Scott    5850        5
72    J.Ogilvie    5845        6
73    Waldorf    5787.5        7
74    Estes    5775        5
75    Crane    5770        5
76    Senden    5750        5
77    Gove    5737.5        6
78    N.Green    5662.5        7
79    B. Quigley    5650        5
80    Atwal    5625        5
81    J.Byrd    5500        4
82    Baddeley    5387.5        6
83    DiMarco    5384.37        5
84    Curtis    5375        7
85    Olin Browne    5337.5        8
86    Gronberg    5312.5        5
87    Calc    5200        8
88    Westwood    5187.5        5
89    Slocum    5150        7
90    Hart    5137.5        6
            T91    Cabrera    5100        5
            T91    Immelman    5100        5
93    Bub Watson    5075        5
94    Branshaw    4962.5        6
95    Maggert    4937.5        7
96    D.Clarke    4900        4
97    Howell III    4862.5        9
98    Flesch    4805        7
99    Triplett    4750        4
100    JL Lewis    4675        7
101    Matteson    4600        6
102    Barron    4581.25        5
103    Poulter    4550        6
104    Herron    4507.5        5
105    Azinger    4500        6
106    Gore    4450        5
107    Br.Davis    4437.5        7
108    Micheel    4425        6
109    Leaney    4337.5        4
110    Sluman    4287.5        8
111    Lickliter II    4250        5
112    Frazar    4187.5        6
113    Stricker    4125        3
114    Mahan    4112.5        6
115    Geiberger    4100        6
116    Veazey    4025        5
117    Cook    4000        4
118    Dickerson    3975        7
119    Kenny Perry    3962.5        4
120    Lonard    3937.5        6
121    S.Jones    3912.5        5
122    Faxon    3812.5        6
123    Pavin    3787.5        4
124    Goggin    3737.75        4
125    Ridings    3700        5
126    Lowery    3612.5        6
127    Kaye    3575        5
128    Wetterich    3550        4
129    Andrade    3545        5
130    Kent Jones    3537.5        4
131    Petrovic    3512.5        5
132    Sindelar    3512.5        6
133    Jimenez    3387.5        3
134    Stankowski    3290.5        6
135    Sean O'Hair    3287.5        6
136    Kevin Na    3275        4
137    Ws Short Jr    3187.5        6
138    Katayama    3171.87        4
139    Daly    3050        5
140    Gamez    3037.5        5