Book Excerpt: How The Pro V1 Revolutionized Golf

I think I just checked off Chairman Payne on my Christmas shopping list!

Even though the Augusta National chairman suggests improved conditioning is the best explanation for today's pros hitting it longer on average than they did a little over a decade or so ago, Mark McClusky's new book excerpt posted at GolfDigest.com suggests otherwise. He looks at the Titleist ProV1's impact on golf and namely, the six yard increase in 2001 driving distance.

From Faster, Higher, Strong: How Sports Science Is Creating A New Generation of Super-Athletes And What We Can Learn From Them, you forget how quickly players made the switch:

The first week the new Pro V1 model ball was available for tournament play, in October 2000, forty-seven players switched from their previous ball. That sort of wholesale equipment change was unprecedented in the history of golf. How fast was the transition across the sport? At the 2000 Masters, fifty-nine of the ninety- five players used a wound golf ball. One year later, only four players used one. By the end of 2001, not a single tournament champion on any of the world’s major professional tours had won using a wound ball; the rout was so comprehensive that Titleist stopped making them at all.

Chairman Payne: They're Just Better Athletes

Sounds like someone has been spending too much time around Chief Inspector Dawson!

In an interview to Brett Ogle while Down Under for the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship, Augusta National Chairman suggested that we've had it all wrong in thinking equipment has driven spikes in distance that has forced the home of the Masters to add 500 yards, mow fairways grown longer than they'd like toward tees to create ball-roll slowing grain, buy neighboring property for new tees, and plant absurd looking pine trees at the course where Bobby Jones made it evident trees were not to be used as a hazard.

Nope, apparently it's all in the genes and workout programs of today's golfers, who unlike schlubby types from the past like Jack Nicklaus or Gary Player, are much stronger today.

Thanks to the Aussie Golfer for transcribing a Fox Sports interview:

“You know the kids keep getting longer. I really think for a four or five-year period we blamed it on the equipment,” Payne said. “I really think it’s the conditioning of these young kids.”

“You know they come to the game now much more athletic than they were in the past.”

Apparently the Chairman hasn't seen PGA Tour rookie of 2014 Chesson Hadley and his skin and bones averaging 291.8 off the tee! Or...oh why bother. It doesn't matter.

What matters is that Augusta National has to resort to measures it should not have to all to allow manufacturers to claim they are selling you something longer and straighter than ever. Is it really working for anyone at this point?