issue 4. 2020 | golf digest 31Special Report Playistance must be
stopped, say golf ’s
ruling bodies. PGA
Tour distance, clearly. Your
distance, maybe. But the mo-
ment seems very much upon
us. Where all of golf is, how-
ever, is a tangled mess.
Distance has been equally
celebrated and feared with
each passing decade since
the rubber-core Haskell ball
appeared at the turn of the
20th century. Now, every
group—from golf ’s governing
bodies to its most prominent
professional tours and its play-
ers to course designers and
equipment manufacturers
to the most fervent weekend
hackers—is choosing sides
on whether distance is an
untenable threat or inspiring
allure. The United States Golf
Association and Royal and An-
cient Golf Club of St. Andrews,
who together govern the game
worldwide, seem certain.
“We want the cycle of dis-
tance increases to stop,”says
USGA chief executive Mike
Davis.“We think distance is
relative, and it’s always been
relative.This concept of every
generation having to hit it
farther than the previous gen-
eration, we just don’t think...
that is good for the game.”
Davis’ declaration accompa-
nied the release of the USGA
and R&A’s Distance Insights
Project. The report’s introduc-
tory statement is a succinct 16
pages, but it’ssupported by a
“Conclusions” position paper
that runs another 102 pages.
That paper is informed by what
is rightly called a “library” of 57
supporting research reports.
One report surveyed more
than 68,000 golf “stakehold-
ers” (such as fans, architects,
tour players, equipment man-
ufacturers, tournament orga-
nizers, etc.) and concluded:
“Much of the opinion around
distance is very divided, with
each stakeholder group’s opin-
ion motivated by their own
unique standpoint.”
That conclusion is reflected
in a Golf Digest survey of its
readers. Of more than 4,000
respondents, a third favor a
rollback for the men’s profes-
sional game,butjust 13 percent
support a universal rollback.
More than half (54 percent) say
nothing should be done.
Alot more than nothing
seems inevitable. Within a
year, the USGA and R&A will
announce areas they’ll be
targeting for change, includ-
ing the possibility of revis-
ing equipment standards or
expanding the idea of a Local
Rule that would allow any
event to restrict equipment
performance—such as the
use of a shorter ball.Propos-
als mightbe announced,
but those are merely sugges-
tions to be debated through a
lengthy “notice and comment”
period and an even lengthier
implementation timeline.
It’s hard to imagine any
rollback without the support
of PGA Tour Commissioner
Jay Monahan, who has been
open but skeptical. In a recent
statement, the PGA Tour
said that it supports solutions
that “benefit the game as a
whole without negatively im-
pacting the tour, its players or
our fans’ enjoyment.”The equipment manufac-
turers have been largely silent,
but one said what others
surely must be thinking.
“The conclusions drawn in
thisreport undervalue the skill
and athleticism of the game’s
best players and focus far too
much on the top of the men’s
professional game and project
this on golf and golfers as a
whole,” says David Maher, the
president and CEO of Acush-
net, the parent company of
Titleist,which sells nearly half
the golf balls on the market in
the United States. “We believe
that existing equipment regu-
lations effectively govern the
prospects of any significant in-
creases in hitting distance by
the game’s longest hitters.”
But the USGA and
R&A—citingcosts, environ-
mental concerns and water
demands—arelooking to pro-
tect the game’s playing fields
from a scenario that might see
average driving distance at
the elite level spike in the next
decade like it did with the in-
troduction of titanium drivers
and solid-core, multilayer golf
balls a generation ago.
But even there, the evi-
dence is mixed.PGA Tour
driving distance is up nearly
40 yards since 1980, but it has
increased only eight yards
since 2003. Since 2012, driv-
ing distance has risen at a
ratesimilar to where profes-
sional golf was in the 1980s
and’90s,butthat’sone-fourth
the rate of the late 1990s and
early 2000s when the ruling
bodies put the industry on
notice withitsJoint Statement
of Principles.Distance has
declined in six of thepast 13
seasons on the PGA Tour, but
the number of 320-yard drives
or longer has gone from one in
20 to one in 10. This year, it’s
more like one in six.
A study of recreational
golfers by the USGA and R&A
shows a distance increase
of 16 yards since 1996 to 216
yards, but it hasn’t increased
at all from where it was in
2005.Not included in theDistance Insights report is av-
erage-golfer data collected by
theArccosCaddie GPS-based
stat-tracking app. Based on 26
million drives, the data shows
driving distance has decreased
three yards since 2017. The de-
cline was true across every age
group and handicap level.
It’s alltantalizing fod-
derfor a debate that Davis
says must be “collaborative,”
though he believes the game
still should be governed by a
single set of rules.“This is a
long-term play because this
has been a long-term build-up
of a problem... .We realize
this is a big undertaking. We
don’t see this as something
where we’re just going to man-
date something. Clearly, we
mightnot agree on everything,
but I think everybody cares
about the future of this game.”
That future will be about
this push and pull between
maintaining a connection to
golf ’s past and embracing the
realities of its future partici-
pants. The questions we need
to ask now are: Would 400-
yard drives at a tour event be
a tragedy? Would this signal
that golf ’s connection with its
historic championship venues
had been severed? Will the car-
toonish swing speeds of today’s
long-drive competitors become
the standard for tomorrow’s
PGA Tour players? Would the
bond between golf ’s elite play-
ers and its paying customers
be broken or heightened by ex-
traordinary driving distances?
The answers might not
be found in the research,
of course. Perhaps they’ll
shake out during Davis’ “col-
laborative” discussions with
the various stakeholders over
what likely will be years. Pre-
sumably, there’s a number
everyone will agree is too far.
Whether golf as a collective is
there yet seems as much of an
open question as whether we’ll
ever get there.An untenable threat to the gameor an inspiring allure?The Distance Resistance
Why golf’s rules-makers
believe it’s time to act
by mike stachura