USGA and R&A Announce golf ball rollback for everyone!?!?!

[grochol17]

50 minutes ago, My2Dogs said:

Before the COVID bump. We had a big problem with golf.  Courses were closing, memberships were down.  Remember they were doing everything to try and grow the game, get new blood, get younger, get minorities, etc into the game. 

 

Again, if the USGA was ruining the game for decades as some people like to say in their complaints about the USGA, please point to some specific things that they did that directly resulted in people leaving the game.

 

As you mentioned, they were working on initiatives to grow the game and it wasn't clear that those were having an affect.  But there are also lots of non-USGA reasons why people were playing less.  For example, at one point the closest golf course to me was about 15 minutes away, but the pace of play was glacial... 6 hour rounds were the norm on weekends.  At the time I was single and loved the game enough that I was willing to drive quite a ways to find other places to play.  If my situation with family, job, or financial concerns were different, I'd probably have quit playing and just become a range rat.

[ColdOkieGolf]

I'm not so sure why people assume this will result in the average amateur golfer taking a big loss of distance.

If you are playing a lower compression ball, I'd bet it isn't too far off the future legal limit.     At 115 mph the difference in ball speed between the prov1 left dash and the wilson duo soft is almost 6 mph.  The difference would only be larger at 125 mph.

[North Butte]

Well good. This means fairly soon now, normal golfers will finally be rid of USGA. They'll be in the business of regulating golf's 1%-ers and the rest of us will just ignore them.

[st1800e]

16 minutes ago, molecularman said:

I'm not so sure why people assume this will result in the average amateur golfer taking a big loss of distance.

If you are playing a lower compression ball, I'd bet it isn't too far off the future legal limit.     At 115 mph the difference in ball speed between the prov1 left dash and the wilson duo soft is almost 6 mph.  The difference would only be larger at 125 mph.

Yes, I’ve crafted a similar post , with data, but now it’s being moderated.  

[Pnwpingi210]

27 minutes ago, grochol17 said:

 

Again, if the USGA was ruining the game for decades as some people like to say in their complaints about the USGA, please point to some specific things that they did that directly resulted in people leaving the game.

 

As you mentioned, they were working on initiatives to grow the game and it wasn't clear that those were having an affect.  But there are also lots of non-USGA reasons why people were playing less.  For example, at one point the closest golf course to me was about 15 minutes away, but the pace of play was glacial... 6 hour rounds were the norm on weekends.  At the time I was single and loved the game enough that I was willing to drive quite a ways to find other places to play.  If my situation with family, job, or financial concerns were different, I'd probably have quit playing and just become a range rat.

Ha.  I agree - The USGA didn’t ruin the game.  
 

The COVID did introduce new people to the game, which has changed how easy it is to book and how long it takes to play a round.  Anecdotally on the course I have access to a 5-7 days booking in advance is required to get a tee time now and average rounds are 5 hrs for relatively short courses.  
 

they would do better to make some recommendations on pace of play and have courses try to adhere to that.  I think the challenge is the covid golfing bump introduced a demographic that don’t necessarily enjoy golf, but enjoy the escape from other areas of their life and want to prolong the experience not speed it up.

Edited December 2, 2023 by Pnwpingi210

[Trav1989]

I hope the pga tour refuses to use the rolled back ball and that will be the end of the conversation whether the usga likes it or not. 

[Trav1989]

I think the roll back will equate to about two clubs into normal par 4’s 

[Copacetic]

16 hours ago, NoCalHack said:

I think it’s overblown how much it affects the average amateur. The courses will play a bit longer. Tees will just move up.  The game will fundamentally stay the same. 
 

I have no issue with them rolling it back for pros and elite amateurs only. But ball companies and PGA were the ones who revolted here and kept that from happening.  PGA tours big issue was always with bifurcation not the fact the ball is shorter. It affects all pros proportionally. Pros are understandably nervous but most understand that. But bifurcation would kill money invested into the game. Kill endorsements and advertising. Essentially decimate a big part of the golf industry and golf economy. Titleist and callaway have little incentive to pay players to endorse their product if they can’t sell the same ball to the consumer. You can’t claim to be the number 1 ball on tour and sell another ball. Once the bifurcation thing was dropped the PGA tour folded.

 

The USGA and R and A have no financial interest in this at all. Agree with them or not, they are doing what they think is better for the game. 
 

 

Agreed, this is a non issue for most golfers, we’ll have to listen to how unfair it is to older players etc etc losing 6 -10 yards off the tee by limiting the ball. The same old players who 90% of are already playing a cheap ball that loses them more than that over a premium one. 

[Greenie]

4 hours ago, Double Mocha Man said:

 

You would have to show proof of age ID at the counter to buy a dozen of those.

 

That would be ok with me.

 

I still have to show proof to buy alcohol. I have to show proof for my senior discount at places. As a one year retired senior now I don't mind showing ID. I have become accustomed to the perks a senior gets. I earned it..LOL

 

My only complaint is the senior age is getting older faster than I am. At 63 I've seen a few courses change the senior age to 65. One course is at 70. Years ago senior meant 50 at a lot of courses for the senior discount. Not anymore.

[Double Mocha Man]

1 minute ago, Greenie said:

 

That would be ok with me.

 

I still have to show proof to buy alcohol. I have to show proof for my senior discount at places. As a one year retired senior now I don't mind showing ID. I have become accustomed to the perks a senior gets. I earned it..LOL

 

My only complaint is the senior age is getting older faster than I am. At 63 I've seen a few courses change the senior age to 65. One course is at 70. Years ago senior meant 50 at a lot of courses for the senior discount. Not anymore.

 

One of my older friends turned 75 today.  We played golf.  You gotta hurry up and get to that age... senior discount will always apply.

[NoTalentLefty]

If you are opposed to the roll back the you have the option to cancel your USGA membership. Money speaks louder than anything in this world. 
  If you agree join the USGA or keep renewing. 
  Most of the groups in my area do their own hcp anyway. For me it’s easy to no longer belong.

  One other option might be to raise hell at the USGA with threats, not my preferred way , but might work. 
 I don’t think the USGA has ruined the game but this may be a bad decision they might regret. 

[gvogel]

6 hours ago, dgarland said:

If you were charged with devising a plan to destroy the game of golf... you couldn't come up with anything better than this.  Great job governing bodies of golf.  You all should be banished to the far reaches of the earth.  

Wait, did all the advances made to the ball in the past 25 years significantly increase participation in the game?  How about drivers increasing in size, spin properties and maximizing COR across the face?

 

I think that you are over-reacting.  I will concede that the driver changes have benefitted Tour pros, but not so much for the rest of us.

[gvogel]

3 hours ago, The Pearl said:

JFC, just keep the ball as is and create a tour ball for the tours and whatever amateur events the clown show governing bodies decide. That way the precious upper crust of private golf course memberships can stop building extra tee blocks.

 

This is insane.

 

 

that is exactly what the USGA proposed.  But the PGA Tour and the OEM's put up a hissy fit.  So the USGA said we'll do it for everyone.

 

It won't make a difference for me.  In the fall when the temperatures drop and the ground is soft, I'm sure that my drives go 90% or less than in the summer.  I play anyway.

[larrybud]

3 hours ago, Jayjay_theweim_guy said:

Dude, Golf Twitter is that way -->.

 

 

 

 

No kidding! Hell, I play State AMs and very few guys are sniffing 300.

[larrybud]

1 hour ago, grochol17 said:

 

Again, if the USGA was ruining the game for decades as some people like to say in their complaints about the USGA, please point to some specific things that they did that directly resulted in people leaving the game.

 

 

I'm not sure the number of people playing is the right metric. The right metric would be "How many actually listen to the USGA when it comes following the rules?"  That's how most view the usga, the rule makers. Hopefully this will be one more rule that people ignore, and we can speed this up and make the usga irrelevant. Obviously will need the OEM's help.

[bekgolf]

PGA could establish an Amateur Golf Association and replace the USGA.  I would support having the PGA be the rule makers and index maintainers.

 

I know, it's a pipe dream.  I need to have a handicap index so I'm tied to the USGA unless I can convince the club to maintain our own indexes.  The only competition I'm involved in is with other club members.

[My2Dogs]

1 hour ago, grochol17 said:

 

Again, if the USGA was ruining the game for decades as some people like to say in their complaints about the USGA, please point to some specific things that they did that directly resulted in people leaving the game.

 

As you mentioned, they were working on initiatives to grow the game and it wasn't clear that those were having an affect.  But there are also lots of non-USGA reasons why people were playing less.  For example, at one point the closest golf course to me was about 15 minutes away, but the pace of play was glacial... 6 hour rounds were the norm on weekends.  At the time I was single and loved the game enough that I was willing to drive quite a ways to find other places to play.  If my situation with family, job, or financial concerns were different, I'd probably have quit playing and just become a range rat.

All I know is the game was in the decline before COVID.  Now they are going to implement a rule to try and rein in around 50-100 people on earth.

 

Most course stay open due to the folks who play during the week and not the weekend players.  Most of them are older and don’t hit it as far and anything restricting them is going to hurtful.  
 

the other large group would be ladies golf.  Even taking away 5% of distance is huge for them. 
 

I’m ok.  I hit it long enough that it really won’t hit me as hard but I want the game to grow and not decrease.  I hope you’re right that this is a nothing burger and it all blows away but I think this decision might be a huge negative for the game. 
 

[hammergolf]

17 minutes ago, larrybud said:

 

I'm not sure the number of people playing is the right metric. The right metric would be "How many actually listen to the USGA when it comes following the rules?"  That's how most view the usga, the rule makers. Hopefully this will be one more rule that people ignore, and we can speed this up and make the usga irrelevant. Obviously will need the OEM's help.

I can tell you one thing for certain, in 2030 the ball manufacturers are going to sell a TON of golf balls since the new ball rule will take effect in 2031. I’ll be buying cases of my preferred ball for sure. 

[Double Mocha Man]

54 minutes ago, gvogel said:

that is exactly what the USGA proposed.  But the PGA Tour and the OEM's put up a hissy fit.  So the USGA said we'll do it for everyone.

 

It won't make a difference for me.  In the fall when the temperatures drop and the ground is soft, I'm sure that my drives go 90% or less than in the summer.  I play anyway.

 

So, in 2030 your Winter game will become your Summer game.  

[storm3]

5 hours ago, grochol17 said:

 

There are a lot of different problems that you can solve with a ball roll back.  Personally I find bomb and gouge boring to watch.  But, there are three reasons as a golfer why I'm good with the ball being rolled back...

 

1) Hopefully this will make golf cheaper or at least keep the prices cheaper than they would be otherwise.  Rolling the ball back means that a golf course needs less space to keep the same level of challenge so there's less to maintain which should save money on equipment and man hours for course work.  An additional benefit is that more golf courses might become financially viable so there won't be as many course closings and more choice is better for the golfer.

 

2) Shorter courses and/or people playing from shorter tees to accommodate the "new" ball will hopefully make the game faster to play.  Plus, a ball that doesn't go as far overall won't go as far offline, so there might be less time spent looking for lost balls.

 

3) Courses that can't expand won't become obsolete (or will become fun to play again).  The course I grew up playing on is a short par 70 golf course, maxing out at 6000 yards.  Since pretty much every hole is surrounded by streets or houses, there's no room to expand.  When I was in high school hitting balata balls and the great big bertha driver, the course could be challenging.  I went back and played it about 10 years later using a pro v1 and a Titleist 983E and it was kinda boring... it basically played as a par 66 (or less) since both par 5s became reachable with with driver/mid-iron and on multiple pars 4s it was possible to easily hit it past all the trouble and have a short pitch into the green.  As I've moved around to different areas, when I look for new courses I generally stay away from playing a course that maxes out less than 6500 because that means to make it interesting and hit a variety of clubs for my approach shots, I'll probably never hit driver (like I said, I find bomb and gouge boring).  A shorter ball means that courses that are currently too short for me will become more fun to play, so I'll have more options.

Earlier this year, Mike Whan mentioned that the MLR allowed them to be more aggressive with the ODS rollback. Now that the new proposal appears to be universal, it is likely that the rollback will be less drastic so I think you are over-exaggerating the impact that this will have.  

1) This proposal may very slightly slow the current rate of increase in the medium term, but it isn’t going to result in a decrease in present costs. Ultimately golf will not get cheaper without a massive reduction in long term demand and this proposal is unlikely to cause that.

 

2) Playing time does not have a linear correlation to playing length, so even if the USGA stick with the proposal from earlier this year, it is highly unlikely to result in a noticeable reduction in average playing time (keep in mind that the earlier ODS proposal was estimated to result in a reduction of 15-20 yards for those test conditions and slower speeds are likely to lose less).
 

3) Most of this section of your post is based on perception and a simple solution to that would be to reduce par. This proposal will not make your example course magically relevant again nor change public perception very much (6000 yards will still be short for a par 70 if this proposed rollback were to be adopted). This may buy some time for a few courses, but it is just delaying the inevitable without a dramatic shift in perception of what is considered to be an acceptable challenge. The USGA could be putting more effort into permanently reverse this course trend by simply modeling better practices at their hosted events in an effort to change public expectation (shorter length, par below 70, more sustainable agronomy practices), but this whole effort has clearly been about finding justification to rollback the golf ball.

[storm3]

7 hours ago, klebs01 said:

terrible ideas. Most actually promote bomb and gouge.  Trees are expensive to grow and maintain and compete with grass for resources. Not a good option. 

The MLR ODS proposal wasn’t going reduce the bomb & gouge trend either and the forthcoming proposal is likely to be less drastic. Changes to course design/agronomy practices will have a way better chance of changing a players approach to the game than averaging 15-20 yards less off the tee will.

[DLiver]

Just incredibly tone deaf decision. Let's make golf harder for everyone!! That will grow the game!

 

Could this be the USGA's secret strategy to force "play it forward" on everyone?

[The Pearl]

1 hour ago, gvogel said:

that is exactly what the USGA proposed.  But the PGA Tour and the OEM's put up a hissy fit.  So the USGA said we'll do it for everyone.

 

It won't make a difference for me.  In the fall when the temperatures drop and the ground is soft, I'm sure that my drives go 90% or less than in the summer.  I play anyway.

So what is does this accomplish now?  The USGA can pass whatever they want. The PGA Tour and the OEM's can ignore the rule and continue playing with the current ball.  What is the USGA going to do, conduct a US Open with only competitors willing to play the "new" ball? Who cares. If the Tour guys want to play the tourney than they can use the "new" ball.  

 

The LIV tour will exploit this to high heaven.

 

And who is going to make the "new" ball?  Costco?  Vice?

 

Who really cares about all the other USGA events other than a few hundred golfer's across the nation?

 

[storm3]

4 hours ago, klebs01 said:

You obviously play with short hitters. Long hitters are way more common than a lot of folks around here care to admit. 
 

there is no reason anyone halfway athletic shouldn’t hit it 300 with current technology. 

Not sure who you regularly play with, but your perception does not align with reality.

 

Based on Arccos data from 2022, the highest average for any male demographic was 274 yards (age 20-29, HC +0.1 or better). Based on Shot Scope data from 2020, only 4% averaged 300+ off the tee. These figures likely skew high given that players that use shot trackers tend to be more avid golfers.
 

Ultimately, I don’t think it is fair to say that 300 yard drives are a regular occurrence today outside of the highest levels of competition (which by the way accounts for an extremely small percentage of the golfing population).

[storm3]

5 hours ago, grochol17 said:

Maybe courses start moving all of their tee marker up so that the holes play 95% of what they played before the new ball.  Or maybe the guy that used to be able to carry a bunker decides he wants to keep carrying that bunker, so he moves up a set of tees.  I don't know exactly how people will react and of course, people can still find way to f around while they are playing, but at the very least if you have to cover less ground you should be able to do it in less time.

 

 

I've been playing 39 years and I've seen it multiple times... distance increases make a course start playing "too short" so guys move on to newly built courses that are longer.  If the "short course" can expand or remodel, it does, but if that isn't an option, the number of rounds played goes down, revenue drops, course conditions go downhill, more people stop playing, and either the course continues limping along as a crappy course or the owners sell and suddenly the course is now a housing development.  For example, a course not too far away from me used to host US Open qualifiers in the 80s, but at only 6200 yards people stopped playing when technology passed it by, and the course recently closed and sold to a housing developer after losing something like $1 million over the last five years. 

I would not hold up much hope for average players moving up voluntarily as many players are already playing from tees that are too long.
Additionally, it is doubtful that the majority of courses will be willing to build new tee boxes to account for the rollback (keep in mind that the previous MLR proposal was estimated to result in 15-20 yard loss at the the 127 ODS condition, so the average player would likely lose much less) and simply moving every tee up a box will be way to drastic. The likely scenario will be most courses/players doing nothing.

 

Also, 6200 was short for a US Open qualifier even in the 80s given that the average for the actual open during that period was in the high 6000’s (Merion was the shortest 80s host at just under 6600 which ironically played shorter than when it hosted in 1934). The reality is that the real estate that many golf courses reside on is more valuable to society as residential housing and that trend is unlikely to change in the future regardless of what the USGA does here. 

Edited December 2, 2023 by storm319

[bekgolf]

Random thought here:  Courses would need to be re-rated with an equipment change, how much does the USGA charge to rate a course?

[Double Mocha Man]

20 minutes ago, bekgolf said:

Random thought here:  Courses would need to be re-rated with an equipment change, how much does the USGA charge to rate a course?

 

Ahh, there's money to be made...

[storm3]

3 hours ago, Trav1989 said:

I think the roll back will equate to about two clubs into normal par 4’s 

Likely less for the average player. The MLR ODS proposal from earlier this year was estimated to be a 15-20 yard loss at that test condition (slower swingers will very likely lose less) and the forthcoming proposal will likely be less drastic given that it will be universal.

[03trdblack]

20 hours ago, NoCalHack said:

 The USGA and R and A have no financial interest in this at all. Agree with them or not, they are doing what they think is better for the game. 

 

Oh really... 

 

The USGA made $206.7 million in revenue in 2022 and only employ 300 people. They use 1200+ volunteers to do all the work at their events and make the volunteers pay for all of their clothing, etc.

 

When the tickets went on sale for the 2024 US Open at Pinehurst, regular day tickets for individuals didn't go on sale for months and the only tickets available were corporate tents and hospitality tents and week long passes. Then individual tickets went on sale but only for people who had an American Express credit card account.  They purposely catered to corporate interests first before any regular fans. Wonder why that was... $$$$

 

It's amazing how much profit these "non profit" organizations seem to be making these days and the USGA is no exception. 

 

If you think they have no financial interests then I have some oceanfront property in Arizona I'd like to sell you. 

[Trav1989]

4 minutes ago, storm319 said:

Likely less for the average player. The MLR ODS proposal from earlier this year was estimated to be a 15-20 yard loss at that test condition (slower swingers will very likely lose less) and the forthcoming proposal will likely be less drastic given that it will be universal.

I think you’re right about it being less of drop off since it is universal this time but the pga tour holds all the power in if this will work or not.