The Battle Over the Ball

This week, the USGA and R&A made a proposal to roll the ball back, although it seems not to have support from players or manufacturers, this battle has played out before. The idea that the golf ball needs to be restricted goes as far back as 1848 when the gutty ball (a ball made from gutta percha, a tree sap) was created as an alternative to the feathery (a feather filled dense leather ball). Back then, the issue was that the gutty flew too far, as well as feathery producers fearing a cheaper ball would put them out of business; which it did. The reason people went to the gutty was exactly because it was cheaper, more durable, and flew further than the feathery. It was eventually discovered that these balls flew even farther when they had grooves cut into them, thus being the predecessor of the dimple. The gutty was the king of the hill from 1848 to 1898, when another more controversial ball was invented by a B.F. Goodrich employee — The Haskell Ball.

The Haskell was more similar to a modern ball, it was rubber thread wound into a ball with a cover made from another tree sap, in this case balata. Initially they had a bumpy appearance that came to be known as bramble, until the early 1920's when it was discovered that dimples were the more aerodynamic cover pattern and that as stuck ever since. There were many golf purists in the early 1900's that argued the Haskell would render old courses useless, because players could hit the ball further (sound familiar?) and such a ball should be banned. However this never happened, the ruling bodies, The USGA and R&A, simply set standards for the weight and size of the ball, although initially different sizes were adopted for Europe and the US, the standards set were fairly consistent, and eventually standardized at minimum 1.680in in diameter and a maximum of 1.62oz. This was how the second battle over the ball was concluded, they didn't make players go back to a technologically inferior ball, they just created new standards to reign the technology in.

The funny thing about setting boundaries though is that we continuously continue to push them. Ball producers used the guidelines if 1.68" and 1.62oz and experimented with different core contents for decades, leading to balls that could be tailored for a players game, for example distance balls and high spin variations. Outside of the creation of Surlyn covers in the 50's the ball remained mostly the same from the 1930's through the end of the century, when the next great battle, that is still being fought today, began.

In 2000, when Titleist created the modern multi-layer ball and made it available to PGA Tour players, it was quickly adopted because it combined the best of the 2 kinds of balls popular at the time, the wound rubber ball and the solid core ball. The former spun more and felt soft off the club face, the latter flew farther, but the Pro v1 was both. Before this ball changed the game, the average professionals drive was a little less than 270 yards and had hovered around this distance for decades. After the Pro v1, professionals now hit the ball almost 30 yards further on average.

Now that's a significant difference, but remember when the Haskell ball came out and the argument that the ball went too far was made? Players then hit the ball 20 yards further on average. So how is our current situation any different? It can't all be blamed on the ball either, the construction of clubs has also changed substantially. When the Pro v1 released to the general public, driver heads went from 250cc's to 300cc's. Driver heads continued to grow until the USGA and R&A set the limit at 460cc's in 2004, but the revolution had already begun. The oversized driver gave players a larger margin of error and allowed for mishit balls to still fly far, and the extra size paired with lighter materials allowed for faster swings, again increasing distance. We've also seen golf club shafts incorporate lighter and stronger materials that has also contributed to the long ball evolution. My point here isn't that the ball alone isn't a problem, it's the natural progression of technology that is making it seem that it is.

Now that we've figured out why the ball goes so far, let's discuss what can be done to protect the "Sanctity of the Game".

• Narrow the fairway and grow out rough. Everyone knows drivers are the least accurate club in the bag, if courses penalize missing the fairway, players will naturally opt for a club that they can be more accurate with, thus limiting distance.

• Add hazards at 280-300 yards. If you create a forced carry, most players will attempt to play it safe and play short, limiting the shot distances to 270-280 yards at most.

• Dial back the driver. Take drivers back to 350cc's and shorten the maximum shaft length to 45in, making them both harder to hit, and limiting the distance that the ball will fly.

Now those are just some options, i'm sure there are others that are also less invasive than completely creating a flighted ball for high level competitions. Speaking of which, requiring high level competitions to use a flighted ball would have a ripple effect for amateurs who play in qualifiers for these tournaments. Now they would too be required to either switch to a ball they have never played with, that performs much differently, or permanently switch to a ball that doesn't allow them to perform to their full capability.

Rolling back the golf ball is solving a problem that doesn't need to be solved. No one is overpowering golf courses by hitting it a country mile and running away with an alarming number of victories. The only example of this actually occurring would be the 2020 US Open where Bryson Dechambeau employed the "Bomb and Gouge" strategy en route to his win. That is an outlier bc even with the capability to hit the ball 400 yards, of his 8 victories as a professional most have been by less than 3 strokes. Which goes to show when you hit the ball that hard, it's almost impossible to hit it where you want it.

The other argument being made by proponents of changing the golf ball is that there are historic, important courses that can't be lengthened to defend against bombers. These historic courses don't need to be lengthened, they can hold up to modern players and technology with some strategic mowing. For example, The Country Club, last year's host for the US Open was one of the five founding courses of the USGA. Founded in 1882, with the last significant design changes happening in 1902 as a response to the Haskell ball. There were only two holes that were significantly lengthened for competition, and it was because they were Par 4's that needed to be Par 5's. With this in consideration, the winner was a mere six strokes under par through 4 rounds. How was this possible? The USGA grew out the rough to make inaccurate shots hard to recover from and used a mixture of long and short holes in a way that made it hard for any type of player to have an advantage. This is in opposition to the classic folly of thinking that making courses longer is the only solution. Especially when doing so is counterintuitive and only plays to the advantage of the longer hitters.

We should all hope that the governing bodies walk back this decision on changing the golf ball, because of the ripple effects that it will cause. Not only will it make the 2 major "Opens" in golf much more closed, it will also cause a 25 year era of golf (most of which was the Tiger Era) to be viewed with an asterisk. It'll be something akin to the "Steroid" era of baseball, where many stats are looked past or expunged because players had an unfair advantage. Doing so also goes against precedent, every time the golf ball evolved it was never walked back. If that was so, we'd all still be playing with a feathery. Times change, equipment does too, but the game has always found a way to remain challenging to all players, even those regarded as the greatest of an era.