I will let Mike Clayton argue with you on this point, since he participates here. He loves to put persimmon clubs in the hands of young players to see what they can do.
Nobody (that I know of) is saying they'd
instantly be better. But Dustin Johnson hit Jack's old 1-iron and driver or something, too, and hit them pretty far pretty quickly. Different skills are not "less skilled."
Give a modern tennis player a wood framed racket and they'd struggle (for them) for a bit. Give them enough time and they'd begin to show off.
But Mike is not the only one who has said to me that Norman's big advantage back in his prime, and certainly Nicklaus's big advantage in his prime, was being able to consistently hit their drivers at something close to full speed, which most other players back then [even Tour players] did not do very consistently at all.
You could also take that to say… "players back then weren't as skilled."
I do not believe there are 80 guys on Tour who could hit Jack Nicklaus' old driver the way Jack did.
But Tom, there only have to be about two guys who could do it for those guys to be "just as" or "more skilled," no?
I think that, given a little while to learn how to hit it, that there are more than two or three guys who could do it.
Second, if Tiger had been born 50 years earlier, his skill still would have shown itself. Yes, there are other factors like access to the game, but based purely on skill, Tiger would have been Tiger.
Born 50 years earlier, Tiger would have won
significantly more often, given that he'd be playing against club pros, far fewer international players, etc.
Another post made the point that the advantage the great drivers like Nicklaus and Norman had was the ability to hit the center of the club face with a high-spin ball at full speed. Even most good ballstrikers had to dial back their swing to make sure they hit the center of the club face and not blow drives off the planet…unless you’re Seve and possessed the greatest recovery game in the history of golf.
Again, this tracks with golfers back then not being as skilled.
To me, the greatest argument for a rollback of the ball, or at the very least bifurcation for the professional and top amateur game, is that the increase in distance means that we never would get to see a player like Lee Trevino because, despite his ballstriking, he simply would not be long enough to succeed in the modern game. If the modern game cannot allow the genius of someone like Trevino to shine through, then something is fundamentally wrong.
Lee was less than ten yards shorter than Jack in the 1980 driving distance stats. Lee probably wouldn't succeed today because he hit the ball pretty low. Lee was comfortably top half (and nearly top third) in driving distance in 1980:
https://www.pgatour.com/stats/stat.101.y1980.html.