[Willie_Dow]

The Golf & Technology II discussion in Orlando consumed about half of the Growth of the Game discussion.  Tarde said: "The USGA made a mistake back in the early 1990's and late 1980's.  All they had to do was to look into their rulebook and say. 'Sorry, fellas, a wood has to be made of wood.'  I don't think the predicament some people think we are in today would have resulted in the added distance that we see today."

Right on Jerry!

[ForkaB]

Willie

Jerry is right, but......if you think that a "competition ball" would cause apolplexy to the Uihlein family, think about all the golfers who would only give up their new $500 driving implements if one were to rip the titanium out of their cold dead hands!

[Willie_Dow]

Rich

I also understand that there was a 5 percent drop in golf participation during 2003.  Could it be that the $500 driver just discouraged a few would be golfers??

 

[Jeff_Mingay]

Very interesting simplification. Makes sense to me.

[Willie_Dow]

Hi Jeff

GCA had a very interesting discussion about a year ago on "Tennis Technology mirrioring Golf".  The thinking was that the game of tennis is changing due to technology, and the death of the serve and volley game "mirrors the death of shot making due to technology".

Same thing killed the hard ball squash game, which I loved.

[Jeff_Mingay]

It's funny, I think people enjoy a game like golf - at least in part - because of it's inherent difficulty. It's just tough to consistently play good strokes. So we continue to try. Yet, at same time, we're anxious for the game to be made easier, with larger clubs and golf balls that travel farther and fly straighter? It's a bit of an anomoly, sort of.

[Willie_Dow]

Sorta back to Geoff Shackelford's "Why Max Behr Matters", eh Jeff???

[Jim_Kennedy]

Willie,
The USGA would have to go back a lot farther than the '80s in banning metal woods. Mass produced aluminum "woods" pre-date stainless by about 50 years.
Walter Travis experimented with an aliminum cleek back in '05.
He also tried a 50" driver and employed the flop shot.

[A.G._Crockett]

Does this mean that irons will actually have to be made of iron?

[Willie_Dow]

jim

Yes, I recall that the driving ranges offered metal (aluminum) "woods" years ago.  But is Tarde correct in saying that the old rule book said "a wood has to be made of wood"?

[A.G._Crockett]

Willie,
I don't think that's what Tarde said, and the rulebook never did.  I think he meant that somehow rules should have been implemented in the late 80's that would have prevented wood from being replaced by steel, graphite, titanium, et. al.  

While an attractive notion, it would be an absolutely impossible rule to craft without Humvee-sized loopholes.  What would you say in the rule?  If I can't use a metal "wood" then I'll just call it a metal or a steel or a titanium and I won't have violated.  In fact, I'll just call it an "iron"!  Since my irons aren't made of iron either, what's the difference?  Can't be done, I don't think.

[ForkaB]

AG

Couldn't they have said something to the effect of:

"any club whose head is greater than 150 cc (or whatever) must be made of wood."

[A.G._Crockett]

Rich,
That's pretty good!  I may have to stand corrected on the loophole matter...

Give me a minute to think like a manufacturer and get around this.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Willie,
You made an earlier observation that rounds were down and attributed it in part to equipment costs. I don't doubt that this has some effect but brand new, complete sets of clubs can be had for as little as 1/2 the price of a $500.00 driver. Wilson ans Spalding are two cos. that make these relatively inexpensive sets. The component and brand name used club markets are huge and offer inexpensive product also.
Something else to think about is the fact that it takes $3.09 in 2002 to buy what $1.00 could in 1976 and if you made $1.00 in 1976 you were only making $2.00 in 2002, a loss of about 1/3 of your buying power.  
   
NGF figures state that rounds were down 5%, as you suggested, but they clearly believe its mainly due to inclement weather. For year 2003 rounds were up 0.7% where the weather was unchanged (from 2002) and they were up by 10% where the weather was improved. In the east and central regions there was a 26% increase in precip over 2001 figures. In 2003 we had 45 days of precip and cold between Apr 1st and May 31st in Ct.. June, July and August were nothing to speak highly about and the fall, usually dry, was also more rainy than usual and colder than normal. All in all we did about 5% less than 2002 but had many more days of crappy conditions, but we actually had an increase when comparing number of rounds/number of playable days in 2002/2003.

One other small point, when Taylor came out with metalwoods distance was not the main focus of their marketing, forgiveness of mishits was.

[Doug Siebert]

Rich,

Does anything stop the building a 300cc wooden head that's hollow?  Not for COR reasons, just to give a larger clubhead that makes it easier to swing harder and/or get better distance on misses.

AFAIK no one ever tried building a large hollow wooden head and some might say it can't be done because it would have been done if it were possible, but who forsaw the 300, 400, even 500 and 600cc heads that have come to market in the past five years ago two or three years before that?  You probably couldn't build a 600cc head using aluminum or steel, but they certainly could have been building them at least 300cc in size 50 years ago, especially given that shafts were still steel then so they had more weight required in the head anyway.  If they'd thought of that then, wooden headed drivers might have been as remote to many of us as hickory shafts and mashies are.

[Willie_Dow]

jim & Doug

I remember going to a golf range, trying one of those aluminum heads, and saying to myself: "what a lousy sound that shot made".  My persimmon driver's sound was golf in those days.  Then TV put a microphone on the tee.

The squash story goes back to the late 60's when racquets were made of bamboo.  They were replaced by graphite, and made "modern".  The stronger players just wiped up the court, and the ball moved so fast the game was moved into the softball court.  Not only an expensive court charge for all clubs, because of court size, but a totally different game evolved.  Any similarity?

[Jim_Kennedy]

Doug,
I don't think they made it to 300cc but ther have been hollow persimmon drivers. Arnold Palmer co, made one in the late '80s? and Honma also makes one.

Willie,
I won't say that golf hasn't changed or that courses haven't gotten bigger. Yes, advances in equipment over the past 100 years shares some of the responsibility but owners and architects who built courses like the International or the Concord share in it too. These places, in the time frame they were built, would be the equivalent of modern courses built at 8,500 yds. Longer courses aren't just a byproduct of equipment advances. We could have reached a plateau a long time ago if there wasn't such a need to differentiate a course from the competition by making it longer/harder.  

A large segment of the golfing population plays less than 20 rounds per season. Creating equipment that lessens some of the punishment that is doled out by this game is not going to destroy the game.  

[Willie_Dow]

jim

Maybe what we need is a pro tour tourney to be played with the 1980 version of sticks, just to see what the difference really is today.

Sort of between the hickories and current clubs.

[ForkaB]

Doug

You're more of a scientist than I, but I doubt if any sort of wood would be able to have the strength/weight ratios of Titanium, say.

I do think you could wirte a rule to exclude anything but old fashioned Persimmons, but I do not think there is a hope in hell of it ever coming to pass.

Willie

Wasn't the squash ball change in order to bring the US into line with all the other squash playing nations of the world who always had played the soft ball?

[Willie_Dow]

Rich

Sorta like the committee for Implements and Balls, and the desire to participate in international games and olympics, yes you are correct.  But my read was that this was the answer given to counter efforts to keep the hard ball in play.

For some time one of my buddies kept playing with the old racquet, trying to keep the game alive at Merion Cricket.  I went for the new racket, and was embarrassed when I beat him.  He would have normally have beaten me.  It was a good lesson in sportmanship, and it kept the game alive at Merion where we still have hard ball courts.

The new racket forced clubs to spend thousands of dollars to build international courts.  Colleges had to build them,too.

Soft ball is a different game, different scoring, and more of a conditioning race, physically, than the old game of hard ball.

Squash's story is closer to the equipment technology and playing field discussion January 16th, 2003 by NAF "Tennis Technology mirroring Golf", I think.

[ForkaB]

Thanks, Willie

I've only playede a wee bit of squash, so it's good to hear form one who knows his oats.

I agree with you (I think!) regarding tennis.  I did play a lot of that sport (and still do), and do not see any really relevant analogy for golf, at least vis a vis technology.  The fact that men's tennis is now in an incredibly exciting phase, with Federer, Roddick, Safin, Ferrero, Hewitt and even Agassi raising the bar of talent week on week, shows us that one can still get sporting excitement in a playing field restricted to the dimenstions of the 19th century.

[Willie_Dow]

Rich

Sorta hate to see this discussion leave here.  Our Divotees are planning a trip to Wales this September, and I may only take my hickories back across the pond.

Willie

[Jim_Kennedy]

Oh Willie,
You must not have fully read Jerry Tarde's remarks before you started this thread. I just read the full text and I'll excerpt some parts of it :

Thank you. I learned before we came in here that I was supposed to be the anti technology person and I have a pro technology statement prepared so I will have to wing some of this

But if we did that (limit woods to wood), golf would be a lesser game. Technology over the last 20 years has made golf better and more fun for more people

We should thank the USGA for messing up because we have ended up with a better game.

So, I'm in favor of equipment technology and what it's done for the 99 percent of us who struggle to reach 440 yard par 4

The game is stronger today, not weaker because of technology and realistically, I don't see that changing

Oh Willie  
 

[Willie_Dow]

Oh jim

It appears the I&B group got to Jerry.  Were these remarks before or after the meeting?

It is difficult to go against an industry with a GNP of $62.2 billion.

Willie

[Jim_Kennedy]

Willie,  
These are excerpts from the text of his speech at the meeting.

Americans spent $4.7 billion on equipment in 2002

[Tags:]

Tags:

[Tags:]

Tags:

Call to undefined function theme_linktree()