A Rolled-Back Golf Ball is the USGA's Solution to a Problem That Didn't Exist

The PGA Tour has enough on its plate right now, yet here comes golf's governing body trying to rein in the Tour's strongest asset--its athletes.

As if one uncivil war isn’t enough, pro golf took an elbow to the ribs last week when the USGA announced specifics on a proposed distance rollback over the next three years. Seeing how no 12 handicap drives the ball 350 yards without assistance from a cart path or a hurricane, the matter is exclusive to the sport’s highest level. Do today’s tour pros hit it too far? Are many hallowed venues now defenseless to advances in equipment technology? Has the art of skillful shotmaking dissolved into a forgotten priority?

Those questions have remained unanswered for 25 years, since former USGA president Buzz Taylor vowed to restore the game’s intrinsic ideology by taking on club and ball manufacturers, even if it required unsavory legal action. “No lawyer is going to stop us,” Taylor proclaimed at the 1998 U.S. Open, a bold stand that proved to have no legs whatsoever.

The average driving distance on the PGA Tour has risen from 267.67 in 1997 to 299.8 last season. A 12% increase over a quarter century, which might strike some as insignificant and others as a sign of healthy growth. Chicks dig the long ball, as the old Nike ad informed us—a commercial that aired the same summer as Taylor’s righteous rant. Times have changed, although equipment standards really haven’t, and while excessive length has long been perceived as a scourge to the sport itself, the Tour’s overall scoring average has been much steadier over those same 25 years.

From 71.67 in ‘97 to last season’s 70.61, the number has strayed just twice. Not until 2015 did it first break 71; the all-time low (70.56) occurred in 2020. That is not the type of data reflective of a power predicament. Players are stronger. Swing aids are more effective. Courses are in better shape. And purses are much larger, a bounty brought on by Tiger Woods, whose brilliance obviously inspired kids with greater athletic ability to take up the game with serious intentions.

With all that in mind, the USGA still has a job to do, but if distance is a culprit, somebody please show us the victim.

Perhaps this explains why golf’s lawmakers have been hesitant to act on the issue over the years. Yes, the ball goes a whole lot further than it did in 1957. Does that serve as a reason for declining interest in the pro game or stunted growth at the recreational level? Clearly not. The Tour heads into its post-Tiger era with several formidable challenges ahead. LIV Golf represents a threat that cannot be underestimated, while the absence of Woods as a full-time participant makes mainstream reach a much tougher task.

Given the lay of the land right now, the last thing Camp Ponte Vedra needs is a disruption to its normal operating procedure, which is exactly what a USGA rollback would become. However accurate Justin Thomas might have sounded when he denounced the distance measures last week, any top-tier player unhappy with or disillusioned by such changes would be more inclined to examine his competitive options.

Let’s say the Tour adopts the USGA proposal and LIV doesn’t. Coming off the loss of a dozen or so relevant defectors last summer, is the mighty empire willing to brace itself for another round of casualties? The fact that the USGA holds no jurisdiction over the Tour only complicates things. Although it has a long history of embracing new policy and implementing those revisions to its competitive format, this isn’t about leaving the flagstick in while you putt or being allowed to ground your club in a hazard.

We’re talking about a seemingly modest reduction in how far the ball travels, but to the game’s biggest hitters, it’s a neutralization of perhaps their greatest asset, at which point there’s nothing modest about it. Would it alter the Tour’s hierarchy? Maybe not, but it would serve as a convenient excuse to those who fail to perform to their previous standard. Tour pros have been known to mess around with lots of different putters or try a new driver if the old one is misbehaving. Many of them swap out wedges on a consistent basis.

The ball, however, is the most important equipment component in the bag. A player commits to a particular model of a certain brand and sticks to it until he has very good reason not to. It comes with precise specifications partial to his swing speed, shape and trajectory. In a game where every stroke is precious and the financial rewards immense, such compatibility can play a huge role in separating the winners and losers.

For an extraordinary shotmaker such as Thomas, the rollback isn’t just a really big deal, but a decent reason to freak out. “It’s so bad for the game,” he said last week at Innisbrook. “You’re trying to create a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.” It’s a point worth stashing away in a safe place—the notion that golf’s primary legislative body would spend years researching and pondering a regulation that has nothing to do with the recreational player, a mandate designed solely to affect an organization it does not govern.

It should come as no surprise that the Tour has remained almost silent in regard to the proposal, reacting only by referencing its own evaluative process, which is to suggest that it had no official representation or role in the USGA’s preliminary decision. Why wouldn’t the two organizations work together on such a project? If this is all about harnessing a trait native only to pro golf, shouldn’t the administration that runs pro golf determine whether the 350-yard drive is detrimental or dynamic to its competitive core?

No victim, no crime. No culprit, either.