The winter of our discontent is finally over…
The new CEO of the PGA is a veteran of the most popular sport in America, the NFL. This could not have happened at a better time. As the sports entertainment product called PGA golf needs help.
The obvious stuff is the lackluster fedex cup and events that fail as spectator sports. Then there is the woeful marketing and engagement with and to fans. It is telling that most Youtube golf is more interesting than all but 5 or 6 events on the tour.
While these problems have long pledged theTour, they are relatively benign compared to the extinction level tandem of player speed and expanding forgiveness of equipment.
As I write this there is a reel on Instagram of Kyle Berkshire hitting a 330 yard 1 iron and a 249 yard 9 iron at Paynes Valley golf club. While Kyle can peak at 157mph club speed with the driver, he averages 145mph. The only thing that Mr.Berkshre lacks is an elite short game. So golf is safe for now.
That combination of speed and short game skill is going to happen. In fact right now if you are a college athlete with a 330 yard average drive and just average short game skill, coaches don’t need you, because everyone on the team is cranking it out there. In the next 5 years the tour is going to have an avalanche of speed that no ball rollback can fix.
At the same time as swing speed is exploding, so is the ability of manufacturers to make the distance penalty for off center hits go away – compounding the problem. This of course is the only path left for innovation and by extension sales for these companies. By capping driver speed though C.O.R (Coefficient of Restitution) which essentially multiplies club head speed into ball speed, The USGA (United States Golf Association) has left the equipment industry only one out – making the entire club face a sweet spot. The new distance claims are for average distance, because AI is making the center strike, and therefore skill, unnecessary.
The problem at the edge of tomorrow is that every year players get faster and better in all sports, and equipment manufacturers need something to sell. These two juggernauts are destroying the most important part of golf – skill. This flattening of the importance of skill is what all current efforts of distance mitigation are really about. It’s what the groove rule change was about as well.
So how do we protect and increase the test of skill in elite golf?
First, we restrict the expansion of the club head sweet spot. This will at the very least slow the onslaught of player speed as it will matter more to have a dead center strike.
Second, we must bite the bullet on bifurcation of equipment. As we will illustrate below, this will allow more finite control of the distance on tour, and let golf club innovation transform the average player’s game.This will also allow us to bring in shorter venues like Marrion, by using local rules to set the COR for the event specifically.
Of course you may be asking “ Why don’t we just roll it back for everybody?”. Well because if we were to do so, that the math would look something like this
Let’s assume that the high end of speed is 145mph and the low end is 135mph. That would give us an average of 140mph. This would mean (140mph x 1.50-COR = 210mph ball speed) 210mph x 1.8 = 378 yard drive. These are all maximized numbers.
Now to bring the distance back to just around today’s numbers (the average drive on the PGA Tour is 302 yards) we would need to roll the driver back to as COR of 1.2. The average driver swing speed for the male amateur is 95mph. So, without bifurcation, this would make the average drive (95mph x 1.2 =114mph x 1.8 = 205 yards) 205 yards. Compared to 256 yards with the current 1.5 COR.
If we assume that a less extreme speed shift happens at say 125mph – 135mph (130mph average) we get to a COR of 1.3 so that would translate to 222 yards for the am player.. This is of course the result of a perfect strike which is much less likely for the average player.
Even if the average miraculously stays at what the upper end of the tour is now (125mph) that still gets us to a COR of 1.35 which gives our average player a drive of 230 yards on a perfect strike
So I think it’s clear that restricting both levels of players is not going to work. Now what would uncorking the driver for the amateur player look like.
If the driver were to increase to 1.6 COR that would mean that the average drive would go from 256 yards to 273 yards (95mph x 1.6 = 152mph x 1.8) almost 20 more yards, I think I could sell that! If manufacturers could bump up the COR to 1.65 that would give the average golfer a 282 yard drive!
Golf is a hard game. Making it harder for non professional players is just ludicrous. Allowing the advent of 3D capture, force plates, and advanced biomechanics to steamroll courses is just as batshit crazy. We can’t let the term “hitting it on the screws” be made obsolete by super computers either. This leaves us with only one option – bifurcation of equipment.
This will make sense for the Pings and Titleist of the world; they can increase the sweet spot speed or COR for the amateur ranks and have something to sell – more distance. The PGA will have control over how speed effects the game and classic venues become viable again. You could even let the higher COR equipment out on the Champions tour to add some sizzle to that tour as well.
There you have it, the holyduffer’s take on the state of golf. Thanks for listening, and we will see you down the fairway.
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