One way or the other, its a supply side world. The cost is too high & fluctuates too much and its too labor intensive to make wood clubs. Nobody will do it and if they did the MSRP would be $3000 minimum. I don’t care about material and that’s technology in a nutshell. If they regulate the size & shape and make it a solid material who cares if its made out of moon rocks? Time marches on & you can do something other than wood. That I’m ok with technology then ten minutes later, no it has to be made of wood is the hypocrisy I’m talking about. It has to make sense economically and on the supply side especially now. There’s been weird garbage around forever anyway… Hello, glass shafts? Ginty irons and wedges?? Life goes on, now that reverse routing stuff, that’s something old that needs to be new again.
I totally agree with this; if you regulate the size and a minimum weight and the COR to that of wood then that should be OK. Wood will become a luxury item for those who can afford it.
Why make it more complicated. To have to set up a lab to test manufacture submissions and cater to their wishes and desires seems like a waste of time and money. Better to just take a look in the bag and say, “yep, made of wood, your good to go” and leave it like that.
I’m sure aluminum baseball bats are easier to crank out by the thousands than a lathed hickory or maple bat.
I seriously doubt that the majority of all the persimmons ever made are now buried in landfills. There are millions of them out there in garages and storage sheds. Enough to supply serious golfers for the next 150 years. I bet you could send a high school kid knocking door to door asking for persimmon donations to fund the Friday night fish fry and have 100 of them in one day.
Sometimes it’s not always about money. Certainly this site isn’t. The day it’s littered with ads along the edges of every page is the day I’m out of here.
I think it’s time to say, what’s better for the game, rather than what’s better for some non golfer trying to figure out a way to further exploit the game based primarily upon the statistical demographics of the medium household income of golfers living both in urban and suburban locations who own two or more cars and are occupying more that 1243 feet per household occupant with fixed incomes over the marginal threshold of upward trending consumer profiles that match the criteria set forth by the NGF data research team.
The only time it isn’t about the money is when it’s about the programming. Do you know how I know this? I know this because every single time I’ve gone in a store or a gas station anywhere in the world they demanded either fiat paper or a credit transfer or a comp slip (Vegas baby). Without exception. That is the nature of our society be it good or bad. Even in here, every night GoogleBot & MSBot are in here collecting their word clouds & their marketing research to better tune their programming & directed advertising down our throats. This is the world we live in and it sure isn’t by my choice. If I had my choice I’d live in 4th Age Hobbiton rather than the Age of Game Theory, Objectivism & Holy War.
Now you can choose your community but not your society and not your time. It is the year 2011, nothing is going to change that and just because you left the game in 1993 and didn’t personally experience the change in the trajectory of the game for twenty years does not mean it didn’t happen. So now you come back in with the blinders on big time, refuse to look at the big picture, how the nature of the game has changed (lock step with society as sport always is) and project your own old value structure on an environment that has transformed in every way, shape & form to 99% of society. Now you can comment and outright reject it and do your own thing, but when you project your value structure upon the whole of society and say absolutely I’m right and everybody is wrong because I say so you’re in the heart of Objectivism & narcissism. Who the hell are you to say this is the way everybody should be playing golf? Hardly anybody believes this anymore. I happen to agree with you on most of this but I realize I’m a radical and an extremist in this day & age as compared to the norm.
That’s the thing about independent thought, nobody can do it all the time and few do it ever. The nature of your analysis makes you the exception rather than the norm. That means something. It makes this ABS radical to the masses. Again nothing wrong with that and I would that its very beneficial and necessary but it will not label this the norm and everyone else the extreme. You project your particular set of values outward (read that Tschetter book before you label Hogan as married to tradition & persimmon) and now you have your own little pseudocommunity where you make the rules up as you go along and are completely and totally removed from reality to the point now where you’re deciding that the point of the game is no longer to shoot the lowest score. You’re that far off of the grid man… If golf really is now that incredibly easy for you that par is no longer any sort of challenge, start hitting your tee shots backwards instead of toward the target. Give me a heads up though so I can bust out a Polo helmet.
You also know damn well that this is programming just like the OEMs do. Just like everybody does with everything. At thisw point you can tell this whole community that they have to play left handed and use tennis balls instead of golf balls and they will do it sight unseen because this is not independent exploration. It is rigid programming in the most classic semse. Again not that that’s bad but this is the world according to Lag Erickson not a sublime community groupthink. The programming is damn good, you figured out things I never would have in a thousand years and are commited to a very high standard that is to be commended but the fact remains that the clock only goes one way, forward.
Nobody is going to make this stuff again and if they did nobody would pay the sky high prices, not even the students & lurkers here. I wouldn’t and I’m as nutty as they come. Reality.
LCD
I like dissent but you stor things and then diasppear for long lay off. Please continue the debate this time around. Lets not take things personal.
You keep bringing cost. I grew up where I am pretty sure i can make raw wood heads easily for around $5, if you are not picky about the type of wood. Make it $10-15 if you have to import wood. How much will it be to put shafts and sole plates???
No one is saying persimmon is going to be the only version but why cant it exist like a fringe. Something like UFC.
I get that balls are a major challenge that might not have a clean solution. I like the idea of working on a urethane covered solid ball like the Spalding. Maybe there’s a chance there, maybe not. But what am I missing with wood clubheads? Doesn’t Louisville golf make wood clubs now at prices on par or cheaper than OEM titanium gear? There is Persimmon Golf UK too but I think they get their stuff from Louisville. I know Tad Moore is making hickory gear for the Society of Hickory Golfers which actually appears to be flourishing.
Macs, so go right ahead. More power to you. Talk to Dave Wood, he knows what the score is better than anybody. If its so easy & cheap to make wooden golf clubs prove me abjectly wrong. Nothing would please me more & I’ll buy some. But it isn’t cheap, it isn’t easy and it is an art, takes months just to make one. Seriously, do it, I’d be interested to see how it goes.
With the balls the thing is that when the cover gets softer the core has to get softer too or it’ll spin way too much. The old balatas had liquid cores, the surlyn harder covered DTs had solid rubber cores inside the windings. If the balatas had solid cores they would have spun too much, way worse than the Tour Editions & if the DTs had liquid cores they wouldn’t have spun near enough, as it was they didn’t spin enough but they didn’t cut & they went a little further & straighter than the balatas. I used the Lady DTs sometimes if it was really cold & wet, but I’d be in tears if I hit one thin. Everybody knows about the stingers I guess, at least everybody that hits blades.
So when you want to use a cover as soft as balata or any equivalent the core deep down in the middle has to be so soft it has to in fact be a liquid. The old ones were usually corn syrup encased in a thin rubber shell. Now say you do the same thing and the same material. Now for it to work it has to be in the dead center everytime. There’s three ways to do this, you can pin it, spin it or inject it. By pure circumstance I happen to kind of get this because when I was growing up my folks owned & ran a chocolate factory & we made truffles amongst other things for over twenty years. Truffles are the little round European style chocolates with all the different stuff in the middle that you don’t know what it is til its too late. If I had to put a number on it I’d guess I’ve made 3-5,000,000 truffles in my life. These golf balls are truffles, plain and simple. They just are made of a different material. Nightmare. Now with the centers you can’t inject because it won’t stay in the center so that’s out. You could pin them, I think that’s the best option and then mold an intermediate mantle around the liquid core and that’s viable where the mantle would just have the pinholes and it wouldn’t change anything and then injection mold whatever soft cover on and you’re off to the races. The third option is of course to spin it which is what they used to do with the windings I’m assuming because they didn’t have the technology to do it cheaper at the time by pinning, either that or they never found a mantle with comparable characteristics. Spinning is the most expensive, most time consuming process and its not as accurate as pinning either, that is why nobody does it anymore.
So again it can be done but if it is going to work with a soft cover that at least imitates balata the core has to be liquid. The mantle doesn’t have to be wound but it has to mimic the characteristics of the windings. Then the cover would work. All three materials have to be of this nature or else you got what my grandmother referred to as Gar-baaj.
LCD,
Thanks for your posts, really… I do mean that.
I think the difference between you and I are that I see hope for change, and you don’t.
If I ever feel about golf the way you do, I’ll go do something else. There are other things in life that interest me.
In February of 2012 there is going to be an event in Las Vegas that is going to offer a bigger first prize cash award than most current mini tours are offering…to the golfer who can best play the game working off a better thought out rule book in my opinion, complete with persimmon and blades, no pin sheets, or yardage books, no long putters and no silly rules. I know you won’t be there, but like “Field of Dreams” if you put up the money, they will come.
Is that 1980 cutoff still there & what ball are you using? The first year I was working & last year that cutoff was there plus it was freezing rain and snowing at least at my house for weeks on ends before & after, what’d you make a deal with God for perfect weather or something? It was unbelievable, the weather was so bad I never thought in a thousand years it’d even be played.
If there’s a good purse that’s awesome, doesn’t particularly affect me all that much since I never play and probably wouldn’t break 80, but its nice to know its there.
I’m not sure why you do this, LCDV? Are you even American?! There is so much defeatism in the above and put in such a mean spirited way, it just feels like it’s written by somebody who is bi-polar or the medication appears to be off. I think you are more stable than what is demonstrated by the occasional rant you spew. You disappear usually after one of these literary “benders” and then come back as if nothing happened.
Oh well…I prefer to fight. I’ll help those here with ABS and put my weight into dislodging that…person…posing as our country’s leader.
Captain Chaos
Oh and speaking of “reality”…the reality is that golf isn’t about score for some who play the game. Enjoyment can actually come from playing with great people in a beautiful setting and hitting the odd shot exactly as you intended. I love that about this game.
Captain Chaos
Actually they do read like someone who is in an unbalanced state. Don´t mean that disrespectfully or anything but you write like you are totally disgusted with a man´s view on yardage books and it´s a peculiar read to say the least.
Getting back on topic…
I played my whole pro career worrying about exact yardages, pin sheets and so on. Looking back in hindsight, I don’t think they helped much. There were many many times when I would have the exact measurements, try to calculate the wind, elevation changes, my lie and so on … all done numerically in my head, and then proceed to miss the green long or short with a well struck shot. I would often look at my caddy as if it was his fault, and I would often step it off, and then want to blame the guy who made the book.
A 150 tree, shrub or marker gives you a very good idea when you walk up to your ball. If I’m outside a 150, I know I’m not hitting 9 iron.
I view each approach in three dimensions. First, trajectory. Second, shot shape curvature, then finally the position I am going to want the ball on the green based upon hazards, easiest leave, and what my shot tendency has been for the day.
I would rather be 15 feet below a hole than 10 feet straight up above it, especially if the green has any speed to it.
From 160 I could hit a very hard 8 iron. A firm 7, a medium 6, a knock down 5 and maybe even a 4 iron if I think running one in there is a safer shot. So that’s five clubs to choose from. Five different trajectory options. Whether I am 153 or 167 is not going to make a lot of difference. I want to play a shot that is going to give me a balance between getting the ball close, missing the shot to the easiest conversion.
Boo… 
Ok that tournament registration says this & that 3 1/2 stacks of red to enter & a rack o’ black for first to use local terminology. There’s a bunch of stuff about local rules from Aberdeen in 1870, you trash Nick Price & Mark O’Meara which is fine I guess but you don’t mention Lee Trevino playing rocks for years which is a bit odd but whatever. Now what I can’t find is stuff like again whether that 1980 rule is still there. It doesn’t reference it one way or another but you guys make all this up as you go along so I dunno. It also doesn’t say what ball you’re using anywhere I looked. Seems strange to me to have a page that says solid balls suck (which they do) but then not say whether or not anyone can use them in the tournament. Do I supply my own ammo or does the tournament committee? Can I use my old balatas or Professionals? Can the rest of the guys use ProVs and the other new stuff?
Also occurred to me, if there’s a piece of cheese out there now & a bunch of guys sign that don’t really get this stuff it could get tricky. Are you guys going to sit all the players down and explain exactly how all the rules go to everybody? I don’t really want to be on the course with somebody I don’t know playing for prize money and have to be the one to explain that there isn’t a drop from a cart path or a sprinkler or something and have a rules thing when everything’s different & neither one of us are sure what the hell to do. I don’t pretend to get all this, I’ll play by whatever the rules are but if everything’s new & different I don’t want to go out and try to play a real tournament without everybody being on the same page & golfers don’t generally READ the rules. Also I wonder if you guys allow carts or if you have to walk. Seems like for this kind of deal you should walk but I’m not inventing this obviously.
Also I love the glorification of LV National, that’s awesome. You’re the only ones that do so you’ve got originality on you’re side. An American Golf mini in the middle of a ghetto that’s not even very interesting compared to a US Open setup. Vegas baby, Vegas. Sublime. Especially if Vic isn’t there anymore there’s twenty better courses like Royal Links, Southern Highlands etc that would bend over backwards for the business (and have parking lots where your car won’t get stolen) but you guys love National. Whatever’s clever, but seriously how’s this going to work? Also somebody should get Monty Money in this deal, last I heard he was still over at Shadow Creek & this would be right up his alley. He’d love it.
The rules are pretty simple. Much simpler than what people are playing by now… and won’t slow down play which is really a problem that won’t go away anytime soon.
Play it as it lies. Only relief from sprinkler heads, drainage grates, cart paths, but only for the ball… not stance. Stance drops get silly with players suddenly taking super wide stances, or really open or closed… and who is an official to say they are wrong? The player says… that’s how I would play this shot. But when they get their drop… suddenly they don’t need the really wide closed stance, because the player can say… well, the lie is different. So we get rid of all that sillyness.
Last year on the 4th hole I had to stand on a cart path and hit a two wood. I played the shot from 235 yards and hit it 4 feet from the pin for an easy eagle.
You can putt with the pin in. Why should it be a penalty if you are on the green? If your ball hits the pin and goes in from off the green, great shot. On the green, add two strokes. Silly.
As much as the USGA wants a concrete rule for every possibility, it simply cannot be… even with their 1000 page book of decisions.
An obvious example. Say there is a hazard down in a swale on the left with some thick rough leading up to it. A player hooks a ball over the slope, but no one can see it land because of the topography of the course and it’s 200 yards away. Did the ball go in the hazard or was it lost in the rough? Who makes the call? No one saw it. The problem is there are two different penalties, one is a one stroke penalty and a drop two club lengths and the other is a two stroke penalty if the ball is lost and the drop is then to be taken 200 yards away. The decision becomes subjective and substantial. So we are doing away with that. Same penalty either way… and no walking back to the original location which slows down play and wastes time.
Here’s another flaw in the USGA rule for hazard stakes. Say you have a lake running down the right side of a fairway with the edge of the lake 30 yards from the tee and going all the way down near the green on a par 4. But the line of the hazard wavers some with a little peninsula jetting out 220 yards away. The player hits a hard hook out over the water, and as it is hooking back but doesn’t quite make it and finds the water… it may or may not have crossed the tip of the peninsula. Does the player drop on the peninsula or not if it was the last place it crossed? … or did it only cross 30 yards off the tee? There is no absolute way to know this unless you had a camera from a blimp that was right over the peninsula.
Or if a lake is all carry 140 yards in front of a green. One player hits the green but sucks the ball back into the lake. The other player cold tops the ball and dripples it into the front of the lake. Should both players really drop in the same place?
Line of sight rule is another absurdity. Often line of sight puts you even farther back into the junk… and a player has to drop into long grass, bushes or worse. Maybe they can try to hit from some other fairway that isn’t even part of that hole if they go back far enough. Bad rule. But the USGA on the other hand is always saying you must take full relief? So which is it?
So we clean up that stuff.
Ken Venturi made the point about a player hitting a great drive down the middle of the fairway, but it hits hard on something in the fairway and goes through the fairway out of bounds. His playing partner makes such a bad swing he whiffs the ball completely. The partner however gets to hit two on his next swing while Venturi hits three even though he made a much better swing… maybe even a great swing. Does it make sense that he would have been better off completely whiffing or missing the ball? Makes no sense. So we clean that up also.
Casual water is another horribly unfair rule. This happened to me. We are playing a course called Sand Piper (Wind Piper) in the rain. My ball and Greg Twiggs ball land in some mushy mud right of a green just feet from one another. Both balls are covered in mud but are of course playable. Twiggs weights 250 pounds and can draw water over his shoe sole. I weight 150 and can’t. He gets a drop that I don’t… because he weights 100 pounds more than I do and can draw water. So we offer a better standard there.
Hitting the ball twice?
One player hits out from thick rough and his ball catches the club on the way out of the grass double hitting it and throws his ball hard left farther from where he started. A second player scuffs a chip… and in anger walks three steps forward completely intentionally and hits the ball again while it is moving… same penalty? Really?
Fact is sometimes tough calls have to be made. Instead of waiting for an official to come over, which holds up the entire course if one is not there… we make the tough calls after the round on areas that are being contested. Both sides are heard and either a one stroke penalty is applied or not, depending upon the testimony, the situation, intention and so on.
Umps and officials make tough calls in every sport because there is no way you can completely eliminate the subjective element of a sport, particularly one like golf. Waiting for an official slows down play big time. Better to just play one ball and if an opponent wants to contest something… it is take up later if it can’t be rectified out on the course right then and there.
The same official that took 10 minutes to get there, and make the ruling, is now putting the clock on the guys including the other guys in the group on the next hole or two if they can’t get back into their position on the course. Other players now have to rush their shots, walk faster and so on… even though they had nothing to do with the ruling situation.
Much less rulings going on anyway when the only drops are so clear and simplified.
The very first know rule of golf for dropping a ball from a hazard (the watery filth) was a distance penalty. (at least 7 yards or more Leith Code 1754, 1775) It’s simple, full relief is always guaranteed and pace of play is protected in a way the USGA could never offer.
The USGA advice rule is another absurd rule. What is advice? “Good shot mate, keep it going” Is that giving advice? Keep it going? I’m telling him something… to keep it going… certainly implying that he is swinging well and should keep doing what he is doing. That is advice.
Why would you want to take advice from an opponent? Who cares? What club did you hit? How absurd is that? No one is going to know how hard I hit the shot… or missed it a bit or what shafts I have in my clubs or my loft angles. Silly stuff really.
The rule of amateur status is another absurdity. You can’t collect money as an amateur. Ok… but if you are a rich kid you can fly to all the big amateur events and stay at The Hilton. The poor kid though, he can’t collect money he needs because even though he won a State Open, he would give up his status if he took the 10K that he could use to travel and play in the events others can easily afford. If I sit down at a blackjack table in Vegas and win 10K does that suddenly make me a pro gambler? Why not just call them golf tournaments and let whomever wants to play… play. You are only a pro if you are good enough to support yourself playing golf. If not… well, you’re not really a pro then are you? That way, you are only a pro if you are good.
The Olympics did away with that sillyness. Just events for athletes… nothing more.
Good stuff, answers exactly nothing though… Are you going to sit all the players down & explain all this, like what to do when the ball rolls back onto the drainage grate so the local guy who’s never heard of any of this understands? What ball are you guys using? Carts or no? I don’t want to carry 16 clubs if I’m walking & if there’s no carts there’s no point to practicing 4 woods since it won’t be in the bag. Also it said its a 12:00 start the first day, I’m assuming that’s a shotgun since its dark at 5:15, sooner if the weather is bad. If there’s more than 20 guys it may not finish in daylight anyway. Great stories but what’s the deal, & isn’t Sandpiper one word? That’s a damn good track even since the redo, let’s go there instead. Weather will probably be better in SB by a mile, I guarantee it won’t snow at least.
More I think about that the better it sounds… Santa Barbara is awesome, Vegas sucks. My wife would actually want to go to Santa Barbara, instead of having to fly back down to the biggest mistake I ever made, that stupid house nobody will buy & I’m not allowed to burn down. Who’s idea was Vegas anyway?
I think one advantage for Vegas is, its cheaper to fly in to. And the place multiple flights from anywhere.
Players wanting to be eligible for the cash prizes must walk. There will be other prizes, merchandise etc… for “amateurs”.
Anyone can play. Ball is still to be determined. We are currently testing a few out.
We are also trying to get a custom ball made and might have it available by the event. Promises, promises, we’ll see.
The basic rules which cover 99% of common situations are printed on one page, just like the last four events. Have yet to have a problem. Players sign and agree to the rules official making any contested decisions after the round. No pin sheets or books.
Why Vegas? Same bartender who was mixing Martini’s for Dean Martin is still behind the bar in the grill room.