Baseball bat
Is it metal?
Pfffft
Baseball and hockey equipment changed. Not to the extent golf equipment has. I do agree it’s a shame they didn’t act in the late 90’s when they needed to.
The enjoyment of vintage clubs is lost on most, unfortunately. I played the other day with a few random men. A few funny things:
- I easily outdrove them all with a 1950 Byron Nelson Mac Laminate all day.
- On the back nine one tee box backs up to a practice area and a bunch of high schoolers were practicing. It’s a short hole and I hit a nice 4 wood down the middle. A couple seconds after impact, I hear some kid say, “holy s#$t, did you see that?” Got a kick out of it, maybe he’ll pick up a persimmon someday?
- I shot 79 with 3 triple bogies on the back nine. I hate this game, lol…
7 Likes
Agree that equipment helps better players the most. But it also helps us a lot. They will destroy recreational golf if they roll everything back for everyone. They probably will create new rules for elite competitions, limiting club head size and spring like effect. This will help.
Yes it is metal, isn’t it?
Exactly! Metal is great for miss hits and less talented athletes
Metal withstands miss-hits farther down the barrel, toward the middle of the bat, much better than a wood bat can. Big hits towards the middle of a wood bat can end with a shattered bat and an easy out, but again the artificial help of the metal bat might turn it into a cheeky base hit @86General
The higher handicaps are benefiting.
But isnt this Advanced Ball Striking website?
Lets not go off a cliff here
Im talkn mostly about the ball.
Its really stupid to debate. The super ball should be banned. Sell all the light drivers you want.
2 Likes
I was talking about hockey sticks. They are metal now, have been for a while I think. The stick, not the blade. And the curved blade was also an equipment modification that made it much easier to spin the puck and make accurate shots, no?
Random thoughts about golf equipment and equipment standards:
Comparisons with other sports are mildly interesting but I don’t think they are relevant. If anything, the comparison to baseball is the opposite of what most observe. Yes, baseball doesn’t allow aluminum bats at the MLB level…but they do in college baseball and lower levels. And recreational leagues rarely play baseball, they play softball. So baseball has multiple sets of rules for different skill levels. They aren’t trying to play by a single set of rules, as golf seems to be hung up on doing.
And MLB doesn’t really care about the “integrity” of the game so much as they care about fan appeal. That’s why they allow juiced up balls and, as long as they could get away with it and it was selling, allowed the players to use PED’s.
Recreational golf doesn’t need 15 handicap weekend club golfers trying to hit 4 irons and 3 woods into greens. Recreational golf doesn’t need to see the average recreational lady golfer reduced to a 100 yard carry with her driver.
The USGA and R&A are likely influenced by the wealthy, historic golf clubs which are horrified that modern players play their courses to par 68 from the tips. The R&A is horrified that the Old Course is overpowered by average tour players today. Champion golfers from the mid and late 20th century are horrified that the average tour player can hit towering shots from 200-250 yards out that land soft, whereas in their day, maybe only one or two players could. Wealthy members of classic clubs are annoyed that their historic tracks are not relevant.
I get that golf clubs today are forced to undergo costly renovations and lengthening if they want to be able to host high level tournaments.
I just don’t see any of these things as problems. Over the last 15 years, I have played at 2 different golf clubs. One is about 6800 from the tips, and the other has 3 courses, the longest of which is probably 7100 from the tips. Nobody in the membership of either club overpowers these courses, and we have our share of plus handicap players. And for a recreational golfer, to be able to hit an 8 or 9 iron into a green instead of a hybrid or 4 wood makes the game far more enjoyable.
Golf is still ridiculously difficult. Our perspective is skewed watching TV, because we are watching the creme de la creme, the 50 or so most talented golf athletes on the planet. And we generally are watching ONLY the ones who happen to be playing well that week.
If all this is so important, why doesn’t the tour just make their own rules. We have leagues all over the country who play vintage equipment, so what’s stopping the tours from doing this if they think it’s so important?
Personally I don’t find the case of the R&A and USGA to roll back the ball/clubs to be that compelling. Not for the reasons they state. I am friends with an industry insider who has attended some of the meetings and spoken to some members of the ruling bodies about it, and the ruling bodies know the “problem” is really only something affecting the elite level of the game.
They are trying to do something without killing the recreational game. Their hope is that it’s possible from a physics perspective to create a golf ball with reduced ball speed from high swing speed players, but which has little or no reduction in ball speed for club-level swing speeds. And they want to roll back equipment only for elite players, to try to bring back some of the penalty for mis-hit shots (probably in the form of smaller club heads for drivers, maybe 220-250 cc, like the original “big bertha” style heads from the late 80s and early 90s).
The problem with creating 2 golf ball standards is that they believe it would be very hard to police. It would require clubs and organizations to have expensive testing equipment to resolve possilbe violations with players using illegal balls. It’s much easier to police something like club head size.
Golf will always be fun. It will always be difficult. Since 2020, we are in one of the largest golf booms in history. Rounds are up, memberships are up, sales are way up. The last thing they want to do is discourage people from playing the game, keeping their memberships, etc.
1 Like
Well, I disagree. The ball needs rolled back.
Next topic
That is a touchy subject. If they rolled back the ball it would really have a huge change. But the money in golf is the amateur game. Taking the ball away from the masses would cause a riot and a mass exodus from this game. But than on the other hand, it might be easier to get a tee time. Haha
Maybe make it where you have to run with your bag the whole 18 holes. Now that would really even the playing field
Good point!
It is a touchy subject. Especially if you consider what they might have to do with regard to a roll back. Modern pros carry their driver about 300 yards, on average. Pros in the 1970s carried their driver maybe 240 on average. That’s a 20% increase. Rolling the ball back 20% puts the average recreational golfer’s driver go about 170-180.
As Einstein pointed out, distance and speed are all relative 
… If we are all rolled back, I guess it doesn’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things. But if we are all reduced 20%, they better move every tee box on the course up. Will that happen? I don’t know.
I think we are very short sighted. Everything in sports improves. Swimming times, running times, broad jump lengths, everything. People today are bigger and stronger…not just athletes, all people. My youngest son is 6’1" and weighs about 200 pounds. When I was a kid, someone’s dad who was that big was, well BIG. Today, my son is much closer to average size among his peers.
You’re not going to stop progress in golf. They can roll things back, but people will find ways. They will find ways to make the clubs hit the ball further. The ruling bodies think they have a firm grip on the physics, but experience has shown that they don’t.
I think it’s best to just leave the game alone. Rory McIlroy can’t be compared to Jack Nicklaus any more than Aaron Judge can be compared to Hank Aaron. It’s different than it was. But it’s still golf. If it was so awful, we wouldn’t be watching, buying, playing, cursing, betting, laughing, or crying the way we do, the way we have always been, and they way we forever will.
Being that Nicklaus has won 18 Majors and multiple 2nd hes probably the greatest ever IDK
Most likely hes talking for tournament golf. Watching these guys hit 220 yard 9 irons is getting boring and making great tracks obsolete
Thats all. Let the masses play whatever the hell they want but the Professionals need throttled with similar tournament balls. What sport lets u have an advantage with different objects hit by an instrument
It wouldnt be hard to regulate the pros playing a specific ball
Thats all
1 Like
Standardized, rolled back ball for professionals makes sense. Amateurs can play what they want, it’s leisure.
2 Likes
Didn’t they have an event at the memorial. Where Jack had the approval that year to have un raked bunkers? Maybe they can try an event with a reduced ball. Or go back to the early 1980 balata for an event
2 Likes
The guys and gals now are flat out stronger , faster and more flexible. You give them advanced equipment and it’s not even a ball game anymore
I can see the norm being 400 yard drives in 10 years . And maybe sub 60 as a norm as well
If you want to see the future. Follow Kyle Birkshire on YouTube
He dismantles a golf course
1 Like
Exactly. If they would have fixed the ball regulation early and left it alone we wouldnt be in this predicament
A. We aren’t in a predicament. A few elite, rich, 100 year old (or older) golf clubs and stuffy guys in blazers in Far Hills and St. Andrews think they are. (With apologies…I am grateful that the USGA and R&A exist, and I recognize all the good they do.)
B. The history of the regulations show how hard it is to “insure” distance is controlled.
I’m NOT an expert here, but I do remember some of this being covered over the years in various articles. The Top Flite of the 1970s already had the potential to be a weapon in a distance war. But elite players wouldn’t use it because the feel was awful and it didn’t spin like the pros wanted. But had they chosen to, another 20-40 yards was just sitting there for them.
So the ruling bodies just left it alone. They looked the other way on the top flite, because they thought it was fine for recreational players to have a longer golf ball. So we were playing by 2 sets of rules, de facto “bifurcation.”
Then the (ahem) “Great” White Shark started playing the Spalding Tour Edition, the first solid core ball (I think) that spun enough to be usable by a pro, but which had that top flite distance. I think the Top Flite Strata also was solid core, long, and spinny enough for an expert to use.
If they roll the ball back, I still think distance will gradually inch back up. They will simply engineer the clubs or the faces to attain the launch angle and spin characteristics to maximize distance.
My industry contact knows the equipment very well. One of the issues right now is that they can’t go back to balata. Well, not easily, and not cheaply. All of the manufacturing processes are different, and all the machines and tooling and raw materials for those old balls is just gone. If they roll the ball back, it will be done by just changing the characteristics of the core parts of the ball. They will not be going back to liquid-center, wound golf balls.
I LOVED the year he furrowed the bunkers. No reason they can’t do that on tour. But the tour doesn’t want it.
As for a shorter ball, I do think the manufacturers have done some preliminary prototypes, or at least started to work out the engineering of it. I’m not positive but I thought they did, in fact, at some point over the last 8 years or so, actually test a shorter golf ball with high level players.
I asked my friend about just bifurcation in golf balls - I agree with you guys that would be a GREAT solution - and as I said, that isn’t going to happen. The reason is they think it is too difficult, practically speaking, to enforce. There is no easy way to ensure that a ball is conforming without the use of very sophisticated equipment.
1 Like
They change the regulations all the time in Formula 1. Few years ago the had to change the centre of gravity for the javlin so the runners didn’t get kebabed. Can’t be beyond the wit of the R&A and USGA to change the regulations for a simple golf ball. Can’t keep building new tee boxes and moving the bunkers every 10 years.
3 Likes