I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball in.
A brid egg Frida egg, Frida egg, Frida eggag bride egg lie.
I'm about ready to run off the golf. Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today's episode is a big one, obviously, if you have not heard, the U s g A and the RNA has released news about a potential new golf ball that would be used by high level tournament players men's high level tournament players. So we break this down. This has obviously been a long process. We've had number of podcasts about the prospect of this and they've moved to the next kind of
chapter of it. So for this pod, we did something a little special. I wanted to get a variety of insights from a different angles of who this would impact. So for this podcast, I talked with Tom Doak about the architecture angle. I talked with Roberto Castro, a retired PGA Tour player, about how this would impact the PGA Tour and PGA Tour players, and then I also spoke with Joseph LaMagna about the impact on golf course strategy.
He obviously contributes for the Frieda Egg, writes in Club TF and in the newsletter, as well as appears on the podcast pretty regularly. He does on the side, he also does consulting for PGA Tour players where he helps them break down strategy. So we talked about that, and then Garrett and I are going to be on this podcast in a minute here kind of just talking about the basics of it and our general takes. So you're gonna get a lot of different perspectives in this podcast
on different angles of it. It's obviously a massive topic and will impact the game. Really, you know, I think this is the way a lot of regulation works. Like you implement it and you're not really sure you know one thing that is going to address, but it causes a lot of different ripples throughout the industry. So that's what we tried to do with this podcast was give you a little bit of an encompassing look at how it impacts, you know, directly impacts a few big things.
So excited that this happened. As a quick reminder, you know, one of the things if you're a Frida Egg newsletter subscriber, you saw this week was that we have a whole new spring line in the Pro Shop. If you want to support the Frida Egg, this great way to do it. Meg Atkins has really got some great stuff. She did an awesome job stocking the shop. I myself had to ask ask for a couple of things because they really
caught my eye. I thought they're awesome and some of the best stuff that we've ever had in the pro Shop. If you want to check that out, it's pro Shop dot Thefrida Egg dot com. Lots of hats, layers, some new golf shirts, some stuff that's geared towards the first major for both the Frida Egg and the Shotgun Start, which if you're looking for more on this potential rollback for the for the tour professionals, check out the Shotgun Start. We had a long discussion about that as well as
this podcast that you're already listening to. So without further ado, here is the podcast all about rollback again. Here's me and Garrett and then it will be followed by Tom Doak, Joseph Lamannia and Roberto Castro. Thank you and here you got all right, Garrett, Big big golf news this week obviously the UH, the golf world has quickly divided itself into different camps.
I think there's a lot of people in the middle that are just the silent, silent middle class.
And enjoying the fight, watching the fight.
Yes, I would. I'd love to hear kind of your top level thoughts about the USGA's announcement UH with the with the regulations to the potential regulations the ball. Really they're in a comment period, so the regulations the ball are, you know, they're kind of collecting feedback and you know, we'll see, we'll learn more later this fall.
Let me try to lay things out here. I think people should know first of all, what a model local rule is, because that is the key to this whole discussion and to analyzing the entire situation. So a model local rule is optional. The USGA is going to create this rule, put it out there, and different organizations, tours, different entities in the golf world can adopt it if
they want to. And this model local rule will essentially give, as the USGA puts it, give competition organizers the option to require use of golf balls that are tested under modified launch conditions to address the impacts of hitting distance in golf, and this golf ball would be essentially tested at a higher club head speed then balls are currently tested at and will have to go the same distance, so the ball will fly shorter than the current ball.
And one quick thing here that this is very important for everybody to understand. The longer players are still going to be longer. The shorter players are still going to be shorter. So it does not move. It does not remove somebody from swinging higher than the testing speed at one twenty seven and hitting it further than their three hundred and seventeen yards. If you swing at one thirty five, it will go further than the high end of their testing range.
That's right.
So it's important to understand that there's not there's not like a ceiling on how far you can hit the golf ball.
They are just it's not going to hit an invisible wall at three hundred and seventeen yards and drop out of the air exactly.
So it is a it is that's just what it's being test at, tested at, which then scales all the distances down roughly between five and ten percent.
Right, And so what the USGA is saying is that the longest players will lose fourteen to fifteen yards in driving distance. Now there's been some dispute over that. Some people are saying it might be more like twenty yards, but we don't really know yet until we see the ball, and this model local rule won't be available until January first, twenty twenty six at the earliest, so we've got some
time here. But I just wanted to clarify that upfront because I've been tracking the discussion in a number of different venues and I feel like a misunderstanding of the model local rule and how it actually operates is at the core of a lot of people's concerns about this. Because it really doesn't need to affect any particular organization
that doesn't want to buy into it. The USGA and RNA have passed the buck to other entities in the golf world and said, if you want, for whatever reason to adopt a reduced flight ball, then you can start to do that using this model local rule. Now, I think that their play is more complicated than that, and that's kind of what I want to get into. Do you want to get into that, like the kind of the strategy that's probably being used by the governing bodies here.
Yeah, absolutely, I think you know, from my perspective, this is this was strategically the correct play for the USGA. They are the.
Governing body they aren't in the USGA are the governing bodies of the game of golf. But they also do a lot more than governess. And I think that's where it was tricky. Like if the only thing they did was was create rules and protect the game, you know, I think we would have had something in place a
long time ago. But you know, the tricky thing with the USBA as they've grown as an organization is they do a lot more and they you know, I think they are I hate the word grow the game, but they are vitally involved with growing the game of golf. And I think you know, from this standpoint, when you look at the rule, the idea of it applying a model local rule that can be applied to the high end of golf, that is an attempt to not have the pr hit of like you're trying to make golf harder.
If you went with a ruling that said we're gonna take, we're gonna make we're gonna take yardage away from everybody, there would be a lot of backlash of like, wait, golf's having this moment, and you're gonna make it harder, even though I don't even believe that it would be harder if you if everybody played this equipment, I don't think if you if if.
Just find the right t's, chill out, find the right teas, it wouldn't be that much harder. And most amateurs if they played a reduced flight ball, if you just like snuck one into their bag in place of the pro v one x or whatever they have in there and had them play it, I bet they'd play. Most amateurs would play eighteen holes and not even notice a difference.
So at the core of this, I think the the choice to make it a what people are calling bifurcation, which is the model local rule. So you could theoretically all of men's professional golf, and theoretically is an important title here because we don't know if the PGA Tour
or the PGA Championship will accept this. But like, theoretically all of men's professional golf can play a different ball than the regular, you know golfer, the weekend golfer, and they from a marketing standpoint, are not taking away things from the person that needs all the help they can get. What they are trying to do is really you know, what this all is about, for the most part, is professional golf. But I don't agree that it's just a
professional golf problem. I think this is a problem across.
Golf, and I think that the governing bodies acknowledge that. And that is the complexity here that I'd like to get into is the governing body's awareness that distance gains are a problem not just at the elite competitive level, but all over the place in golf. Regular local courses have had to lengthen over the past several decades because everybody has gained distance, and especially like the top five percent of the longest amateur players have gained just as
much distance as the pros have. Right, if you have one hundred and fifteen miles per hour of clubhead speed, you can be a five handicap. I've played with five handicaps who have that much clubhead speed, and you're going to be hitting it just as far as the pros do. You might not know where it's going. But they're a
problem at normal courses as well. And you know what, the USGA and R and I have done a lot of research in the past several years looking into exactly that problem, and so I think the intention here is eventually to have an effect beyond the elite competitive level.
But I want to get into the strategic and pr play that they're doing here, because you're right that a big thing that Mike Wan and Martin Slumber, the CEOs of the USGA and the RNA, are saying right now is that this will not affect the recreational golf level. We've gotten feedback in the past year that nobody wants the recreational game to be negatively affected, and so this rule, this model local rule, is intended for high level competitions.
That is what they're saying right now. But that goes against the research that they've done recently, that they've spent a lot of money doing discovering that the distance problem in golf is not just a professional golf problem, it's not just a PGA tour problem. It is a problem all over the place, and it's an issue for the sustainability of the game. And so I think that what they're trying to do here is introduce this model local rule to some championships like the US Open and the Open.
I think they probably figure that the Masters is going to implement the ball because Augusta National Golf Club has been you know, has had to spend a lot of money expanding its course, and its leaders do seem open to implementing a new ball. And so that's three majors
right there. That's three very powerful tournaments in golf. And so if they adopt the model local rule, is that going to have a kind of trickle down effect throughout the game where different tours, including the PGA Tour, as well as other institutions like state championships, like various amateur
championships like the NCAA, like your local club championship. Is there going to be a trickle down effect where all of those different kinds of tournaments and competitive environments will say, well, you know, three of the biggest tournaments in golf are using the model local rule ball. So I guess we better. You know, if you want to qualify for the US Open, if you want to go to your local qualifier and try to get into the US Open, you've got to
learn how to use the reduced flight ball. So I guess we might as well start playing ball at the local level at our courses and I think that their hope is that this ball will eventually make its way into the recreational game that we play on an everyday basis, but they can't say that because people are scared of that.
Yeah, I think you hit on exactly what I've been thinking about the last twenty four hours and why this was the right way to approach this, because you know, we talked about like the marketing headache, but when I think about how this could infiltrate the overarching game, it is through the competitive golf landscape at the amateur level. So you know, the idea of you know, I used to play competitive golf. I haven't in the last five
years because I've been busy. But you know, the thing about it is like what you play that competitive golf at a state level, and this is like as a mid am, right, is like I would play it. I try and play the US Open, I try and play the US AM, I try and play the US Midam. It sounds like their goal is to have this ball
be used at the US Midam. So all of a sudden, you know, I'm one of the best players at a club, I am going to be probably using this ball predominantly this is the ball that I'm going to use, and that's going to have a trickle down effect into the group that I'm playing with, and that's going to just continue to push out. The same thing goes for like if you have a kid that's a growing, that's a golfer, that's you know, that's really good, they're aspiring to play
the US Junior. It sounds like this is going to be tied into the US Junior. Maybe not the first year, but quickly after. So if your kids wants to play the US Junior, that's the pinnacle of golf. Like the Western Junior, the US Junior, those are the pinnacles of junior golf. You know what's probably going to be The Western Golf Association is probably going to follow the USGA.
You know, they're historic organizations. So all of a sudden, if your kid wants to, you know, compete at the highest level, they're going to start to use this golf ball and so on and so forth.
The amateur level. The same thing. Now where I find where all this the wrench comes.
In is if the tour says we are not doing that, and I think that that that is a it's it's interesting they obviously have the power to do it.
But the thing about it is, I think it's a.
Really bad marketing play by them if they do it, because it's saying, hey, we don't want to play these rules.
We'd prefer to have the game dulled down, especially, you know, it would be super weird after we watch people play Augusta National and have to hit a wide ray shots and even accentuate the product difference that we see, Like we watch Augustin and it's like, God, I wish every week of golf was like this, and then have that accentuated by like, oh, we're gonna see these guys hit more shots and the best golf course and the way you know that they play year in, year out, and
then they're going to go to Harbortown, a tiny little course with a souped up golf ball.
It's going to further.
Like there's a running joke that the tour is almost like WWE is to wrestling as to what major championship golf is with like the TiO relief, they get the favorable rulings, the lift clean in place, if they refuse to accept the equipment stuff, it's just going to accentuate that fact that, like you know, the PGA Tour doesn't play the same golf that you play.
And I don't think the players are going to want to go back and forth the play. What do the players on the PGA Tour care about. They care about the majors. Specifically, they care about the Masters, the US Open, and the Open Championship. Those are the three tournaments they care the most about. The PGA Championship, we don't really know what's going on with PGA of America, but we've heard rumblings that they're not stoked about the model local rule.
But I think that the Masters, the US Open, and in the Open hold a lot of cards here and that what we see is a bit of a game of chicken going on between the PGA Tour and those three majors, because I think that the PGA Tour knows that if the top three majors implement this ball, that
they're probably going to have to follow suit. I think that they know that they don't quite have the clout to stand up against those three majors and say to the players, you have to play one ball on our tour, or you get to play one ball on our tour and then you're going to have to switch for the
most important tournaments of the year. I honestly don't think that most players are going to go for that, and that what most players would want is for the PGA Tour to pressure the USGA and RNA in this comment period to drop this idea. I think that's why you're seeing so many tour players come out so strongly against it. Right We've seen Justin Thomas speak out, We've seen Keegan Bradley open his mouth, We've seen Charlie Hoffman go on
PGA Tour Radio. We've seen a lot of guys come out really aggressively against this, and I think the reason for that is that their preferred situation would be if this idea just went away. But I don't think it's
going to go away. And I think that once the most important major start to use this model local rule, that the PGA Tour is going to be in a really tough spot because it's going to seem like they're not playing real golf and their players are not going to want to switch back and forth and you know, play a ball that they're not used to for their most important events of the year.
I you know, and This is the thing is, I don't think it's going to be that big of an adjustment. Everybody's kicking and screaming right now about it, but the reality is is like it's going to be a little
bit of adjustment. But they aren't taking They aren't changing all the clubs either, you know, like and I think that's like one of the things if we wanted to talk about what we wish they would have done, and I understand why they couldn't get there, and maybe this is the first regulation that pushes the ability to say, hey,
this isn't all that bad that we change. But you know, so the one thing with the tour is if they go to this, if they stick with their ball and they don't go to this, like who's going to play the week before the Masters, Who's who is? Those tournaments are just going to be wiped off the schedule, right, Like nobody's playing the week before the Masters or the or the week before the US Open or the week before the Open and not playing with the tournament ball.
Right, Yeah, they're they're they're gonna have at least I mean, yes, they're the best players in the world. They should be able to make this adjustment. But if they're going back and forth, they'll need a little bit of time to dial things in and get their yardages and and make sure that everything's, you know, in line for a big,
important tournament. I think you're right that the week before a major, if they have to adjust to a different ball, they're probably gonna have to spend some time optimizing that ball.
I think we both agree that this politically was a smart and strategically a pretty smart move by the by the usg the way they've rolled this out, I think that I would say that, if I summed up, both of us were a little disappointed, Like in an ideal world, you'd see this across all of golf.
Well, I mean that was my first reaction. I wish this were a universal rollback, and I still feel that way, But I understand the political maneuver a little bit better
now than I did when the announcement was made. But you know, a year ago, they were looking at doing a model local role for the driver and doing a universal rollback for the ball, and I'm a little bit disappointed that that hasn't stayed that way, that we're no longer looking at the driver and that we're no longer looking at the idea of a universal rollback for the ball.
It seems like the governing bodies have seeded the point that a rollback of the amateur's ball would be bad for the recreational game, when I don't think that's the case. I don't think that they should admit that point that a shorter ball is necessary worse or less fun or somehow unattractive for recreational players, because I just don't see it that way at all.
You know, I've I've kind of played golf with a self imposed rollback for the last year.
Yeah, you have, so for those that I've.
Talked a little bit about this on this podcast, But I play with a persimon driver titleist PT three Wood nineteen seventies Blade Irons, and.
You're you're you're such a woke andy look at you, I such a frankly.
Frankly, what happened was like my my ten year old clubs they broke and I just haven't got I haven't found the time to go get new ones from from Club Champion, and like I just haven't gone.
Like that's literally why this has happened.
I've like had like great joy playing the game at a smaller scale.
And We've heard this this word used before, but.
I've had like incredible amount of fun playing golf courses and not bludgeting them with a driver and a wedge like I've I think I've gotten I think like I haven't played modern equipment, but like I think when I play it the next time, it's going to be like WHOA, Like I've gotten a lot better over the last year because I've had to like work on different things, Like I've had longer approach shots into greens all for a year, you know. I just like my short game is better
because I've missed a lot more greens. And that's I think the interesting thing about this when you talk about, you know, the tour is like and be recreational golf. The recreational golf takeaway is like I have done this. I've I think that's it's probably been pretty close to the yardage number that I've taken away from myself, and I've.
Really enjoyed it.
I have not like I you know, there are times when it's soft and I'm playing with people with modern equipment that I get a little frustrated. But for the most part, I've really never been like you know what, this sucks that I don't have I can't hit it twenty five thirty yards further.
This this is terrible.
I will say also, like for the professional game, for people that are saying like, oh, power players are going to be so much more advantage because this is going to hurt shorter players more. I don't think so, because, like if you're not hitting wedges all the time, golf becomes a.
Lot harder for the power players.
Like, what needs to be looked at, It's not just like the strokes gain difference off the tee. What needs to then be looked at is like, how is the individual player from one fifty versus one twenty five? So look at that one twenty five versus the one fifty number. But also the player, the shorter player, say they go from one seventy five to two hundred. What's the difference there?
Right? Is there a huge difference?
And you know, different players, it's going to be different things, like certain players are going to be better at that around the green I think is going to be more emphasized because of this.
Yeah, I think that it should be seen rollbacks should be seen less as a deficiency, less as taking something away and more as sort of changing the nature of the game that you play. And for some people it will be a disadvantage. Let's be honest. If you play from the same tees and you rely on a certain amount of distance off the tee and you have less distance,
then yeah, you're going to be hitting longer clubs. But for other people it might be good for them to have tighter dispersion, the tighter dispersion of a shorter drive. You know, I think that it's just more complex than saying roll back is a disadvantage to recreational golfers or something that makes the game more difficult, because I just don't think it would feel that way in reality. And part of this comes from my memories of playing golf
before the four hundred and sixty cc driver. You know, I was young, but I did play golf in the nineties, and guess what, it was just as fun then as it is now. It wasn't that big of a deal to me that my three would was sometimes easier to hit off the tee than the driver. That was fine. That was a feature of the game, you know, And we played with spinnier balls that traveled a shorter distance. The game was still incredibly fun. It was still the greatest game I had ever played in my life. And
so anyway, that's that's my take on that. Now we should get to the guests that you have lined up, because people, we could talk forever about this, and I'm sure we'll talk more about it in the future. But who's next up on the docket?
Here?
We got Tom Doak first.
He will be up and he obviously has some interesting thoughts on architecture and how this applies to his job.
Then we have Roberto Castro.
I wanted to have somebody on that was very connected to the PGA Tour game, but maybe not like right in it right now. So they have a little bit, you know, it's one of those can you see the force through the trees type situation. And then Joseph Lamannia to talk about strategy. We got into it a little bit, but he has some more thoughts on how golf will change if there's fifteen to twenty yard reduction in drivers.
Okay, let's go to it.
Now. For a quick word from our sponsor, which is Club TFE. This is the membership for the Fried Egg. One of the things that I made a very conscious decision when I started this company seven years ago was that we would not be taking money from equipment sponsors that wanted our voice to be, Hey, buy this club, use this ball, it's the best, because it's something that I just didn't believe it. I believe that there is no best ball, there's a best ball for you, there's
a best club for you. But also I believe that, you know, the game had kind of gotten a little out of balance and that a you know, regulation was probably needed. And you know, I never wanted a company that financially supported us to have a role in how we talked about the game. So you know, obviously that is a big revenue source for most media companies in golf,
and that's not a revenue source for us. One of the ways that we support our staff continue to grow and continue to improve the content we put out is through Club TFE, which also happens to be a way for you to feed fuel your golf addiction. We are posting daily articles Monday through Friday in Club TFE. Every Wednesday, we have a detailed course review right up with a rating.
We have a monthly member video. We have a monthly hangout which is kind of just like a live podcast, and we have a lot more early event access discounts to the pro shop. It is something that we're excited about. We want to continue to build and grow and it is a awesome probably the best way for you to support the Frida Egg and what we do here. So if you're interested in the membership, if you want to check it out, go to membership dot thefridagg dot com.
It is one hundred and twenty dollars for the year and it gets you a lot of stuff. I think you know, I've been really impressed with our team and our output and our dedication towards it. It is something that we want to be a really special product. It is not just a GoFundMe type thing. It is a product. We are putting a lot of our time and energy into it, and I think everybody on the team is very proud of what we've done with it so far.
So if you're interested in supporting us, membership dot Thefrida Egg dot com. It's one hundred and twenty dollars for the year. And now back to our discussion on the latest USGA and RNA news. Tom with the Rollback News Today and Geared towards elite players. You recently completed a golf design that was, you know, obviously part municipal golf, but also part hosting a PGA Tour event every year
in Memorial Park in Houston. How, if any would you have changed your design for that golf course with this reduction in distance in mind?
Honestly, I don't think it changes what we did much at all. I mean, you know, you're talking about a five or six percent rollback of the golf ball from from what I can tell from the little bit that I've heard so far. And you know, what I've always tried to do is recognize that even tour players hit at different distances. You know, some guys carry a three hundred yards, some guys carry it to ninety. A few
can hit carry it three fifteen. So you don't I've never, I've always tried to avoid putting all the hazards at a certain distance, thinking, you know, if you can carry it three hundred, then you're good and you should be rewarded all the time. And if you can only carry it two eighty five, well then you're not so good and you have to hit it into tighter spaces all
the time. So a Memorial Park has a range of carries, you know, and there's a couple of them, like the shot from the back tee on sixteen that to carry the most part of the water on the right is a little over three hundred yards. And if this, you know, if I am reading this rollback right, there's a lot fewer guys that are going to take that on that particular carry on unless the wind is helping them or
something like that. But you know, all it's going to do is slide back the scale a little bit of you know, the guys, the guys that can carry it further now are going to have to play up more like the guys who are a little shorter, and the guys who are on the short end of the stick now are going to have to think back a little bit further two and you know, and there's going to be one or two holes where they've got to give up trying to make a certain carry.
In a way, would you agree that this would make your golf course perhaps even a little bit more versatile.
If this is only being applied to the elite players and not to the people that play Memorial Park every day, you're narrowing the gap a little bit there. You know, you're you know, you're letting all the amateurs go out and still hit the ball just as far as they do, and you're shortening the gap between them and the tour pros from you know, probably fifty or sixty yards now down to thirty, which that makes a difference. But and you know, the one thing this will affect is that
the scoring will go up a little bit. If everybody's hitting two more clubs into green, that's going to matter some. It's not gonna I don't think it's going to change the approach of what they're trying to do.
You know.
I don't think that they're going to go away from attacking as many pins because they've got an aid iron to the green instead of a wedge. But it will have some effect.
You know.
It's you know, if you if you you know, I don't know the numbers very well, but you can look very clearly on the all those charts they have now and say, okay, if everybody's hitting approaches from twenty yards further out, we know what the scoring differential is there between one hundred and forty yard approaches and one hundred and sixty yard approaches and you can count on the scores going up that much.
Yeah. And then furthermore with that, obviously, is that you know, it's not just the driver. You know, their irons will be slightly it won't be as short, but they will be a little bit shorter too. I imagine for you as a designer, this gives you the opportunity, a little bit more of an opportunity. It seems like it's a very hard thing to do, is to get a longer iron like a five iron or more into a professional's hand on a part four. I imagine that this will do that.
Yes, it will, you know, by the same token it's going to mean. I mean, if anything, it means they'll hit driver, you know, even more of all the time everywhere now because they because they you know, they've have been beaten into them. They need to get up there. And if if hitting an iron off the team means they're that much further back in the rough than they would have been before, they're not willing to take that chance.
They're just going to pound driver all day. Unless they're trying to hit into a funnel with water on both sides. Obviously they don't do that.
Yeah, that's That's the one thing that I'm super interested to see with the strategy component is if let's we know that like there's huge value to get a wedge in the rough versus a seven iron in the fairway, but when you move that back and it's a seven iron in the rough or let's just say a five iron in the fair way, right, how does that change? And I'm sure there's data, and I apologize that I don't have this data. I'm not a corese strategist, but
that's what I'm wondering. If that is a smaller delta there and then all of a sudden, does it start to present more of a choice off the tee?
Maybe, but I don't think. You know, I've always thought that the biggest change in my lifetime and the equipment, it wasn't the ball, It was the driver. And you know the reason those guys and you know they do use three food off the tea fair amount now, but the driver just has there's such a big face there and you can go at it so hard and you know, miss way up on the toe somewhere and it only
costs you like five yards on the carry. To me, that the biggest lesson for me from the Renaissance Club in Memorial Park was there that the pros distance control is so consistent because the equipment is so forgiven that it's almost impossible to you know, make a carry on a golf course that you know, they don't ever mis.
You know, they don't make a mistake with a carry because if they hit you know, if you made them hit driver fifty times and they and their average carry was three hundred yards, I think the margin for error now, like the worst drive out of fifty is going to go like two ninety four ninety five, So all they you know, if they know it's more than two ninety, you know, if they know two ninety is the carry, they can go for that every time and they're never
going to miss. Whereas twenty years ago that was not true. You know, you could there was always a chance of not having a perfect on center, hitting the ball didn't fly so far and you had trouble. And now it's like two ninety five over water. Oh yeah, I'm going to make that every time.
It sounds like the USGAH looked at that and they thought it might be too compliment complicated to implement, doing some sort of a change along those lines. Years ago, I did a little experiment. I never published the results of this, but I went to a track man and I hit Hickory driver, a Persimon driver, and then a modern my modern driver and what was And I hit about ten to twenty shots with them. And what was interesting was to look at the dispersion. It was it's
just what you're talking about. And the dispersions were like a horizontal line or not like a diagonal. I'm trying to explain this in a non visual format, but it was like a diagonal with the with the person and the smaller head drivers, the Persimon and the Hickory. What I saw was there was a diagonal which was like
kind of short. You had that short right miss that was the short misses, and then the left it kind of like it had that wide dispersion of right and left, but then there was a short right component of it where the ball is just not going very far if you missed it a certain way right. But then when you got to the modern driver, it was just like a horizontal line where the distance was basically the same,
but you would miss right or left. So it removes that short miss from a miss hit when you that's what's happened with modern drivers, is the right You've been saying that forgiveness for a high swing speed player is just off.
The charts, and you know, I mean it's not just you know, I recognize it with the driver because that affects even me. You know, pros generally they're not missing the driver way up on the top. They're pretty good, you know. So it goes through all the clubs in
their bag too. Where I really realized it, you know, Padrick Harrington now is consulting on the Renaissance Club in Scotland, and we were we were sitting in his kitchen talking through the holes and we got to the seventeenth pole and you know, seventeen's long, part three and there's a deep ass bunker left front, which you don't see very well from the tee and it's only really in play with the pin on the left. So one or two
days out of four. But we when we went to look at that whole, Padrick said, oh, I forgot that bunker was even there. And I said, wait, you you know the holes like two twenty you know, you got to carry it two hundred and something over the bunker you're not even thinking about that. And he's like, no, the way the green is, I'm trying to you know, the the green slopes away from the bunker a little bit, so I'm trying to land the ball eight yards on.
I'm never going to be eight yards short from two twenty.
And he meant it. You know, he wasn't joking.
He was like, I'm never going to make that, have that miss, and I'm like, what the hell am I even doing?
Speaking of professionals, this is just cave across by desk, we're recording this well, well, professional golfers. Comments are rolling in. We got we got one from Web Simpson, and the question to you would be, how would you respond to Web Simpson's commentary that the solution to the distance problem is better architecture and more specifically, more rough and more trees.
I don't know Web Simpson's game well enough, but you know, anytime a player says more rough and more trees, he's a straight hitter and not a really long hitter, and he just wants the long hitters punished when they hit a wild t shot, which I can totally understand from his perspective. You know, the problem about talking with any tour pro or really any golfer about their perspective on this stuff is that it's all based on their own game, you know. You know, even Jack Nicholas when we were
working at Sabonic. You know, Jack is you know, he's well aware that you know, Tiger Woods in the younger generation they hit it, you know, thirty yards farther than Jack did back then. But to Jack, you know, a two hundred and eighty yard carry was was a reasonable carry and if you could make that, you should be rewarded. And if you didn't hit it solid, you know, to him it was it was still the way we were
talking about how golf used to be. If you didn't hit the driver so solid and it didn't make that carry, then you should be punished for that. But he just, you know, he couldn't help but think of it in terms of his own game, even though he knows better that there's plenty of other guys that hit a different distances than it.
I mean, to be a great golfer, there is a self pursuit aspect, like you have to be very selfish and you have to view kind of the world of golf through a very like it's it's very hard to be you know, almost like a you know, thinking of other people and be a successful pro golfer.
Yes, and and you know, more than that, they want to believe that if they you know, they know when they're hitting the ball well or not well, and they want to be rewarded for hitting the ball well. Web Simpson's idea of hitting the ball well is I'm hitting it straight on the fairway all the time, so the golf course should be tighter, and if I can't hit that fairway, I should be punished for you know, and other guys it's more about how far they hit.
Yeah, it's a great point. I think if you pulled, you know, Jason Cocrack to Web Simpson, I'm amazed that you preface it by saying you know nothing about web Simpson's game and then then explained web Simpson's game to a t. But if you compared those two players to get wildly different opinions on how a golf course should
be set up, so a bigger question. And I think, you know, if they had taken this approach to roll back for the entire game, not just the professional game, and it seems like what you're getting at not much would change with how you designed a course for a professional. How would golf course design and management change if this was applied universally across the board to golf.
Again, I don't think it changes that much. I mean, you know, the average player, the Deltas are way bigger on their misses and how far they hit. You know, how far one You know, if you're a ten handicapper, some of them hit the ball two ninety and some of them hit the ball two hundred yards, And you can still be a ten handicapper under either of those scenarios, depending on how the rest of your game.
You know.
The thing about why the tour pros are so consistent is partly you have to be really good at all parts of the game to survive out there. You know, it's not like there's tour pros with who hit it gray but have bad short games that won't work. And it's not like they're tour pros they hit it bad but have great short games. That's not good enough to be one of the hundred best players in the world.
But when we're talking about the average golfer, the ten or fifteen handycap app er, Yeah, there's huge variations in what kind of golf they play, and that's why there's huge variations in what kind of courses they like.
I think you're spot on, and I just want to clarify point when people talk about, oh, this guy's not a doesn't have a great short game on the PGA Tour. That's in comparison to his peers, who are the very very best in the world. Not like you know, in my years of caddying, you could create an eight handicap
that has such wildly different skill sets, right. One could be really long off the t tour, long off the t but an eight handicap because it's wild and it's very inconsistent and just wawful around the green.
And the other guy is a sixty five year old guy that used to be scratched and still hits every shot exactly flushed, and he's just not long enough to be any better than an eight handicap exactly.
So it's important like to reference when when when there's criticism of a tour pros putting. For example, if you took that guy and put him at your club or your local course, he would probably be by far the best putter there, you know, like That's the thing that I think sometimes people like overlook is how good, how great these guys are everything, you know, and how wildly different in terms of like for there to be a shift in design, how drastic would the changes have to be?
Uh?
You know, they've been talking about this for forty years and if they'd have if they'd have stopped the growth thirty years ago, it would be different and he wouldn't see got you know, a course wouldn't have to be seventy five hundred yards to be a tour site. But you know, I mean, I you know, I thought that they were probably going to talk about a ten percent rollback, which would be enough to you know, not build some of the crazy back tees that we've been building. Some
people talked about a fifteen percent rollback. That would get you know, that would bring Rory McElroy back to where Jack Nicholas was forty years ago. That would be that would that might have serious implications for course strategy at that point. You know, now you're talking about hitting pretty long clubs into a lot of the greens. You can't
be on the rough for that. And now you got to think about, okay, you know, where is the balance of hitting the fairways more versus versus getting a little farther. But you know, I don't think a five or six percent different change makes a real difference in terms of how people attack the golf course, because really, all you're
talking about is I don't know. I don't know when the average PGA Tour driving distance was six percent shorter, but when that long ago, you know, it was in my professional lifetime, and I haven't really started I haven't really changed much in my professional lifetime about how I approach design.
There.
You know, the change has been incremental, and it's certainly way different now than it was thirty five years ago, but not to a level that, oh, you know, we got to start designing everything differently.
I think what you talked about with like fifteen percent for example, what that could also lead, Like you talked about the strategy change, but another thing that might change is the golf ball makeup. At that point, if all of a sudden, guys are hitting very long irons into play into greens rather than short irons, and greens are firm, they might value a spin yar golf ball. You know, these these are all different things that could you know that when This is a very small change and it
limits the downstream you know effects that it does. It's a very safe change really when you think about because when you start to do a bigger and bigger change, that's where you start to have the more unforeseen downstream changes that could come up. And you know, I obviously it's a We're still three years from implementation, and I think there's nothing is final, so it'll be fun to
watch this. Tom. I really appreciate you coming on and giving us your insights on the latest chapter in the two hundred year golf debate.
All right, Andy, thank you, Roberto.
What do you think about the changes introduced today, the reduction in just the tour professionals effectively distanced by fifteen to twenty yards via the swing speed test of the of the technology. What are your overarching thoughts on the news from the USJA and RNA today.
My thoughts are pretty simple. I think it's just a no brainer. The how is you know upward debate? If it's ten, if it's fifteen, if it's twenty, I'm sure it'll affect some players more than others. The details, you know, we can talk about, but just the headline to me, I kind of was like, Okay, that needed to happen, kind of moved on with my day. That's how I see it.
What do you mean by it had to happen and it's a no brainer. Why is it a no brainer?
I think there's just two factors. One, the golf ball continues to fly farther, and that can be for a number of different reasons. You can say it's the driver, you can say it's the ball, you can say it's faster players, and all of those might be true, and all of them are true to some extent. But the ball continues to go longer and the courses don't get longer.
So at some point either you're going to play a completely different game unlike the one that really how the game was designed to be played, which in my opinion is fourteen clubs. You hit some long shots, you hit some short shots. You have to be kind of good at all all the shots to be really good, or you can't expand the golf courses anymore. It's just not it's literally not possible anymore. To add, you can't have
ten thousand yard golf courses. There's roads and neighborhoods, and there's no more land and no more water, so ball continues to go farther, courses don't get longer. Something had to be done.
You know, I have to say I was I wanted to have you on because I thought, oh, he's he's a retired former player, he's going to have no bias, kind of no dog in this fight. But I just recalled that you just lost your course record at TVC Sawgrass this past weekend, so there could be some bias sneaking in here.
I blame the rules officials for that. The setup was no that was you know, that was actually like obviously the course was gettable that day. But here's what happened there. You're talking about a twenty five million dollar perse and a guy who shot seventy eight on Thursday, and he backs into the cut like he shoots a nice round on Friday. The cut moves to two over, and we've all been there as pro golfers, like when you make that cut on the number, especially, like it kind of
moves your way. It's the it's the lightest feeling in professional golf. You go play on Saturday and you're like, if I shoot nighty, I shoot nighty, I'm still going to collect a check I didn't think I was going to get and all I have is upside and he caught a day where the conditions were favorable. All he could do was just go put stuff more cash into his pocket and he shot sixty two. So it was that was cool.
It was great round a notorious gambler, as you described, playing with house money.
House money. It's house money. You put the chips on the table and they can't take any away. All they can do is add to your stack. You don't have to be a professional gambler quasi professional gambler to know that's a good deal.
All right, So back to the subject in hand. Sorry for the quick quick divergence. I just was listening to your talk and thinking about the about the feeling on Saturday you had probably why do you think some tour pros are so adamantly opposed to the rollback?
People just are generally hardwired to oppose change. A lot of a lot of people. And if you are on the PGA tour currently, you have the best job in the world. You've worked you know, you've worked your ass off to get that job. You've built a skill set, so anything that could potentially throw that off kilter is probably a little concerning, and I could see how there would be pushback.
Do you think there's any credence to or you know, could explain how these guys are saying that the rollback will hurt the product? Do you think there's any validity to that.
I don't think so. I think if the ball was going to go two hundred and forty yards, it might hurt the product. But I think there is a very large disconnect between the reason people play golf. There's golf and then there's professional golf in the PGA Tour, in the LPGA Tour, and I think we tend to mash those up too much. Most people go to the golf course, invest their time and their money because they enjoy playing
the game of golf. And that has nothing to do really with what happens on Sunday on the PGA or LPGA Tour. And look at this COVID golf boom, Like, first of all, I think it's real. I think a lot more people have come into the game of all ages, all stripes, all colors, and they're sticking to it. And what happened on the LPGA or PGA Tour that could explain that nothing. Nothing's different. There's some stars in the game, there are some great players. Nothing is that considerably different.
If this was going to happen, you would have said it would have happened with Tiger Woods, not rom or Scheffler, who are the best players in the game. Now, what happened is people had time. People had time to go try golf, and they had flexibility with their work life, and they loved the game. They didn't say like, oh my gosh, like did you see the Honda Classic this weekend,
I'm going to go take up golf. That didn't happen. Now, once they do take up golf, they do enjoy watching the tour and the LPGA Tour, because once you've hit a few golf balls yourself, it is amazing to see what the tour players can do, and the competition is really compelling. But I don't think it hurts the product at all.
You know, it's a pretty small reduction. It's five to ten percent, and you you could call me, I mean, I'm in my late I'm getting towards my late thirties. Now you could call me an old fuddy duddy or whatever. I feel like I move the ball pretty well. Myself off the tee. One thing I noticed is I think this actually could help the product from like spectating in person.
I'll never forget at the Ryder Cup at Whistling Straights, I was like having trouble picking up Bryson's ball off the tee because it was going so fast, like you know, to a certain extent, I think that the product in person could be like I'll never forget, you know, watching a Honda Classic and in the early two thousands, and I sat behind a te box all day and the distance of the ball wasn't traveling, wasn't what made me unbelievable.
I'll never forget VJ saying walking up to the tee like he had that you know that saunter right, and he gets up to the tee and just the prodigious height that he hit the ball, Like the way the ball launched off the face. It seems to me nothing about that is changing with a five to ten percent reduction in distance, like the launch angle, all of that
is staying the same. That's what is super impressive. There's no way to gauge if a ball is flying three hundred and ten yards or three hundred yards, whether you're in person or you're watching on TV. It is more about the way the ball comes off the face. And I I think a question I would have is like how far would have been too far from your perspective of as a tour player, because I think that this is almost feels like and it seemed like it was almost admitted to be a band aid solution.
Yeah, I think you're right.
First of all, I remember going to tour events as a kid and being shocked at the driving range at how they just clipped every shot so pure, like every single shot was perfect. And that's my vivid memory of watching golf as a kid, like going to tour events and el my aunt plate on the LPGA, so I would go watch her hit golf balls when I was a kid, and I was like, she just hits every
shot perfect. And as a PGA tour player, you do a corporate clinic and like you could roll straight out of the car, grab a seven iron and hit a seven iron that to me felt like chunky and stiff and wasn't any good. And every single person on that range at that clinic is like, oh my gosh, effort, Like look at that shot, what a perfect golf shot. Right,
so that that doesn't affect the product at all. That the ball goes ten percent, I think it could make the product better because I was watching Sawgrass this weekend in the most compelling hole other than seventeen, which is obviously amazing to watch when it's windy, but sixteen is the most fun hole to watch because they're all hitting like two hundred to two hundred and twenty yard second shots, which is what you used to hit into a par four occasionally, maybe once or twice around, and golf is
still really hard from that distance, Like so few guys were hitting the green, they were bailing out, left not many in the water. But if you can start putting some six irons and five irons back in players' hands, I think that the product gets better because it's just
more interesting than driver wedge. So to answer how much would have been too much, I don't think you need to go back to you know, the long hitters today carry the ball three hundred to three hundred and ten yards, and I think if it flies to eighty or two ninety, great. I don't think taking them to hitting at two sixty, like you're you know, that's too much to do at
one time. But it's just it's just gotten so crazy, like you know, ball speeds of one seventy with three woods now and Min Wu Lee hit an iron that had a one to seventy two ball speed, Like, I don't think we're going too far here, folks, Like it's I don't think so.
Yeah. I kind of come to thinking about like four hundred and eighty yard par fours as like what they've become has been. It's crazy that like they've become, you know, just say normal conditions, no crazy wind nothing. You're talking about long hitters hitting driver nine iron, Yeah, maybe driver wedge. You're talking about like middle of the road PGA Tour players is driver seven iron yep, And to be that's
that's wild. Four hundred and eighty yards like what I remember, And I don't want this to be like a nostalgia, but I remember as a kid. We're about the same age I remember as a kid, like four hundred and fifty yards when I was in high school was like
a beast, you know. And you and I think the USA did a nice job today talking about it, talking about we've been out at the junior tournaments, like we go to the Junior am we see what is going on, because like it's so drastically different when you watch the amateur and junior level to the early two thousands, which is really where it kind of feels like they're trying to push it back to than it is now.
You know, yeah, totally. And the so I've seen the Instagram videos of like the speed training that kids are doing. There's that one coach he gets like four kids at a time and they're lined up on a mat and they're doing like step by step speed training. It's like, oh, well, you know, athletes are better and they're training better. Okay, fine, But it's the USGA's job to protect the game. It's to write the rules of the game so that the
game is played in the spirit of the game. And we made up the rules to start with, like so we can right. And I think the game was designed to be played with a multitude of shots, and that has gone away because of the long distances. So let's make it more interesting through the bag and let's make
the courses play like they're designed to. I heard that I've never played at LACC, but I was talking to Bryce Molder the other day who played on tour, and he goes over there for work now a good bit and has played there a bunch, and he said the back nine is like over forty five hundred yards or something. He said, there can be four. There's like four. He's like, I don't know where they'll put the t's, but there are four or five par fours that are five point fifty. Like,
that's not normal, that's not possible most places. Obviously Augusta did the big deal at thirteen this year, but that's not going to be possible all over that golf course. So I think this is the right move.
What type of player do you think will be most advantaged and most disadvantaged by let's just say to use a blanket fifteen twenty yard reduction in distance.
I don't think it shuffles the world ranking hardly at all. I think that everyone is going to hit it shorter. The best strikers are still the best strikers, the best putters are still the best putters. I just think it makes the gameplay more interesting.
And more interesting. From your standpoint, is a wider variety of clubs hit into the green?
That's right? Yeah.
Strategically, I mean you played in the era where like strategy became a big thing on tour. And the strategy is not from like the romantic golf architecture standpoint, hitting it to certain sides of the fairway. Strategy is if I can hit a driver and push it up there without it getting going into a hazard, that is the best idea for the best thing for me to do, you know, versus laying back and hitting it from the fairway. For the most part, the idea of pushing driver, what
do you think you know? Obviously that is and I think my big question with this is does that change if all of a sudden, instead of pushing it up to a wedge, I'm pushing it up to a eight or seven iron versus I could take a five iron in the fairway, or versus a say a seven iron in the wedge standpoint, Do you think that has any I could have any strategic impact the shorter driving distance.
That's a good question, and i'd actually I'm not the best person to answer this. I was not a super stats guru. I mean that was coming online when I was on tour. You might know more about it and have more conversations about it.
But I think part of.
That, like hit it as close to the green as possible was driven by there were just more players that could hit it really far, Like there just wasn't a three to twenty shot in the bag for most guys on tour in twenty ten, right, and then as more of those guys came on tour that became an option. They had decide how they wanted to play the golf courses. So so it's hard to answer whether that strategy will
really change. I do know that driving it straight, I know you're big on the driver face and you know, go going to a smaller driver that's less forgiving. I think it's still pretty easy to hit the driver crooked. It really is like you saw it at Bayhill. On these are the last two tournaments I watched. Nobody could hit that sixteenth fairway and when it mattered on sixteen and eighteen it was really hard to hit it straight, and fifteen was the same way, like guys were not
hitting it straight coming down the stretch. And Rory, you know, whether he's having a hard time finding a driver or just wasn't swinging his driver great. At TPC he missed the cup by eight shots. So it's still very possible to hit a crooked t shot in today's world, with today's equipment, do.
You think it would be advantageous to have less forgiveness in drivers? Do you think the driver spec not addressing any driver specs equipment specs is a miss or do you think they got it right by not touching anything with that.
I think that that would potentially change the world ranking a little bit more than changing the golf, like just having the ballgo twenty yards shorter for everyone, I think
the same skills still matter. I do think that if you change the forgiveness of drivers or clubs, I mean, I think it's pretty obvious that if you put like a small headed driver and everyone on tour had to play straight blades and you had to carry a three wood and then a two iron and a three iron and a four iron, that some play the world rankings would shuffle a little bit, Like a really pure striker
would rise up. They're already at the top, right, Like the same top five would be the same top five, but kind of that, like Adam Scott would go from twenty fifth in the world to like sixth in the world, right because he's just an absolute flusher. And I mean Rory said this before, where He's like, if a hybrid wasn't invented, I separate from the field even more because
I can hit a three iron up my nose. Now, a guy like me, a low speed guy from two forty, I can hit a hybrid or a five wood, and I was pretty good with a five wood, right, Rory's three iron is more impressive. But actually I would bet that, like, give me a hundred balls versus Rory's three iron. My five wood pretty decent. But if we're if we're all playing straight blades and it goes back to less forgiving clubs, he's going to outrun me really fast.
Yeah, that's the thing. And you see Rory play great, like he didn't have his a game. He almost won bay Hill. And one of the reasons that he plays great at bay Hill is that that's one of the few courses that requires you hit six or seven long irons there. And I mean, I wrote about this in the Fridak newsletter. It paid me to write about it. But like it gives bay Hill actually an identity is the lack of variety in the golf course is unique because it's like, oh, these guys have to hit a
ton of long irons. And like Bryson played well there. Bryson was a great long iron player, Like you know, everybody talked about his distance off the tee. He's always been a great long iron player. And it's interesting when you start to think about the game a little bit differently in terms of like finding the center and having
long irons, it really drastically. I think that's what you know, people that long for the game of the seventies, that's what they longed for, is the idea that the greatest skill in the game is the ability to hit that towering long iron. Yeah.
I agree with that, and you know, I think it's still rewarded. It really is, And like the height part is really probably underrated and under talked about. Like I was reasonably successful tour player and played well on hard courses and was on the shorter half of the spectrum. I mean, became really short, but when I started, I was kind of in the middle, and then I steadily moved down in distance. But the main reason was I
could hit it high. I really could hit high shots with four, five, six, seven irons, and it was a big advantage on hard golf courses. And you know, if you add distance to that, now you're really cooking.
With a shorter I don't know if you're there. You're an edgiteer, so this might be right up your wheelhouse. With the ball going shorter, do you think there will be a push for a little bit more spin in the ball because you're going to have longer shots into greens, into firm greens.
That's possible, It's very possible you. I mean again, you saw that on sixteen at Sawgrass this week that whole once it rained on the weekend, it wasn't so much, but it was hard for them to hold that green with that two and twenty yard type shot.
Last question, if you're the tour, is there any real thought to rejecting this from the USGA and saying no, we're going to play by our rules.
I don't see what the upside would be to that. The governing bodies, the Tour, the RNA, you know, the PGA of America, they all have a really good relationship. I think they've kind of walked in locks that probably more than ever of the last few years.
I don't see.
I'm sure they've all been in communication throughout this whole time. I would be very surprised if that was the case, but that's just my take.
All right, Roberto, thanks for coming on. You've got a podcast that everybody can check out. The Course record show. I listened to podcasts and to prepare for my interview with Joe Ogilvy that was last week. That was fantastic. Anything new with your show.
No, we just were focusing on the business of golf, so you had Joe to talk about the tour regulations and field sizes. We picked some golf companies and ran through who owns them, whether Joe would buy or sell as a professional investor, so we will be always kind of looking at the business side of the golf industry.
Yeah, it's a worth I love love checking the episodes out and listening. It's a definitely a unique podcast, which is the most important thing in a crowded space is you've got a very unique angle and obviously a very unique perspective being somebody that's been very deeply entrenched in the game of golf. So highly recommend everybody go check out your show. And thanks for coming on to talk about this.
All right, Andy, good talking to you.
All right.
Joseph, you are i would say, an advisor for strategy with top end players, you know, at the amateur ranks, the developmental tour ranks, the PGA Tour ranks. You really, you know, one of the things that you do is advise them on how to play a golf course, I you know, to kick things off. I think, you know, I think a lot of people might understand this, but maybe give it a you know, explanation on how the distance gains and power has impacted strategy in golf as of you know today.
Okay, yeah, a lot's unpacked there. I'll try to keep it as succinct as possible. I think the as data has become more advanced, especially with the shot link system that was put in on the tour almost two decades ago, and strokes gained Mark Brody's invention, there have been a lot of insights drawn that prior to that point you would have had to just hypothesize. Now we know, right, distance is one of the most reliable advantages on tour.
You're going to hit the ball. You might not hit the ball straight every day, but if you're a long hitter, you're gonna hit the ball long every day. So a lot of players have chased swing speed because they know that it's one of the most one of the most reliable advantages on tour, but there are a lot of other advantages on tour that have come from analyzing data, being aggressive off the tee, being conservative on your approach targets,
like taking hazards out of play. There's some over art principles that the top end players are adhering to, and I would say overall strategies, players are getting better and better about strategy as the years go by. Whole Tenant Rivier is a great example, and they've shown those graphics where ten fifteen years ago a lot of players were laying up. Now everyone's going for it, and part of that's equipment, which I'm sure we'll touch on today.
So the idea is that the further you can hit it, the closer you can get, and the easier the game gets from there, the basic hypothesis, assuming you don't hit it into a trap or a water hazard.
I think that's a simple way of looking at it. But I think the key insight is more that when you lay back with like a three wood or an iron off the tee to the difference between your chance of hitting the fair way is outweighed by the distance gain of hitting a dry and so a lot of people historically thought, Okay, laid back with three wood because you're going to hit the fairway versus a driver, you're not going to hit the fairway. But that's a reductive
way to look at it. And if you actually compare your chance of hitting the fairway with a driver versus a three wood, you'll quickly arrive at the conclusion that the driver is the better play. I'm simplifying a little bit, but that's the main that's driving a lot of the decisions the players are making.
So with that in mind, just you know, a basis understanding of the strategy. With that in mind, you know, the USGA has proposed these changes here. Now, if we remove say fifteen to twenty yards off of t shots, and obviously there's going to be some trickle down irons are going to go shorter to not as much. Will strategy fundamentally change on the PGA tour fundamentally?
Absolutely not.
All the same concepts are going to apply in practice, Like are there going to be small modifications to how players play certain holes?
What kind of shots they still like? Yeah? I think so.
And there's a lot of unknowns, right, we need to see how this new ball reacts. But there will be some small differences. I think to say that, oh wow, now players are going to start playing golf courses completely differently would be a huge overstatem and it's not going to change very much.
How do you see more nuanced? What are things that you look at with this and think, oh wow, that might be different?
Yeah?
I mean I think approach targets will be interesting because long irons, generally players are getting really conservative with their targets right, And the reason for that is that your dispersion patterns pretty wide. With a long iron versus a wedge, you can get a little bit more aggressive because you
have a tighter dispersion pattern. So now we'll just have to see how those dispersion patterns change when you're hitting the ball a little bit shorter and what is a long iron disp pattern versus a wedge Like, There'll just be some small changes there.
I think.
The other thing we'll have to see how players off the tea dispersion patterns change with a Spinni or ball, because if for some reason it's much easier to hit a three wood than a driver or something, that could change when you hit threewood off the tee versus a driver. I don't expect that to be the case, but I want to I want to have more information before saying anything definitively.
I was wondering too, you know, and this is something like obviously one of the things that's happened. And you explained, like you might hit the fairway less when you hit a driver than a fairway wood. But the distance, the additional distance, the closer you get, like, it's not a given that you're going to hit the fairway with a three wood if you lay back, how far would that pendulum have to change? And does it change with like distance?
In is it then all of a sudden? Does it change with like if I if all of a sudden I'm hitting a seven iron out of the rough instead of a wedge, then all does that five iron out of the fairway look more advantageous than the seven iron from the fairway versus wedge?
It would have to change pretty significantly.
I think the key here will be does the dispersion pattern with the driver versus the three wood?
Does that gap widen?
Because it is true that a three wood, generally a player's dispersion pattern is tighter. It's not just that a driver goes farther, which is why you miss fairways more often. Your dispersion pattern is actually wider with a driver, not just distance, actual dispersion. So if that were two, if the difference between driver and three wood work to significantly widen, then you'd derive in more situations where three wood's the better play, especially if a fairway narrows where your driver's
going to end up. That's true. If those dispersion patterns don't really change, I don't expect there to be much of an off the tee club selection, any any kind of fundamental shifts in how players are thinking about that. So we're just gonna have to see. But if drivers in three woods kind of have the same ish dispersion patterns as before, then now I don't think that's going to come into play.
I think players are going to keep being pretty aggressive with driver.
So the way the fundamentally the way we see guys play golf should stay pretty similar from a strategic standpoint. With this this rollback, what type of rollback would you say you would need to see to have a significant change.
Yeah, I don't I'm not enough of an expert on some of the specifics of what you could do. But for example, if the driver, if the sweet spot was smaller, and your just dispersion patterns started to get pretty wide with driver because you have to hit it in the center of the face, then it would bring more three woods into playoff the tee again, especially if the fairway titans where your driver's supposed to go, so that I
think you'd have to modify the driver most likely. But like with a spin of your ball, if you're into a significant wind, like, I'm interested in seeing what those dispersion patterns look like because that could be an instance where hitting three wood may make sense even under these regulations that they've proposed.
So yeah, and I don't know if there's going to be a spin your ball, but it would make sense possibly if you're hitting longer shots into greens on average, that these players might want a little bit more spin, especially with how firm some greens get on tour.
Yeah. Absolutely.
In terms of just general thoughts, do you have any general thoughts on the news today and just you know, the conclusions that you've come up with.
Yeah, I mean, I'm really happy to see something being done.
The death of the long iron on par fours is something that I think you and I both have lamented over the time, Like you don't see a lot of long iron hit on the PGA tour, And I'm excited that even if it's a five percent reduction in distance, you're gonna get more irons and fewer you know, more wedges turned into a nine iron and eight iron like that does introduce more compelling play, even if it doesn't have a fundamental impact on how players strategize.
I mean that that could fundamentally change golf. I don't I don't anticipate the top end changing, like the very top players having an impact on but you know, if you turn wedges into eight irons, like if you tearn four wedges into eight irons, and that that could dramatically shift some of the prerequisite skills needed in golf.
Right, I think shipping probably just got a little more important. Right, So that's one thing you could just directly point to, guys are going to hit fewer greens. The other thing that there will be some dialogue around is who does this benefit like a long hitter or a short hitter, And the consensus seems to be be a jerk reaction, the knee jerk reaction. That long hitters are going to benefit from this, I'm not sure that I quite see that.
Padrake Harrington said that. Bryson D. Chambeau kind of said the opposite, like this is penalizing me for working so hard and hitting it long. I do think this is going to benefit shorter hitters based on some theory and which holds.
For example, for example, a short part.
Four now right, let's say three hundred and thirty yard part four, where a guy hits it three point fifteen off the tee versus a player who hits it three hundred. That player who hits it three fifteen is at a significant advantage right now because he can get it within ten to fifteen yards of the green, which value of distance is really strong. Inside fifty yards, the incremental benefit, incremental benefit of having like an extra ten to fifteen
yards is huge inside fifty yards. As we move that back, there's less of a benefit there now. So if a three hundred and thirty yard part four did is more, this regulation change is leveling the playing field a little bit. That's not true of every length of pool, like a four hundred and fifty yard part four that just swung in favor of a long hitter. Now barely barely, but overall we'll see how this shakes out.
I actually think it's going to benefit a shorter hitter.
That's what I saw this too, this discourse that like short hitters are screwed, and I uh, I think the thing that's discounted about short hitters on the PGA tour at this point, if you're a shorter hitter on the PGA Tour, that means you're like a freak of nature across the board with all the other aspects of the game. That means you are like extraordinarily good. And I think for a short hitter that might be hitting a five iron into the green, when a long hitter is hitting
a nine iron into the green. Them hitting a three iron into the green versus a five iron isn't as big of a deal as a long hitter going from a nine iron to a seven or a six iron.
Well where it's really big. So it'd be valuable if people looked up a plot. I mean, I'm trying to think of where one would exist, but where the value distance's biggest is generally inside like fifty yards, and then it gets pretty big between like two hundred and ten and two hundred and forty yards. That's where it gets pretty steep on the curve. Outside of that too, sixty two seventy to eighty. The difference there, the marginal benefit
of like ten yards is not as significant. So some of these par fives we're going to see some equalizing and that's not going to be as tilted in favor of the long hitters. So the other and the other thing I would the other thing I was saying.
I think that would be run counter to what people would think is that you would think that the short par fours and the and the par fives would be where the the long hitters have such an advantage with a rolled back ball. But this might not be the case.
I think it's good.
Yeah, it should in theory equalize that a little bit more. I mean, they're still going to have an advantage, right, but it should equalize it a little bit more. I think the other huge thing to look for. I don't think carrying hazards is talked about enough in the value of distance discussion. But now with a five percent reduction in absolute terms, there are going to be fewer hazards that a long player can carry that a short player cannot.
And so there you're going to be removing some of those scenarios where a Dustin Johnson, a Bryson, D Chambeau, like some of those really long hitters Rory can carry a bunker that other players cannot. And that's significant, right, Like if the difference between two drivers before was three hundred and eight versus a three hundred yard carry, so eight yards, and now it's just a little bit smaller, it's shrunk down.
To whatever four or five yards. We'll see that just.
Lessens the number of hazards that only the longest players could hit. So I think that's another way that this could equalize things a little bit.
Yeah, Like a great example of a golf course like that is the Detroit Golf Club where Bryson won, you know, and he literally could hit it over every single hazard, but a shorter hitter still had to contend with all these bunkers.
I'll give you another example that as you were saying that came right to my mind.
Hoole two at Quail Hollow.
That's a shot that a lot of the long hitters just send over the trees, and it's a huge advantage if you can take that over the trees, dog leg left and they just fire it over the over the trees.
I'm interested. Can you still do that?
Like we'll see with the I mean, I don't even know if the PGA Tour is gonna adopt these the new ball, but if they were to, that'd be a really interesting t shot because that's a classic example of where shorter players would benefit because now everyone would be sort of playing into the same location.
All right, Joseph, people can find your work on Twitter, and thank you for coming on and giving lending your expertise here on strategy and how this could potentially impact the top players and how they play golf courses.
Thanks for having me appreciate it, Handy.
Thank you for listening to another edition of the Frida Egg podcast. It was edited by Matt Rushes. Thank you, Matt. As a reminder, we're barreling down on the Masters, this is right around the corner. If you want to get kind of inundated further into the game of golf and you don't already check out the Friday newsletter. We just did a great one on this subject of the podcast you just listened to. It's available on the website, that edition of the newsletter and full I think, Garrett to
the word count is like three thousand words. We kind of split it up and dove into different topics about this. So if you're still looking for more, I mean, this is it's such a big topic. I mean I could do six hours of podcasts analyzing all the little areas that this.
Is going to go down.
I think that's the fascinating thing is like there are a lot of unforeseen consequences that not I don't consequences aren't isn't the right word, but unforeseen things that are going to happen from this, because that's what happens when when big regulation happens, is that a lot of innovation happens. I think that's the thing that's not being talked about enough, is that, like, really, this is how kind of the world works. You regulate something and then people innovate off that.
So we're going to see some new stuff from this. So check out the Friday newsletter. I've diverted here, but it is a it is a nice morning read every Monday, Wednesday Friday. It's free and it will keep you in tune with the game of golf and what's going on the big topics, and again we put a lot of effort into that. It's basically like a big article three
times a week from our staff. So thank you for listening, thank you for the support, and we'll be back next week with a new episode of the Friday Podcast.