AVIDGOLFER

Ogilvy: ‘We’ve Completely Outgrown The Stadiums.’

Rick Arnett /

With the Tour seasons winding down, talk concentrates (once again) towards how to prevent the increasing distance of golf shots ruining current course layouts and who or what to point our fingers at for blame. Most levy fault at the golf ball or the relatively humongous driver size. Bottom line is something should be done–either via bifurcation (like wood bats in MLB) or making everyone hit reduced-flight rocks.

Geoff Ogilvy is one of the more astute Tour players who is branching off into course design (he’s on call to redesign holes for Shady Oaks CC). And, he believes Idocracy has arrived in golf as reported to golf.org.au’s Martin Blake.  

“Major league baseball in America they use wooden bats, and everywhere else in baseball they use aluminium bats,’’ he said. “And when the major leaguers use aluminium bats they don’t even have to touch it and it completely destroys their stadiums. It’s just comedy.

“That’s kind of what’s happened to us at least with the drivers of these big hitters. We’ve completely outgrown the stadiums. So do you rebuild every stadium in the world? That’s expensive. Or make the ball go shorter? It seems relatively simple from that perspective.’’

Ogilvy believes that a wind-back in the technology is coming, although he sees it as “a challenge’’ to the manufacturers to make a ball that does not soar so much for a professional-level player, but does not nobble the amateur.

But the 2006 US Open champion left no doubt about his thoughts, saying a “time-out’’ was needed to rethink. “It’s complete nonsense. In my career, it’s gone from 300 yards was a massive hit to you’re a shorter hitter on tour now, legitimately short. It’s changed the way we play great golf courses and that is the crime. It isn’t that the ball goes 400, that’s neither here nor there. It’s the fact the ball going 400 doesn’t makes Augusta work properly, it functions completely wrong.’’

Add in the cost and available land to build 7,800 yard layouts to hopefully lure a major championship (most will never get one) and it becomes a race of diminishing returns.

I listened to the PGA Tour Network on Sirius/XM driving home and the hosts Brian Katrek and John Maginnes debate over what to do. The ball is just one variable to adjust. There is the driver size to address as well or more benign clubhead grooves so as not to help the bombers with flip wedges from the rough.

What I find curious is if you do use altered equipment then maybe the ball won’t matter (again aluminum vs wood bats). The balls remain the same in pro baseball (okay maybe they were juiced a bit this season). Or, grow the rough as Tour player Steve Flesch offers.

Titleist’s soon to be retired CEO Wally Uilhein “amazingly” defends the golf ball in a letter to the Wall Street Journal. Since its behind a paywall, let’s allow Golf.com’s Dylan Dethier to explain.

“Is there any evidence to support this canard…the trickle down cost argument?” Uihlein wrote. “Where is the evidence to support the argument that golf course operating costs nationwide are being escalated due to advances in equipment technology?”

Uihlein, who is retiring from Acushnet at the end of the year, mentioned several other factors that may play into the recent groundswell behind a reduced-flight ball, including instruction and player fitness. He also cited a lack of imagination from course developers.

“The only people that seem to be grappling with advances in technology and physical fitness are the short-sighted golf course developers and the supporting golf course architectural community who built too many golf courses where the notion of a ‘championship golf course’ was brought on line primarily to sell real estate,” he wrote.

Uihlein also floated a possible motive for Tiger Woods’s recent public stance that the ball is flying too far: Bridgestone, Woods’s sponsor, could stand to benefit from the change.

Uihlein is probably both correct and delusional. Longer courses do cost more (land, grass, water, fertilizer etc) while some courses like the relatively short Riviera CC hold their own against the pro bombers due to risk/reward holes. However, the ball does matter in golf (as do larger drivers) and when senior players are hitting it 30-yards farther than when in their primes, something should be done. Hell, even the USGA’s Mike Davis has emerged from his cave to push the panic button (probably 10-years too late).

“I don’t care how far Tiger Woods hits it,” Davis told the Journal. “The reality is this is affecting all golfers and affecting them in a bad way. These courses are expanding and are predicted to continue to expand. All it’s doing is increasing the cost of the game. The impact it has had has been horrible.”

Classic courses rendered obsolete by players regularly pounding drives over 300 yards is the main impetus for action on the ball. One potential solution is for individual tournaments or courses to mandate a particular ball for participants.

The obvious choice there would be Augusta National, a course where many renovations have taken place over the last two decades to accommodate the Tour’s longest bombers.

But, as noted in the Journal piece, when Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley was asked about whether the club would consider rolling back the ball for the Masters, he replied: “It’s not something we would want to do.” 

Too bad as both men and women dig the long ball. But at some point, cooler and saner heads have to prevail. The “when” is and will continue being the sticky point.

Geoff Ogilvy Titleist Wally Uilhein