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Golf takes a great deal of time, land, water and money in a world where all four of those resources are more precious than ever.
And yet, in spite of the things golf consumes, it endures in part because the things it produces carry a great deal of value: outdoor recreation, lifelong competitive opportunities, lasting fellowship and values like integrity and accountability, not to mention a $100-billion global economic impact.
But there are limits to what excesses the greater world will tolerate from the game.
The grand list of things golf gives us makes most of us grateful. We feel a responsibility to give back to it, to make sure this incredible game, which has existed for centuries, will engender in future generations as much or even more gratitude than we feel.
Is there any such gratitude at the upper levels of the PGA Tour?
A memo from PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan to the players that circulated Wednesday included a public denouncement of the efforts of the USGA and R&A – the game’s two main governing bodies – to moderate the distance the golf ball travels via a proposed local rule to be instituted starting in 2026.
“Although there has been some level of support for limiting future increases,” Monahan writes, “there is widespread and significant belief the proposed Modified Local Rule is not warranted and is not in the best interest of the game.”
This blunt broadside against a years-long effort to right-size the game may go down in history as one of the most misguided steps by any major professional sports league. In one bullet point, the PGA Tour didn't just bite the hand that feeds it, but kicked it in the gut.
The move completely dismisses years of research and thoughtful analysis from all corners of golf, from organizations like the USGA and R&A to the PGA Tour's own all-time greatest players. Tiger Woods, whose ability to play the game is matched by his deep understanding of its nuances, has recognized the need for distance moderation for many years. “Yes, I think this should have happened a long time ago,” he said of proposed equipment regulations in his press conference at Augusta National this past spring.
As if Woods’ perspective isn’t enough, all-time major champion Jack Nicklaus has known the threat poses to the game for decades.
“I don’t think the rules are right about the golf ball,” Nicklaus said in 2014. “The game has changed so much because of the golf ball. If they would switch back [to a shorter-flying ball], all of the 17,000 courses that are obsolete would be championship courses again.”
The PGA Tour’s current preeminent player, Rory McIlroy? He’s in favor of a rollback, too.
For the Tour to blithely dismiss years of thoughtful perspective from three players who have contributed so colossally to the success it currently enjoys shows potentially destructive short-sightedness and arrogance. By putting its head in the sand with regard to the distance issue, the sport of golf threatens the entire fabric of the game.
Don't tell Jay Monahan, Greg Norman or Yasir Al-Rumayyan this, but golf would get along just fine without their influence. It would exist without Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, too. It would exist without you or me, for that matter. It would exist without the Pro V1 golf ball or the Callaway Paradym driver. Golf can get by without any one person or product, but it literally could not exist as such without its playing fields.
Golf courses are far more important than equipment companies or C-Suite executives
Golf courses are a constant amid the game's centuries of evolution. Their continued survival is simply more essential than the comfort of any equipment company or the job security of any player or executive.
Whenever USGA CEO Mike Whan talks about the courses that host the U.S. Open, he emphasizes their importance to the nearly 125-year old championship’s winners. "Venues matter," he says. That sentiment is true of The Open Championship, which dates back a further 35 years. The Masters is not the Masters without the genius of Augusta National Golf Club’s design.
The home of the Masters has added more than 500 yards since Tiger Woods' first victory there in 1997. In order to keep its iconic par-5 13th hole relevant for the tournament by lengthening it to more than 550 yards, Augusta National bought acres of property from neighboring Augusta Country Club, prompting that club to shift an entire hole to solve for its lost acres.
The Old Course at St. Andrews, the most historically significant place in the game, is close to obsolete for professional competition because its tee boxes have had to be moved so far back that, in some cases, they lie outside the course’s actual property. Rather than saunter off the side of a green, as was the original intent and the case for centuries, players must now backtrack upwards of 100 yards in order to get to the next tee, causing traffic and significant pace-of-play issues.
All because equipment companies, employeers of some of the world’s sharpest product engineering minds, want to pretend they’re incapable of making a golf ball that flies slightly differently.
While golf equipment companies deny any responsibility and exacerbate an already widespread problem, the pressure on golf courses to add distance, speed up already-stressed greens, grow longer rough and add unnecessary vegetation extends far beyond the few dozen venues the PGA Tour visits. Courses everywhere high-level golf is played - developmental tours, college tournaments, local, state and regional amateur circuits - must reckon with the fact that 460cc driver heads and ever-longer-flying golf balls have radically changed the way courses are played by good players.
Course design changes are expensive, and that cost gets passed along to everyone but the golfers who play the game for an increasingly cushy living, or their driver sponsors.
Many of these courses can't afford to do what Augusta has done. They don't have the capital or the space, and they receive zero support to defray design alterations from the companies that have put them in this position. Meanwhile, their superintendents continue to work harder than ever to keep up with increasingly demanding members and visitors, all with a shrinking labor pool to pull from. The latest PGA Tour decree suggests it does not care about these hard-working, passionate people, even though they make the Tour look good by preparing the courses it uses for its tournaments.
Augusta National and The Old Course are not, strictly speaking, PGA Tour courses. But the intertwining of the tour’s business with that of the major championships means that golf’s major institutions – the governing bodies and the Tour – must move in a unified direction in order to preserve the game for future generations. By denouncing efforts to rein in distance, the PGA Tour has turned its back on the institutions that paved the way for its existence.
The consequences of this heel turn could be catastrophic. A schism between the sport of golf and the entities that oversee the game of golf will damage the credibility of both sides, potentially beyond repair. In a world where concerns over land and water usage continue to grow and surround golf, the PGA Tour's position on the proper size of golf courses is shockingly tone-deaf.
To continue to enjoy its current level of favor with the world’s decision-makers, golf needs to show a good-faith effort to be reasonable about its footprint. Otherwise, seemingly frivolous forms of opposition – efforts in California to convert golf course acreage to public housing, for example – will eventually get enough support that they stop being jokes.
A reckoning is coming between golf and greater society. Perhaps it will happen after Jay Monahan has retired to large houses on private lands. But by publicly breaking now with the earnest efforts of the game’s overseers to preserve it for future generations, the PGA Tour has brandished its callous lack of concern for potential consequences on the game of golf like a dagger.
Comments (7)
Golf is bigger than the PGA/LIV organization, and always will be. Mr. Monahan's statement I believe is a smokescreen to deflect from all of the other issues he is going to have to deal with going forward. The USGA and R&A have always set the rules that we play the game by and if they decide to exert their authority and implement rules regarding equipment of the game, as they have in the past then the PGA/LIV will have to live with these rules or call the game they are playing something besides GOLF.
The golf course it self could make make a change. Make hitting the fairway a priority. I'm tired of off line golf shots still in play with very little trouble. Trees have been cleared out, very few obstacles in line to green and rough should be more difficult to play out. Maybe a lay up, just saying.
Right on Tim! You’ve highlighted some very significant issues that many golfers were not even aware of. We can only hope that the PGA comes to its’ senses at some point and backs off this ridiculous stance.
If the roll back applied to all and not just the tour, it would eliminate the problem for the manufacturers and the pros' endorsements. Us hackers would be in the same place as we are now--we can't hit it as far as the pros. Some of us might have to adjust which tees we play from.
Alan, like you, I think an across-the-board rollback seems like the simplest solution now. It seems the USGA and R&A attempted to thread the needle by positioning it as a Model Local Rule, potentially with the sense that adherence to the new ball would eventually trickle down throughout the rest of the game because golfers have always wanted to play what the pros are allowed to play (that's why non-conforming equipment has never really sold well).
Your observation about tee selection is something that every anti-rollback commenter seems to have conveniently forgotten. Every golfer has always had a way to combat any loss of distance. It's not by spending $700 on a new driver or $55 on a dozen Pro V1s. It's by moving to a more appropriate set of tees, which costs nothing, and always has.
Golf equipment technology has now overtaken the design of such wonderful golf course designs. Restrict technology to the existing golf courses maximum Tee to Green. Please preserve the great course layouts and contribute further to the Environment .
Agree. It's a shame to see so many great courses become "obsolete" in part because of this technology. I'm guessing, because of the LIV invasion, that the tour is now at the mercy of its players and the tour is thinking that most of its players would be opposed to distance regulation. So it's making a statement like this to show they're on their side.