If you have any doubt that the new golf ball is largely complicit in your ability to take it deep you need to read the attached article by Andrew Rice.  A recent posting on Geoff Shackelford’s site brings back to light this informal study done back in 2011 by Andrew Rice on the how much of the gain in distance we enjoy is the result of the change in golf ball technology.

Andrew did his testing with Titleist golf balls, the industry leader, comparing the old wound Professional 90 and Tour Balata 100 (of blessed memory from around 2000) to the layered Pro V1 392 and the most recent Pro V1.  His conclusions on reading into this data seem irrefutable.  There is a solid 10% gain in the average distance of these balls and almost a 5% gain between the original Pro V1 and the most recent upgrade.  Check out the data for yourself.

(Click to read Andrew Rice’s fascinating study on distance improvements of Titleist balls)

In the comments from the peanut gallery below the study it is pointed out that the shelf life of the Professional 90’s and Tour Balata 100’s has probably been exceeded and could account for some distance degradation.  Also the difference in the technology of the current driver used for the study may has something to say as well, but this latter point would confer relative distance advantage to both generation of balls.

For you techno wonks out there Andrew’s comments on spin rate and smash factor readings of the balls is interesting as well.

Bottom line for all of us is that these balls are nuclear and a 10% gain in distance puts the golf course at a significant disadvantage to our normal play.  No wonder the greens at your place keep getting faster and the cup positions are closer to the edges even on Wednesdays.

Andrew Rice

August, 2011

Ken Duke, a 44-year old journeyman who first turned pro about 130 dog years ago, won for the first time on PGA Tour with a compelling playoff win in the Travelers Championship.  At the same time, on another channel, Craig Stadler, who has not won in almost nine years turned the glass slipper back into patent leather making a slippery 12-foot par putt on 18 to claim the Encompass Championship on the Apostle Tour.  There was unbridled celebration in dog pounds all over the country in response to these two unlikely victories.

For an old guy Ken Duke knows how to win with panache.  From a very nasty lie in the right rough on the last hole in regulation he managed to gerrymander a par to hold his one-shot lead at 12-under.  But the preparation of his acceptance speech in the scorer’s tent was rudely interrupted when Chris Stroud did a Tom Watson imitation holing a 51-foot chip shot on 18 to force a playoff.

Duke’s drive on 18 in the first playoff hole was abysmal left but once again he played a brilliant approach and made par, forcing Stroud to make an 8-footer to prolong the playoff.  The third time through the 18th Duke ran out of bad places to hit his tee ball and from the center of the fairway staked a wedge to 30 inches to set up the winning birdie.

The only real anomaly in this was in the post game green side interview with Feherty. Duke credited his recent plane ride experience with Feherty and McCord as his ticket to the winner’s circle.   Apparently associating with people who are clinically out of their mind is helpful to managing your nerves down the stretch in a PGA Tour event.

This old dog won the 2011 Nationwide Tour Championship which got him full time status on the PGA Tour.  Since then Duke has taken full advantage of his opportunities making 22 of 30 cuts and winning $1,500,000 in 2012.  He has had his moments this season with 2 other top tens to go with this win and total earnings of $1,600,000.  This could go a long way to making the premium payments on a long term geriatric health insurance plan.

In the alter space tour event the Walrus had an out of body experience, which in his case is a major event, playing flawless golf the first eight holes to build a five-shot lead.  But reality returned and he made four bogies over the next nine holes bringing young Freddie back into the mix.  A salty up-and-down from the green side bunker culminating with that 12-foot birdie putt made for a very popular Koo-Koo-Katchoo moment for the Walrus.

The mellow yellow attitude of the Champions Tour was captured in Freddie’s post game comment when he said, “Obviously I wanted to make the putt on 18 to have a chance at a playoff, but to see him make that putt, it was really, really important to him, and the crowd was really pulling for him. I couldn’t be happier for him.  You’ve got a great champ.”

Sunday was a day, like my daughter is apt to say, that they let the old dogs roll in the grass, with their feet in the air, like they just don’t care.

June, 2013

The Golf Channel pundits filled the airwaves with predictions about how meek little Merion, at less than 7000 yards, could not stand up to the swift kicks of the best players in the world armed with the technology of the day.  This was going to be a major with scores in the low sixties, maybe 20-under as a winning score.  Tiger, Rory, Adam, and others were going to have their way with it and this was going to be a U.S. Open in Greenbrier Classic clothing.

Visiting the grounds of Merion on Friday it was obvious to me that the golf gods were not going to have any of this.  With the help of the Mike Davis and the USGA set-up operatives, the intrinsic defenses of this classic design have stood sturdy and challenged the patience of these competitors.  Any of them that believed this would be a short stroll in the park have been rudely awakened by the Merion reality.

The landing area on the blind tee shot on 11 looked like you could not parallel park four VWs in the allotted space.  Deep confining bunkers like on the short 350-yard 8th forced players to play long iron-sand wedge into a green the size of a quarter set on it’s side.  This hilly piece of real estate gave players awkward side hill billy goat stances even in the middle of the fairway.  The green complexes provided the real teeth-steep fall offs shoulders, savage furry bunkering, and serious pitch and yaw to augment the streaking green speeds.

In the final chapter the bulldog at Merion left some torn cuffs and a few open sores on the ankles of those competing for the U.S. Open crown.

The array of holes and their sequencing made building a scorecard an existential experience.  Two opportunity par fives, the only par fives of the day, come in the first four holes.  The second one was over 600 yards and has a fortress green ringed by deep bunkering fronted by a crossing brook.  The front pin was particularly difficult to negotiate, even with a sand wedge in hand, so birdies would be dear there on Sunday.

Steve Stricker fell victim to the Open pressure on the par five 2nd with two balky swings leading to a double OB experience and a triple bogie that dashed his chances for the day.

At 504 and 487 yards respectively, the two par fours at 5 and 6 played a cumulative 9 strokes for the average player, so this is where the wheels could come off early in the round.  The side slant on the 5th green toward the creek front left can generate a 12-foot break on a par saving putt.

The tee boxes at the par threes at 3 and 9 were pushed back to 256 and 236 yards-pros were hitting three woods and drivers at the back pins on the 3rd.  Again, a tight proximity of Cobb’s Creek to the front pin position on 9 made it into a risk reward par three on the final day.

Luke Donald and Charl Schwartzel butchered the front nine in 42 strokes each to end their Open dreams.  Charl would not have beat a Pro-Am partner playing 3 thru 10 with six bogies and a double on 6.  All the “Loooooook” cheers were stifled with his five bogies and a double on 6 in the same stretch.

The crowd noise opportunities were in the middle of the round.  Short holes at 7, 8, 10, and 11 all seem to be scoring chances but these holes have serious technical difficulties that require impeccable execution to set off any fan bedlam.  The ribbon thin 11th is where Bobby Jones closed out the last match of the U.S. Amateur to finish his historic Grand Slam at Merion in 1930.

Jason Day managed to capture the attention of crowd with a couple of birdies on 8 and 10.   But he rinsed his approach into the narrow opening on 11 and two more bogies down the stretch left him two strokes too far to seriously contend.

Maybe the testimony to the quirky character of Merion was to be the 115 yard pitch and putt par three 13th.  An on-level pitch to a green the size of your big toe nail, the players cannot see the surface of the green because it is obscured by a Groucho Marx brow on the top of the front bunker.  It should be a certain birdie hole to anyone with their name stenciled on the side of their bag, but miscues into any of the green side bunkers makes par an elusive score.

Champagne Phil had successfully walked the leader tight rope with doubles on 3 and 5, a birdie on 4, and, in a pure Phil moment, holing out for eagle two from the fairway on 10.  But the enigmatic 13^th took it’s toll as Phil air mailed a wedge into the high grass behind the green and it was all he could do to make a bogie and stay in touch.

The final leg at Merion, starting at number 14, can break down the sternest competitor and those able to avoid the train wrecks through the quarry holes would be the ones with a chance to hoist this piece of silver.

The harrowing OB on the left of 15 haunted Sergio three times on Saturday on his way to a 10 on this par four taking him from one under to five over for the day and putting a fork into any hopes he might have of contending on Sunday.  Hunter Mahan was hovering around the lead Sunday with a steady hand on the tiller until he made double on 15 with two shots wayward right, followed by bogies on the two difficult closing holes.

Phil made one more costly unforced error on 15.  He took the bold driving line up the right and had a stock gap wedge from about 130 for a birdie chance that would have given him a chance to tie for the lead.  It came up 10% air and the severe slope of this green sucked his approach all the way back to the front edge leaving him a pitch off the green surface and two putts for the bogie that was the final nail in his Open coffin this year.

Justin Rose kept the feisty dog at bay showing unperturbed patience through the roller coaster experience of the first sixteen holes.  Successfully playing the Kitzbuhel drop to a long, narrow undulating tongue of a green on the par three 17^th and negotiating two text book Hogan-esque shots into the impossible finishing hole, Rose came out with his trousers in tact to wrap his arms around his first coveted major trophy.

Dash the prognostications of those Golf Channel pundits.  As we all saw today….it is the size of the fight in the dog.

June, 2013

I can assure you that Shigeki Maruyama, the man with the telegenic smile and the matchie-matchie outfits, has not forgotten that June Monday in 2000 when he shot 29-29-58 on the South Course at Woodmont Country Club in the U.S. Open Regional Qualifying for 100th edition of the USGA summer party at Pebble Beach.

Shigeki first blipped on the international golf radar screen in the 1998 President’s Cup when he went 5 and 0 in that year’s matches.  Springboarding off of nine wins on the Japanese Tour he had a couple of high finishes in WGC events the next year that helped him earn access to the PGA Tour.  Playing full time in America after that he won three times-Greater Milwaukee in 2001 in a playoff with Charles Howell, Byron Nelson in 2002, and the Chrysler Classic in Greensboro in 2003.

Splitting the uprights with a seismic 58 ( Allsport)

That grey morning at Woodmont, with rain showers threatening his afternoon round on the more difficult North Course, Shigeki was determined to go low and put something in reserve before the afternoon lap.

What he did was simply astonishing.  Two pars on the opening holes and then he put his foot to the floor making 11 birdies and an eagle over the next sixteen.  Guess the course fit his eye.  It included holing his wedge from 96 yards on the par four ninth for an eagle and the exclamation point of hitting the long par five eighteenth in two (remember this was 2000 before the techno geeks got to the maximum COR on the fairway metals making this routine) setting up a two-putt birdie and his second 29 of the day.

Worth a thousand words……… (photo by Zowl Productions)

He cruised home with a two-over 74 on the North after lunch and easily qualified at 132 two shots behind David Berganio the medalist for the day.

We have staged the U.S. Open Regional at Woodmont for decades with PGA Tour pros of all calibers participating and no one else has come close to doing what “the Smiling Assassin” did that June morning.  The notoriety is a bit infamous from the standpoint of our members but it was great theater for those who witnessed his folkloric round.

June, 2013

Colt Knost flew in some rarified air for an amateur in 2007 when he won three USGA titles in the same year- the U.S. Amateur, the U.S. Public Links, and was a member of the victorious Walker Cup Team.  Only the immortal Bobby Jones and the great Jay Sigel had done this before him.

Jason Sobel of the Golf Channel reports that to commemorate this accomplishment the USGA asked Knost to donate one of his clubs that helped him win those three titles.  Maybe with his sardonic tongue planted firmly against his cheek Colt volunteered to donate his Scotty Cameron belly putter to put on display in the USGA Golf House.

A live shot. …..this puppy looks like it can still do some damage.

Now you cynics out there will say Colt is taking a shot at the recent USGA and R & A ruling that bans the use of these formerly legal putting implements.  But from where I sit this is just a reverse case of Paying Forward…..it is called Paying Backward…..just a man with a philanthropic heart and a point to make.

Personally I can’t wait to read the inscription the USGA puts on the plaque under this piece of memorabilia.

May, 2013