Home » Sports » Golf » Golf Equipment

Golf Equipment

© Russell G. Bell

Golf Equipment

Recently this question has been posed: "Do we really need to spend $500 on a new driver that will give us three more yards off the tee?" Wally Uihlein, chairman and CEO of Acushnet defends the advancements in technology indicating they only help the game and that it is still the accurate player who will finish first over the long ball erratic hitter.*

Be this as it may, the PGA is in the process of lengthening its host golf courses to accommodate the long ball hitters. What does this mean for the average golfer? If all they do is move the Professional tee boxes back by 30 yards per hole there of course will be no change for us white tee hitters. But let's suppose that new courses being built follow this line of thinking and instead of a 410 yard par 4 the average player is faced with a 440 yard par 4 which one could argue should be a par 5 for the average golfer.

I, for one, will not be happy to find my game changing from the low 90's to high 90's just because some players are hitting the ball longer. Are the courses going to offer different score cards for each of the tee boxes? Where a Pro (black tee box) may have a par 5, the amateur (white tee box) a par 6, the senior (gold tee box) a par 7 as well as the ladies (red tee box) a par 7? This is not feasible for the very reason that we, as amateurs, want to think that on a good day we could compete with the Pros and would find it demeaning to have par sixes and sevens on the score card. If in all cases both old and new courses were to change the location of the tee boxes, to reflect the reality of the golfers who use them, the only change to the score cards would be actual yardage, not the par values.

This would mean a 440 yard par 4 for the pros, a 390 yard par 4 for the amateurs and quite possibly a 280 yard par 4 for the ladies. I did not include the senior yardage because so few courses acknowledge us as a golf group.

Now let's talk about the new "long balls" which I don't think are that much longer for the average golfer. Instead of this change in technology why don't they design a ball that will only fly straight and true correcting slices and hooks and every other type of miss-hit ball which we all carry in our bag. This new ball would find a much larger market than any improved distance ball currently available.