No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 770: The Rollback

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

Soly, DJ and Tron gather for our midweek pod fresh off the USGA / R&A announcement of a rollback of the golf ball beginning for pro golfers in 2028 and in 2030 for the recreational golfer. We offer our initial reaction to the announcement as well as some other reactions from around the game of golf, plus a look back to how we arrived at today's announcement - particularly in light of the rejected Model Local Rule bifurcation proposal from earlier this year. We also sift through the various opposing points of contention around today's announcement, the responses from other organizations in pro golf, and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yes. That is better than most. I'm not in. That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Lang up podcast. Sully here. It is a dark, dark, dark day in the world of golf. DJ Pies here to lament the end of fun and golf.

Hello, Pied Man. Hey, guys. Happy to be with you here as as our days in the game wind down. No, I'm pumped to talk about it. We got a big meaty topic to dive into today. Happy to be with you guys. Tron Carter is here. Hello, T.C. How are you? Hey, guys, I'm good. I assume we're talking about the big spectacular blockbuster trade yesterday between the I was going to throw a T to you to do that first. Yeah. Okay. I'm just making sure I'm in the right place here in the right place.

Carlos Ortiz for David Puegg. Let's not give that short change here. Let's breeze past the other topic here. This episode is brought to you by our friends. Of course, it title is the rollback is bad. We hate everything about it. And that is the end. That's all we're going to talk about a distance on this. Now we're kidding. Of course, we wanted We wanted to give another shout out as well to title us and acknowledge their their steadfast belief that we should be having our distance conversations. Freely, even if their opinions are different, you know, than their opinions might be,

they've been extremely true to their word on that. And honestly, they've just been a delight to work through a lot work with through this entire process. They've been very informative. They've been very helpful. It has definitely helped in a proper way, helped shape my view, solidify some things, help back off on a few things that I've just been a little bit inaccurate on. So I just wanted to give them a huge shout out. They did not release a statement today to my knowledge, but I think you can go to their website and find all their public communications titles.com slash titles response distance insights with dashes

in between all of those words for all of their positions on the topic, but again, I wanted to thank them for their, for their, you know, holding up their end of the bargain as far as letting us have our conversations on distance, even if our opinions are different. There's no group that makes me like understand this topic better when I, you know, it's very easy to sit on your your you know, sit on your couch or sit in your computer sit in your basement, whatever and just hook. Well, obviously they should do this right and then you start talking to like people who are very like way smarter than you.

People who actually make the golf balls people who actually like test them understand how they fly and do the testing and know what the limits are. Like, well, obviously, I mean, they could just do this, right? No, dude. That's how physics works. What are you talking about? Like, a lot of those conversations have been very well appreciated. And I think if maybe not necessarily changed, you know, from a one or zero rollback, no rollback perspective, I don't know that they've totally changed any of our, our minds specifically, but they've added a lot of nuance to it. And I think maybe for better or worse, help me understand just how complicated and complex this whole sole topic is. So that's that's where I sit you sit before you today as is one of those people that is confused, but ready to talk about it.

A lot to discuss. Why don't we get into first what was released today, the announcement from the USGA and RNA. They will be updating their testing conditions that they use for golf ball conformance under the overall distance standard. This will take effect January 2028. So we've got some time before this comes into effect. So their decision aims to reduce the impact increased hitting distances have on golf's long-term sustainability while minimizing the impact on the recreational game. And then nuts and bolts in the nerdy part of it,

the revised ball testing conditions will now be 125 mile an hour clubhead speed, which is equivalent to 183 miles an hour of ball speed, a spin rate of 2,200 RPM RPM and a launch angle of 11 degrees. The current conditions, which they said were established 20 years ago are 120 miles an hour, which is 176 mile an hour, speed 25 20 RPM with a 10 degree launched angle. They said their revised conditions are based on analysis of data from worldwide tours and the game over several years and are intended to ensure that the overall distance standard

whose limit will remain unchanged at 317 yards with a three yard tolerance continues to represent the ability of the game's longest hitters analysis of ball speeds of among golf's longest hitters in 2023 shows the fastest 10 players had an average ball speed

of 186 miles an hour while the average ball speed of the fastest 25 was 183.4 while the very fastest average 190 miles per hour. Lastly, the longest hitters are expected to see a reduction of as much as 13 to 15 yards in driving distance. Average professional tour and elite male players are expected to see a reduction of nine to 11 yards with a five to seven yard reduction for an average LET or LPGA player. They also will go on to say is expected for the average male amateur player who swings at an average of 92 miles an hour expect a difference in distance of five yards or less. And that's with driver. That is with driver. That is with driver. So going back to, you know, we had some major discussions around this when the USGNR proposed a model local rule, which was a proposal to bifurcate the professional game

from the amateur game. This model local rule was rejected by the PGA tour, rejected by the PGA of America, rejected by a lot of equipment companies saying that they preferred to unify the game, that players, part of what makes the game beautiful is that, you know, Amitur's can play the same equipment as the pros.

They took, turned that around, took that and said, okay, well, now we will be rolling this back for everyone. Dej, what's your overall reaction to the news we found out today, which we kind of have known in the last week or two, but it's now officially out there and all the USGA and RNA communications are out there as well. A lot of reactions, a lot of reactions.

I TC, a lot of different directions we could go with this. I'll just pick a couple here. I think the more I think about it and sit with it, the more it feels like it's kind of a no-win situation for the governing bodies, right? I feel like they're kind of left in this situation where you either do nothing, which they've made pretty clear is not their intended path

that they wanna go down. Which they've been doing for the last 20 years. And which they have been doing a great job of for the last, for the last 20 years. Either you do nothing, you do something that is, watered down so much that you're not going to get, you know, really much of like a nuclear reaction from too many stakeholders. Or you do something that pushes it to the limit or the level that they probably would have liked.

And then you really piss off everybody and you end up losing probably a lot more credibility and public goodwill and all of those things. And so where I think we find ourselves today is probably somewhere somewhere in that middle, right? I mean, Mike Wahn talked about this a lot on golf channel today and in both appearances, he made where he's going to go back and he's going to have a thousand emails from people who hate it and a thousand emails from people who said, I can't believe you didn't go farther. I think that's pretty accurate. And I think it all kind of comes back to probably a lot of the stuff I said after the MLR was announced, which is it's kind of a Rorschach test for how you feel about governance, right? Because I am not a data scientist.

I'm not really the kind of person who's going to go in and break apart their methodology of all their studies and all the data and how it was collected. And you know, all these like micro examples that people love to look at on Twitter. I think I'm trying to be much more in the camp of the governing bodies are there to govern. They're there to make the impartial decisions that people are not going to make for themselves on popular as they may be. And if, if at the end of the day, the only question that really matters is, do those guys think that there's a problem? yes or no. And if there is, which they have said that there is, then we got to figure out a way to fix it. And I feel like the way they've gone about fixing it is a very, very long process. It is, it is now, you know, we're now into almost year, what, six of this,

since really they were, they started the distance insights report in 2018. Obviously, it's, they've been prepping for this conversation even before that probably all the way back to 2011 TC and you're gonna get into the Vancouver protocols later. We're gonna talk about those Uh, which are sick You know, if you want to look at this and say like oh my god. This is reactionary. I can't believe they're You know, they're flying off the handle. They're taking a couple of years worth of data and they're like, they're making... Why now?

Why now? ...a molehill into a mountain. It's just, that's not what's going on, man. This is such a long process. And at the end of the day, I'm kind of like, I got to trust that they're going through their paces because, man, this seems like the last thing that they would want to do. Like, I think it would just be so much easier if you're the USGA to just keep going and like keep smiling and, you know, in order to do something like this, they must really think

that there's a massive problem and I think you got to kind of take them at their word on that. TC, what am I, what am I, what am I, what am I, what am I, what am I, what am I, what am I miss? Oh, I agree. I think it's certainly easier said than done. There's a lot of downstream effects that I'm sure they're not even aware of or can't even formulate yet.

I think a lot of people are treating this as if it happens in a vacuum as well. Like it's all relative. I don't think they're out to make the game harder. I think, you know, it's not how, like it's not about like the scores, I don't think. Like, oh, scores are too low. It's about like how people are shooting those scores, right?

And, you know, I think they'd like to see people use their mid-Irns a little bit more. It's like using their, their, but like I think it's, it's not just about distance either, right? It's about, it seems like everything's kind of out of proportion. So I think kind of bringing everything back into proportion using this as something I think, hopefully it's the opening salvo in what's a multi-step process that includes driverheads, that includes, you know, kind of hot faces, all that stuff, where, you know, I think the ball gets demonized a lot, but this is also one one thing that you can do that that affects everybody versus, you know, for some people to go out and buy new drivers. I thought, uh, I'll just text some of the friend. Uh, he was, he went back and listened to Michael Breed's podcast when he had, uh,

Jason Goron and Breed was bitching about, he said, just think about all the jobs that exist where people are going to go get secondhand golf balls and all the people that have businesses where they dive into ponds and lakes and all kinds of things all over the place and recover all these golf balls and then use those balls for reselling purposes. That's a huge business. Huge. You're going to shut all those down. What about the kids that are playing? We're trying to compete at the age AGA level. They don't have the financial wear with all, you're going by golf balls all the time. They go into the woods and they find a golf ball. I mean, I played a lot of golf with not buying balls for an extended period of time. Like, I don't think kids that are playing in the AJGA where I think they have like the one ball rule are, you know, are going and like, like all the,

like this isn't gonna happen to like 2028 either. Like the pros for Amateur just 2030 is what it's like. So like, like do people have like a stockpile of golf balls that's like, you know, thousands of balls, like a palette of balls just sitting in their garage or their basement. Like they're, I think the USJ is being inordinately fair here of both communicating with all the stakeholders. Like, you know, communicating saying, all right, you know what, like bifurcations off the table, we, we listen to you guys

there. Or like the tours statement that they put out their bitching about the process and how it goes against the vancube. Like, this has been like a five year thing and you're saying now that you didn't have enough of a say or that they're not listening to you or they're misrepresenting shot link data, it's crazy. You're gonna get me all riled up. You guys drive the ship. A lot of different ways we could go with that response. I wanna pick up one of the things you said there because that was truly an equal takeaway

from everything I said about governance is just how disproportionate the anger and vitriol is on something where like, why just if you could like sit down some of these people and just ask them like a therapist, just like, why are you so angry? Well, because in, you know, I'm going to lose five to seven yards in 2030. It's fucking bullshit. I can't believe that they're doing this to me.

Which listen, hand up. I'm one of those people in a lot of other phases of areas of my life, but I'm trying to take a level head here. I've read the distance inside reports. Like, if it pisses you off that much, at least read it. At least educate yourself, at least know what the issues at hand are. Well, zooming out on this though,

I surveyed the audience just to say, like, hey, if you are anti-rollback, like, what is your single issue voting? It's causing you to vote this way. Like, what is the one reason why? Got like 700 responses to it. Got a lot of them. And, you know, just to pull a sample of them, Swiss Danny 67, he said, because the problem in 99.5% of the amateur game is lack of distance from the T tease they play. This is pushed through. I think there'll be bifurcation along the lines of conforming for his juice ball players.

And then Jay, Jay Pccora wrote 10 said juice ball. He's religious followers. I can see both sides. I think the reason this is hard to agree on is 99% or more of individuals do not directly experience the distance problem in their rounds. They just don't see distance as a problem. And I think that last part is like worth diving in on, right? And that if you play golf normally and you do not hit the ball far, it is very reasonable

to conclude that there is not a distance problem in golf because you are not experiencing it, right? Like if you do not see the effect on you, I can see how you can reach that conclusion, right? And like in a vacuum, do I want my like best struck drives to go a shorter distance, like a binary question? No, like clearly not. Like I try to play the golf ball that legally goes as far as as possible, right?

Like that's we all do, right? You don't, I mean, I'll survey you guys. Do you guys want your best, in a total vacuum, do you want your best struck drive to go eight yard shorter than it does? I mean, listen, it's impossible to be impartial about that question. Of course, it's fun to hit it far, right?

It is. And that's what's interesting about this, I think now too, is I truly am hitting the ball farther than I ever have in my whole life. A lot of that is, not a lot of it. All of it is equipment related. I got fit for new equipment this year. I got fully, like, it's completely, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully, fully I was driving past you at Pinehurst a couple a couple weeks ago. You were. That's a blast to do. And so I fully, fully get the, if you are not, you know, sitting down, reading the distance insights report.

And this is kind of where I get back to you at the beginning, you know, what I was saying at the beginning is the onus shouldn't in a way, the onus shouldn't be on just 100 million golfers to go like, no, no, no, like, go read the distance insights report, go read our reaction, go listen to all the back and forth, and then maybe you'll understand, you know, the big picture. Like, I get, well, of course, people aren't going to do that. And so, of course, in a low context, like gut reaction world, I 100% understand people being massively pissed off about this. And I think there's going to be a lot of people that feel that way, probably the majority of people that feel that way, which is an interesting conversation in and itself, right?

Is that disqualifying to making a change like this? I would say no, right? I mean, I don't think people like seeing calories listed next to their fast food orders either, but like ultimately that's probably a good thing. DJ's like Bloomberg. He's trying to get the, trying to get the city to stop drinking drinks. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know those big goals. Yeah. I don't know that I would vote for, for listing those calories next to the, my McDonald's order, but like unfortunately it's probably better for me that someone did. And I think that's kind of where I keep coming back to you on this stuff is I fully understand why people are pissed. And I'm not even going to try to change your mind. It's very fun to hit it for. But, you know, the decision kind of is not in that it's not a democratic system, right? There's a governing body in place for a reason. And it's not like we've been hitting it.

Like it's not like we woke up one day and it's like, oh, I'm hitting it 20 yards further than I did yesterday. It's been this incremental creep for the last 30 years, right? And you're, you know, 28 years. And so it's something where it's like, yeah, if it's if it's in pieces here and there, there's not really a right or wrong time to do it, right? And then I think what cracked me up,

like I said this on the pod on Sunday, like when I got like Ricky Fowler, it was like, well, they should have done this 20 years ago. Why now? It's like, well, you know what, man, they didn't. And so does that mean that like, so like, so they should have done it then, that means that they shouldn't do it now, like if anything, it's just contradictory, right?

Where I think I don't, I tend to sway a little bit from what you said there on the reaction being reasonable there, DJ is ultimately with not reasonable, not reasonable, understandable, understandable. Okay. I guess I do understand it, but at the same time, like, what were, what this really actually does today? I'm in support of as a part of, as one part of a solution to what I believe to be a distance issue that I believe very strongly that it would be a distance issue and golf. Do I think it is the number one and best thing they could have done to address the issue? Absolutely not. I agree with UTC that the golf ball pays the biggest price. When we, when everyone talks about rollback, I think everyone thinks of golf ball and thinks of the distance it goes and not.

I'm particularly intrigued by one part of what they talked about in there about what they're going to look at next, which is continue to monitor drivers and explore possible additional options related to distance, specifically, that we will research the forgiveness of drivers and how they perform with off-center hits.

Like that is blinking lights, like strongest thing that I would appoint to to say, like if you want to address the value that I would like to see restored in golf of the benefits and of hitting the center of the face, that would be it versus what has happened today is you have taken the dispersion cone of how professional golfers hit it, how Amherst golf golfers hit it,

it's varying degrees of which this is affecting it, but has taken your dispersion cone of how professional golfers hit it, how Ambers golf golfers hit it, it's varying degrees of which this is affecting it, but it's taken your dispersion cone and moved it back towards the tee a little bit, right? It has not changed. Maybe I'll even slightly more emphasis on hitting it farther, like a little more value in the fact that you have this skill, but at the same time, what it does is it can put a cap on or limit potentially the need to move T's back to restore shot value. I think people don't really understand the term shot value, which again, if you don't

do this every single freaking day, like we do, I understand that completely. But the idea being, all right, a lot of stuff for a bunker to make sense. It has to be at its proper distance for the equipment that matches up, right? But if Rory can fly seven of the bunkers that web Simpson can't, the shot value gets messed up a lot. And in theory with this, by bumping the bottle back 5% without having to move T's, you might be bringing bunkers into play that now Rory has to think of. He's still going to get value out of hitting it farther, but he's going to be playing a more similar course than maybe the middle ranked distance guy here. That's

what has happened with this effect, right? This does not change the effect of off center hits. As far as I know and could tell, it doesn't majorly affect the way the ball is going to spin with offline hits and go farther offline. It is just shrunken the scale of which the game is going to be played, a scale of which that has stretched out greatly, greatly significantly over the last 30 years. And it doesn't even go all the way back to that. It not only puts a cap on it, continued to extend, but it is shrinking back at least a little bit, not enough in my mind, which people aren't ready to hear, but just shrunk it back a little bit to the point where I, I don't think it is that reasonable to be upset about.

Yeah, I think it's almost gotten disqualifying to not be a bomber right of like, you know, you're where I think that's that's a problem out there where, you know, hey, if you don't hit it this far, you can't compete as a professional. I think that's gotten out of whack. I think the, the, it's all right what you said about just like, you know, this happening over 30 years or whatnot too. It's, it's like, I guess the devil's in the details on how they're gonna enforce this. Like is it, you know, how do you slow the golf ball down, right? Do you, you slow down via the core,

via what's inside the ball? Do you slow down via spin? Do you slow down via aerodynamics via what's inside the ball. Do you slow down via spin? Do you slow down via aerodynamics? I guess the companies, it kind of brings trade-offs back in a little bit more. Where what I hope they're not doing and going back to, I think, tell you what you said, it's not bringing it far enough back. I kind of agree with you, but also it seems like that's all of branch to all the people that are winging about all this. It's like, hey, like they could have made this a lot more drastic. And this is more preventing against future growth than it

is trying to put the genie back in the bottle. So, you know, I would say acknowledge that a little bit. At least you're trying to slow it down, right? Because that's what I think slumbers and Mike Wann and all these guys that have been on TV today have been saying a lot is we know that people are going to keep optimizing and they're going to keep changing their launch angles and keep trying to get spin down and keep using different shafts and getting on track man and working out and doing all these things that they're going to keep moving forward. The point is like we're just trying to slow that rate down so that, you know, Mike Wahn said this a bunch of times today, like we know that probably in 15 years we're

going to be right back where we are right now probably having the same conversation. But to your Ricky Fowler point, Tron, like at least we did something, at least we slowed it down, we bought ourselves another 15 years to figure out, you know, what how we're going to get our arms around this thing. And and one of the main like principles of this again, is the USJ and RNA have reached the conclusion through their studies that regardless of what is causing the ball to go farther, whether it be track man, whether it be optimized launch conditions, whether it be driverheads, whether it be athleticism, whether it be height of the players, whether it be fairway

mo height, whether it be any of these factors, regardless of the cause, it is an issue that needs to be addressed. That is what the many hundreds of pages of documentation with many inputs that have gone into it. That is a conclusion they've reached, right? So it is not, I guess one of the things that I find myself fighting the most is like this misnomer of like why are you taking the skill away from players?

It's like no, that is absolutely not what is happening. That's not what their desire is. It's, you're still changing a bunch of functions to make sure that the proper value of shots is restored in different ways. And we can get into that in a number of different ways. But that it's yeah, I just and like people, all the people, I think one of the things

that's really pissed me off is like, all these people saying, well, like, you know, the game's gonna take longer, you know, because, you know, people are gonna be hitting longer clubs and it's like, all right, well, this is incremental across skill sets. So if you're not hitting the ball 105, 110, 115 plus swing speed, you're not going to be deriving as much benefit out of the technology. And then also, like, you're seven iron,

you're not swinging at those speeds. Your seven iron is not going to go demonstrably less far than it currently does, right? At least the average player or even the above average player. And this, like this doesn't just affect the pros. Like there's, there's people at every club, like the, the best players at every club, there's bombers at every club, right? And it's, you know, it's the top 1% or top 2% of players everywhere, not just the top 1% and the professional ranks or like it's, you know, it's the top 1% or top 2% of players everywhere, not just the top 1% and the professional ranks or like it's, you know, it's it's your club championship at the Walker Cup, right? And like, I can't imagine what Nick Dunlap or Gordon Sargent was hitting into most holes

there, right? Like the par fours don't, like strategy almost doesn't matter anymore. Yeah, I think that was kind of the big thing that came out of the initial distance insights report, right? As, you know, I believe the quote, is increase hitting distance can begin to undermine the core principle that the challenge of golf is about needing to demonstrate a broad range of skills in order to be successful.

And I think we were talking to a friend earlier today and they brought up a good point that like, I think that conversation is actually interesting, right? When you get into, you know, they were comparing it to basketball and like is the NBA currently the game that, you know, Nase Smith invented? No, probably not, but that's like a fun conversation to have about whether that's good or whether that's bad. And I think golf where everything just gets so complicated is there's just such a massive industrial complex built around all the equipment stuff and all the recreational play and all the gear that goes into it because

Like you guys were saying about you know changing the drivers and I wish they would have would have done that Obviously the USGA looked into that. That was one of the first things that they they kind of said after the 2020 distance insights report came out was hey, we're gonna look into You know, here's our areas of interest Here's what we're gonna look into and they came out a couple months or maybe it was because of COVID a couple years after that and said, ah, the clubs just aren't, you know, they're not, uh, it's harder. It's harder. Yeah, it's just much harder to do.

And even just teasing it out now, let's say that today, they came out and they said in six years, drivers are going to be substantially different. What's that going to do to driver sales for the next six years, right? If everybody knows that like, yeah, go buy, go buy this year's driver, go buy this year's driver, go buy this year's driver. And I know that people can roll their eyes and we can roll our eyes to an extent too about like how much we should be putting the commercial interests of private companies in front of, you know, the sustainability and health of the game.

That's a whole interesting conversation. But that's what I think happens to this is, I mean, there the game, that's a whole interesting conversation. But that's why I think happens to this is, man, there's a two-hour conversation down every one of these rabbit holes, and you can keep doing it, and we do it privately and publicly all the time, trying to get to the bottom of all of those and figure out what the right answers are.

But at the end of the day, it's like, okay, let's at least all get on the same page. Like, is there a problem or is there not, which obviously we can't get on the same page about that either because people like to get into the data and actually people, you know, I think there's, there's even credible stuff on that level, right? It's like elite players are absolutely hitting them all farther. A lot of the data in the distance insights report is like amateur players are not really hitting it that much farther, right? That's, that's, there's a push and pull there, though. It's, it's choppy, but like over a 30 year period, yes, amateurs are hitting it at every

handicap level are hitting it 10 to 12 to 15 yards longer. They are, but it's, it's not a clean, clean line. Yes, it's, it's not a like existential catastrophe. Basically, the 50% out amateur does not hit the ball too far, right? That is, like, bright lights. That is a, I don't want to say it's a distraction in the conversation. It's just like, yeah, if you, if you're a 50th percentile amateur male player and you play with a bunch of 50th percentile male amateur players, you have not experienced the distance issue, right? And honestly, though, I think our point in this is that you're still not going to feel it.

Like, I'm sorry, you're not, you're probably not. And that brings us along a separate question. Is this worthwhile doing? Is it worth updating the apple cart for this current change? That is a whole different animal that I am very willing to listen to conversations on that It's just like again identifying like the commonality of why we we or just a whole golf community cannot find common ground on this is is is worse Saying like yeah, like I don't blame you if you percentile amateur that has not experienced this like So that's where you end up in this you can go down many different rabbit holes, but you end up at the same thing

It's like well, okay, but does something need done? Yes or no if the answer is yes, okay, is it only at the pro level? Or do you want to keep this unification thing? And there's not a clean answer to any of it, and that's how we ended up at the how we are today. Which also 50th percentile image is the guy that's finding fucking balls in the woods and putting them into play. Do you think those balls go as far as?'re already removing yourself from credibility? Can we talk about the bifurcation stuff a little bit? Because I think I saw a lot of questions on like, why did the PJ tour come out so strongly against this? Why did the manufacturers not like this? Solid, what's your, what's your read on that? Because, you know, again, just kind of backing up, that was the initial, the initial proposal from the governing bodies

was, and again, just to go back to the timeline on some of this stuff a little bit, distance insights report was announced and launched in 2018. They said, we're starting to compile this stuff. We're going to put it all together. The findings were published in 2020. In February of 2020, right? Just COVID's really starting to buck.

So a lot of the action was pushed back, pushed back. I think all the way till 2021, I think October 21 was when, I'm sorry, February 21 was when they announced they were researching two areas of interest, model local rule, which was essentially bifurcation, and then club stuff. Like changes to testing, club length, changing like the tolerance stuff,

the characteristic timing stuff. Basically, all the way down to March of 2023, what was it? March of 2023, that was when they proposed the model local rule saying like, okay, we've been listening to you all for five years now, four years, five years, we've heard all your comment periods.

Here's what we suggest based on everything that everybody said based on all the data based on the problem. We should just by for Kate the rules elite players pros and elite am open up another five or six month comment period on this and government like the key stakeholders like Torpedo this hated it. And so it's all I'm curious if you what what are your thoughts on why that was and kind of how did we end up back it full rollback? Well, by vacation and we said this when it came out, it's messy, right? I mean, again, I think most of the distance issues at the highest level of the game, I think the pro game has been reduced to a lot more driver wedge than is healthy for the game. And without going down that rabbit hole, there's just a ton of effects that have come from that narrowing of fairways has led to even more emphasis on driving distance, even though people think it's more emphasis on accuracy.

It has led to correlation to driving distance going out of control. It strokes gained from a stroke's gain standpoint, correlation to accuracy, going the wrong direction, all that stuff. So look, it is the easiest like solution to addressing it is just like for the pros play by different rules. Sure. But there is like, you know, I was in favor of that. I think I still in favor of that. But

at the same time, the stakeholders involved have made good points. One, where's the cutoff? Like, dude, does the US mid-AM have a rollback ball? Like, does that, how many thousands and tens of thousands of golfers does it affect that are trying to qualify for the USGA Amateur Championship? The US mid-AMateur Championship, the junior championships. Where, if you're playing all your qualifiers, does that mean you're playing all your practice rounds with a different level of equipment? It was very messy. Also, equipment companies gave very clear feedback

to say like, hey, we don't want to have two factories. One, to do this, not that it needs a whole factory for, but we don't want to do the R&D just for professional golfers that also goes down to the amateur golfers. It's not desirable. We believe part of the beauty of golf is a unification, and we all play the same equipment. And that ultimately ruled the day from the people that were that again looked into the options of what to do and like understanding

what rulemaking and governance actually is like giving opinions on a podcast. Lot easier, whole heck of a lot easier, even easier on Twitter and way more fun probably, but like governing and making rules and putting things in place and working with all the stakeholders is a lot more challenging. And that's kind of where you go and goes into the black box for me of like, Hey, do you, like you've made this point a lot, Dave's like, do you believe in governance? Do you believe the USGA and our Peter Kossus may not believe in that in months people to rebel against it? Well, only Cuxkit governed and you're going to fight back, right?

And do you trust like the decision makers at hand to like have made that proper conclusion? And like I tend to net out on yes on this, even if like, just trust has been so by the USGA for many, many years. It's like, man, I think we said this when Mike Wong got hired like two and a half years ago, was like, if we were to pick one guy of all the golf industry to take that job, I probably would pick Mike. And so I do have faith in his ability to make proper decisions. And I think that they probably landed on something that was the most palatable at this point.

You imagine Mike Davis trying to deliver the message. I mean, everybody was. He started it. He did, but like, even all this stuff, and I guess that comes into some of the credibility or some of the trust issues even I have with the USJ of like the devils and the details on this stuff and you know better get the details right because otherwise the whole thing might be and it's where I struggle a little bit with like long putters right like they've totally fucked that up like like you know there's no enforcement of it there's students clearly anchoring out there.

There's just make it simple. Make the putter, like if, all right, make it to the spirit of the game. Should the putter be the shortest club in your bag or it can't be the longest club or, you know, various things like that or, hey, a putter can't be longer than 45 inches, you know, shit like that.

And it's like, you know, instead we have this convoluted toothless mess that, you know, instead we have this convoluted toothless mess that, you know, they, they, like they just can't get out of their own way in spots. So hopefully, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt here. But if, so, if somehow they mess this up, then it's all right, then let's, let's change it. Let's, let's change it back. But like, it's been going a certain direction here for, for the last 30 years. And all the arguments of like why now golf's thriving? Well, not doing it right now. They're doing it in five or six years for amateurs. You know, like it's, it seems pretty thoughtful.

Yeah, I think real quick on the why now thing just I can't stress how quickly that falls apart if you just think about it for two and a half seconds. Just not even that. Right. Why would we do this when the game is at its absolute strongest? Yeah, totally. We should do it when it's weakest. We should do it when everything's just falling apart and nobody has extra money. That's when we should be tackling this thing. But I think what everybody's stressed about is not wanting to see a repeat of kind of the square groove situation, right, where

they, they, you know, identified this thing that was causing a massive, you know, in their mind, causing a massive, massive problem, which is that, you know, you guys correct me if I'm misremembering this, but I think the thought was, guys are able to spin it from the rough a lot more because of certain grooves and it's you know allowing them to get at pins and it's not punishing them when they hit it offline. There was a whole wedge retooling situation that went on, grooves changed and scoring state exactly the same. Nobody really thought about it again. And I think people are kind of saying that with you know the the anti-rollback people would be making that case of like, this is not going

far enough. So why are we even doing it? Why is this just disruption for disruption sake, which I am curious what you guys think on that point. Is this, why, you know, is this worth, I know you both kind of have alluded at, they should have gone farther, is it worth taking the steps that they have? Or is it kind of disruption for disruption sake? It's worth starting here. It's worth like, all right, well, there's a lot of stuff we need to

address that can be first based, like put a cap on this, right? Like this is, again, if we're talking like six years down the line, but you know, four years going down the line before this goes into effect for pros, maybe it's five, if I'm not the math right. Like that is, there's gonna be gains and distance between that time. And like in reality, like we're not equipment wise, but like where the distance will be probably going is probably, I haven't looked into this closely,

like maybe like 2015 distances, right? Which is not short, like that is not short. We're not going back to 90s distances. Like that's just not happening with this proposal. It's not significant enough, but like, all right, which, there's a lot of holes in the boat. There's a lot, a lot of holes in the boat. Which one can we plug first?

Like, what in the sequence of things we need to do here to get things back to, you know, a more sustainable environment? Which hole can we plug first? Not the, you know, what's the biggest hole? It's which one can we plug first? And this feels like the first one to plug to me. Again, it's, yeah, who knows what the actual distance is? Because this stuff is always, you know,

there's some uncertainty there as far as, hey, what does it look like in practice versus in theory, you know, running a model or whatnot? But, but I imagine if they say, all right, this is where we want it to land. They can figure out how to get it there, right? Even if there's tweaks to what the formula is or what the actual regulations are,

again, going back to what I thought earlier, like trade-offs, right? Like, hopefully they don't just like dumb the golf ball down to where it's the exact same thing, there's same spin rates and all that. And it's just going less far. Because to me, that's, that's just as uninteresting, right? Like, I think there's interesting, I think there's something interesting there to going back

to comparing it to other sports where when you are dealing with companies who are, you know, they only exist in order to like serve a need in the market and they are trying to please, not only the professional golfers that are playing their balls, but they're also like millions and millions of consumers, is like they're setting out, there's no tournament ball, right? Like they're setting out to make the straightest ball,

the least interesting to your point. Like they're trying to make the least interesting golf ball possible because that's the one that's gonna sell the best. It's not like the USGA has a ball factory and they're saying in order to make the game more interesting, we're gonna make it spin 20% more because that's gonna bring back shop making and all this stuff.

I don't think they're gonna figure out how to optimize it. Yeah, like within those parameters, with the ingredients that they have available, I'm saying it's like when you add more constraints to the mix, to me, that's where it gets interesting. You have to make a decision between distance, like I feel like growing up, we had to make much more of a decision

between distance and spin, distance and green side control. And then the solid core golf ball came out. And that was, like rather than just being a matter of raw distance, because there were long golf balls out there, it was a matter of, you could get that high launch and that lower spin off the tee while not having to compromise the spin in the control with the wedges and around the green, right?

And I think, you add on a little bit more constraint as far as distance goes and hey, maybe the recipe looks a lot different and people start prioritizing, you know, other elements more so than just right now. It's like distance, distance, distance. Speaking of distance, listen, there's a lot of ways you can get ready for the holiday season and one of the ways you can do it is by gifting your loved ones or yourself the perfect golf present. That is the all new RAPSOTO MLM2 Pro. We are building off the success of the original MLM, which is now only $299.99. RAPSOTO has introduced the MLM2 Pro, a mobile launch monitor and golf simulator that's revolutionizing the game.

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Don't miss out on this opportunity, elevate your game with your episodeo and to play without limits. You're looking to do their own testing, right? 20, 20, 20, 20 starts now, TC. Start out, optimize it, man. Yeah. No, I think on that level too, like it's, I, you know, I don't know, like what percentage of this is, is driver head, what percentage is ball, this or that.

I just know, like, I've gone out and played with titleist professionals or Max fly revolutions or whatever ball, like I've tested out like a few different ones and just see how they spend differently off the seven iron, see what they do, you know, kind of like see how they spend differently off the seven iron, see what they do, you know, kind of like see how it reacts differently with a hickory versus a modern driver and all that and it's like. Like yes, the golf balls go farther now like that's an indisputable fact and. You know, I like I think we need to employ the I test a little bit here. That's all I'm saying. Well, I think again, trying to separate out like disingenuous arguments versus like very valid arguments is is a lot of the outrage that we saw online today was pretty much of like, I will leave the game over this. And I'm not exaggerating some of that reaction. Like, I, you know, who's going to leave the game with it? And I would say like,

man, golf is in an extremely fragile place regardless of any future decisions. If like plus or my like minus five yards would cause people to leave the game, right? Like I get a very, very small percentage of my golf enjoyment comes from the final 5% that my ball carries in the air, right? And it there's it again, it's the important. If I had to like big bold letters, like put this out there for people to, the one thing to please take away from all of this is this is, it's distance at any level is relative, right? And you are, and your golf course wherever you play,

are in charge of setting up relative distance, right? I do not play the same tease at the courses I play consistently. I will move around from time to time. If it's 55 degrees, like very little chance, I'm going to the back T's at Tim Aquano just because that just becomes a lot more stressful of a day, right? I'm in charge of setting up what T's I want to play. Now, when there's a bunkert 220 and I'm hitting a driver over it and I clear it by 50 yards, do I get like a lot of pleasure out of that and a lot of joy of the game? No, that's not where the joy lies for me. The joy lies from taking on the proper challenge of a shot that has fit for my skill level, right? Trying to cover a 330 bunker is also not a good skill for me.

So like chances are, if you struggle into cover bunkers or why not, you might be playing the wrong set of teas. And like part of that is gonna come back to you. And like again, if you put it in a very simple terms, if there's a, juiced up equipment and you have a 400 yard hole, and b, you have rolled back equipment, and you're playing like a 385 yard hole.

I'm of the belief, you're gonna have better time, long term in the game of golf, playing b at the 385 yard hole. It's a more healthy scale for the game of golf, and you don't have to go play the same t, the same golf course with rollback equipment. Like a lot of the stuff I'm seeing in the PGA of America today is kind of frustrating me of like the messaging that this is going to make golf harder for people.

No, like you're partially, you're almost entirely in charge of that as a golfer of like what kind of challenge you want to take on. And I think people should take some ownership of that. I think there's also something to be said for. I mean, I know the USGA has tried with T.F. forward, which didn't go great. But I mean, they put that in pretty big bold letters in their original distance insights report too.

It's just people are playing the wrong T's just full stop anyways. For sure. And I almost think that this is like a good instance of, it kind of gives people an excuse to move up. That should have moved up a long time ago. And one of the best arguments I feel like I've seen because I see it with my wife, Justin, all the time is there's a lot of courses that don't have T's far enough forward to begin with now as it is and rolling it back again a lot of the people who are playing those T's probably going to see a

very small like they hit it very inconsistently they don't compress the golf ball they're probably going to see a very small, like they hit it very inconsistently. They don't compress the golf ball. They're probably going to see a very small impact. Whatever this golf ball ends up being anyways, but even if it's one yard, you know, they're already not long enough to get there based on the teas they're playing and this doesn't help. So my heart goes out to those people and what I would say is like if we're going to build any more T-boxes, if we're gonna invest in these clubs, man, it makes a lot more sense to build more forward T's than it does more back T's.

Especially if all these beginners that everybody's telling me about are coming and joining the game, then there has to be better communication and better like almost like onboarding towards, hey man, you don't need to be playing all the way back there because that's what fucking makes it take so long, right? It's just people playing the wrong T's to begin with. We to be playing all the way back there because that's what fucking makes it take so long, right? Is just people playing the wrong teas to begin with. We can get into all the fractional stuff of like, hitting an eight iron instead of a nine iron and that means I'm gonna miss x% more greens

which is gonna take x% more time and blah, blah, blah, blah, like that stuff is all valid but I would think it has to be so far outweighed by people just playing the wrong teas to begin with. I just wonder why are some of these people playing golf to begin with? Like, you're just playing for the wrong reason.

Right. And that's what, if I may, the like technology is keeping, we're hanging on for dear life because of, you know, this technology stuff, we're hanging on to these pandemic golfers because of technology is like, it's just so disingenuous, right? That just, that to me feels like saying, you know, the option that, like me being able

to zoom my background on, or me being able to blur my background on zoom, like that's the reason everybody started working from home during the pandemic is because of that option. It's like, no, I don't, I don't think so, man. I think there was a lot more than what did do it. That, that's certainly, you know, makes life a little bit easier. It's probably a little more fun. People have to see your messy apartment or whatever. But yeah, I think there's probably larger forces that play. Again, we'll go back to the disingenuous arguments we hear about games were popular

than ever. It's like, okay, well, literally, from like every year, according to the National Golf Foundation, from like 2004, up until COVID, like every single year, solid decline in US golf participation. Over the largest expansion of distance that we've seen in the game, golf courses were closing in a huge rate,

which the financial crisis can, of course, be blamed for some of that, but like, that is an element of this is, people are not lining up to play the game because all of a sudden the ball is going a lot farther. People were leaving the game. People were playing less rounds of golf. And so it's correlating the wrong thing to say, like, the distance has caused this boom in people playing.

It was COVID. And like, that was happening in the context of like post tiger woods. Correct. Two, which is even more jarring. And guess what? You know what tiger thinks about all this? Like I know tigers pro-bifrication, but he thinks, hey, like we need to do something,

at least for the for the elite players. Right? So I don't know. It's so funny when everybody holds up tigers. Like, all right, well, like tigers said it's a cool like, why aren't we doing that here? Like put your money where your mouth is. I like like, like, Matt Janella, he had a post on Twitter or whatever we're calling it.

It was like one of the most unsensical things I think I've ever read. Like, you know, of course, he managed to just bring white belts and flating, Mike Kaiser and it, and as if banding some like super repeatable recipe that you can do at your local community or whatever. But it's just like, you know what, man, we're all chasing that extra 10 yards. And you know what,

Father Time's gonna roll us all back in the long run. So, you know what, this is outrageous. How dare you try to legislate or regulate the game? The part that almost anything you can make work again in this vacuum, right? If you want to ignore all of the macro data, you can make all these points. All of them totally work. They totally work. Why would any amateur want to give up five yards? That totally works. Like if you want the answer to that though,

it is out there. Like you can give you that answer. But I still think like, I still struggle with that question of just, hey, I hit it 230, like why would I want to hit it? Like what would your guys go to answer for that B of? Somebody that is mad about losing five yards off that.

Like well, how would you, well, how would you address that to them? Like here's something that is mad about losing five yards off that. Like, well, how would you, well, how would you address that to them? Like, here's why this is going to happen. I think I would go toward some of the unification stuff. I think has kind of grown on me over the, over the last six months or so. And, you know, if, if we're all going to play under the same set of rules, then we need to rain things in at the top end. And this is, this is the byproduct of that.

I guess. And I also would say that like, there's nothing stopping you from moving up a little bit and making up that distance just based on where you're team off. But I, again, that's not like a great answer. I, I don't think it's, it's not fair to the everyday golfer, right? That this is, but I think that if we're all gonna, there's so many different interested parties here that if we're all gonna stay under the same umbrella and we're all gonna play the same rules, then we're gonna have to kind of be governed by whatever that top end is and it's gonna have to flow downwards from there. So it, like, I don't think it's, nothing about it is, is fair, right? I don't think it's, nothing about it is fair, right?

I don't think it's fair to go say, Tron, you're losing five yards. So or Tron, your mom is going to lose a couple yards. Like, I don't think that's, that's not like a fair argument to make to anybody. But and I don't think it's really like all that fair to a lot of the manufacturers either to say like, Hey, I know we didn't really police this in a way that we probably should have over the last 20 years, but now we're going to have to kind of fix everything all at once. Like, if I was one of those businesses,

I would also be quite fucking mad about it. I get why they feel the way that they do. But Tron, it goes back to what you said at the beginning, is like, if you think there's a problem, okay, well, step one is step one. Let's figure out how to start moving it in the right direction and and unbreak in some of this stuff. And just because you don't see a problem in this, like again, a lot of people just don't see the problem. That does

not mean it doesn't exist. Just because you have an experience that are don't, you know, care to understand it. A lot of people don't. Like I get that. I do. But that does not mean it does not exist. Like a lot of the, I guess the responses that got me the most upset were like, the way you frame this is horrible. Like you said, you know, addressing the distance issue. There is no issue. It's like, it's like one of the most debated and discussed things that we'll ever have in our lifetimes as it relates to this game. Like clearly there is an issue here.

Like you are just choosing to ignore the fact that there is an issue. Like this is not the best use of my time. Like clearly there is an issue here. Like you are just choosing to ignore the fact that there is an issue. Like this is not the best use of my time. I can do many other things with my life than just debate this issue, right? But clearly there's something to discuss here. A lot of this stuff, and I think Thomas Pagel on golf channel was good about this today is like, man,

and this is, we don't have to go far into it, but I promise this is not related to just the golf distance issue. This might be a pervasive issue across our society these days. But just cherry picking one piece of data to hold up as you're overarching case against lots and lots and lots and lots of other data is just not really, it's not really an effective way to go about this. And that's where I keep coming back to some of the Twitter is just not really, it's not really an effective way to go about this. And that's where I keep coming back to some of the Twitter stuff is, well, according

to this one chart, the golf ball is not going any farther. It's like, okay, well, according to 25 years worth of moving T boxes and, you know, go talk to any tour player, man, see if the golf ball is going farther or not. Like, I'm pretty sure it is. So yes, there's going to be outlier, there's going to be little outlier data items all over the place. But where I, again, I'm not going to run all those down. I'm not going to put the onus on myself

to go track all that stuff down. And maybe that makes me like a sheep or something. But I'm going to trust that that's exactly what the USGA has done over the last five, six, seven, eight, 12, 15 years is trying to take a very comprehensive look at that. And because again, I feel like this is probably the last thing that they want to wake up and work on is is is. It's not some power play that like, oh, you know what?

Like we got to take control of our, no, like I think they have bigger fish to fry and they'd rather be working on something else. My thing with like, is this an issue or not? All right, cool. Then like tell Tiger, it's not an issue. Tell Rory, it's not an issue. Tell Jack Nicholas, it's not an issue. Those guys seem pretty knowledgeable about

God at large. It's all, I'm hesitant to do this next one because I think it's kind of along the same lines of disingenuousness. What would the word therapy do? Do you see, I don't know. I think disingenuousness, what would the word there be? Do you see? I don't know. I think this ingenuousness. Okay.

If it really is about how the actual distance the ball goes, if that's really like what sells the tour level, we hear that a lot like people want to see the long ball. People want to, you know, see the bomb, whatever. Why aren't more tour events held in Colorado? If that's the case. You know what, Sally, I'm gonna move away from I'm tired of this bullshit plan at sea level This is no I'm just the game's just not fun here, man

But like if it's about the total number that it goes why wouldn't why wouldn't Colorado be like more of a golf destination than it is Like if it's if it really is about how far it actually goes. And again, the answer to that is clearly because distance is relevant, right? I don't get more of a thrill out of my drive going 330 in Colorado that would have gone 300 at sea level because I know it's the air that helped me get there, right? So it's not about the number at the end of the day. It is way more about the challenges that are close to you within that golf course. And that's like, again, that answers a lot of the question, right? Of if they're selling us on, yes, the actual yardage that it goes, the number at the end of it is what sells. Then like, why wouldn't you hold more events where the ball goes farther? Totally.

I think the tour, I mean, you know, like, I don't even think the tour knows what their product is. So we can get in, I mean, you know, like we bitch about it on every on every pot of like there is some most myopic Unstrategic like unserious group of people out there that you know most of them like a lot of the leadership They should lose their jobs So like I'm not even gonna factor in what they have to say about this because they're saying that the shot length data is being Misappropriated.

All right, cool. Let's go back to like, you know, measuring distance, two holes around. What does that data stay? Cool. That data backs up everything that's being said here. Like, yeah, like, you know, part of it is like they've dumbed the game down on the on the PGA tour. It's like, if anything, if you want this thing to be more interesting, like, the long ball is all relative, right? You could take the governor off the balls right now, and guys could be hitting it 420 yards. I would like somebody to make the case for that. Exactly.

Like, all right, cool. Like, you know, some of these people, if that's why you watch golf, cool, then why aren't, like, why aren't long drive contests? Why aren't those the most popular event in all of golf, bigger than the majors? It's all relative to history, to the course, to the field, but all of those things, I feel like when the competition is out of proportion to the course itself, that makes it less interesting. Just like when at a lot of your local communities,

the course is out of proportion to the current distances where certain bunkers aren't in play any longer. Or, and like that makes golf less interesting to everyone who goes out and plays there that hits it a certain length. And that's not good for the game either, you know? And I think that is, I think that's where some of the comps to other sports break down, right? Because you could, you can convince me that, you know, if I'm just close my eyes and listen for a second, it's, there's something interesting about the way that Rory hits a driver

versus the way that guys in the 70s hit a driver. And that's what athletic progress looks like. And like there is something to, you know, there are already limitations on golf balls and clubs. And these guys are doing these things inside of those limitations. And like creating these extra gains with a lot of athleticism, a lot of technology as well, but with a lot of optimization and all these things. And, you know, that's, that's what happens when a game continues to evolve. But I think the difference is this game in particular is like largely played against the course, right?

You're not playing against the basketball court that is going to get outsized. You're playing against the other players. And I know that breaks down a little bit because you are playing against the other player's score, but it is a different, it's a different thing. It's supposed to be who's navigating the golf course. You're not playing defense against against the other guys. You know what I mean? It's, yeah. It's, it, it, the comps

can break down pretty easily of, you know, some of the, the basketball comps or whatever that, you know, should we limit guys that are able to dunk it now just because the guys are faster. No, but if there were shoes that let you jump two feet higher and made the dunk a kind of skill that anyone could do anywhere. Right now and running. Like there's certain shoes that yes, if it's a equipment-related boost that you're getting out of it like the the baseball is tinkered with all the freaking time. tennis ball has been slowed down to get the proper balance of skills tested in that game. You could make the tennis ball go way faster and make it all about serves in tennis decided like that

was not good for the game and that we are of the opinion that driving distance is like not the premiere where golf should be decided and again, it gets really in the weeds and you have to follow the date on this to say like again the farther the whole field is driving it the less driving less distance they're gonna have into the hole and the less ability of the higher skill play the less ability the higher skill players are gonna have into the hole and the less ability of the higher skill players are gonna have to differentiate themselves from the field.

That's just math in it, right? If Keith Mitchell, I tend to pick on him just because he drives it really far and that's his main skill. If Keith Mitchell is gonna compete with a Rory, he's gonna want the test to be more about wedges than it would be seven irons, right? Like that's where that Rory is going to gain more on Keith Mitchell. And that's just one example.

And like that's, that's the scale at which we're talking about the, I think people get confused a lot with the D skilling, which is a separate issue. Like I think that's saying that this isn't skilled. It's just it's a wrong balance of skills. The weight per skill. Yes. I think going back to the baseball analogy, like, you know, it's like, A, if they if back in the, you know, when the ball was flying out of the parks and everything and they said, all right, well, cool. The balls flying out of the parks. We got to we got to move the fences back. We got to keep moving the fences back. We got to make make make everything look like pet cope park and Cindy

I go or safe go out and Seattle right and like keep doing that and keep doing that and at the same time. We're also going to make it so that Hitchers can't spin the ball as much. You know like they can't like the breaking balls. We're going to make it like into me like I think breaking balls are like one of the most interesting things in all the baseball and all the sports, right? Like it's you know the different sliders versus curve balls versus splitters like all that stuff. And it's like, you know what? So we're going to make the ball just go straighter off the pictures hand to but simultaneously we're going to make it, you know, we're going to keep making the ball parks bigger and bigger and bigger. Like that's the analogy here is like that doesn't work. You know, that's, that's a less interesting form of the game and it's more grass to mo out in the outfield and, and, you know, I don't know, it's just like nobody's woken up for the last 25, 30 years and said, hey, what are we doing here?

Why don't we think about this holistically? What do you think the best case against the rollback is? I think the best case is over time. There's been a ton of damage done. There's a ton of just natural inertia, is that the word? Like the way, like almost all golf courses in some way have evolved in the last 20 to 30 years in some way. I'm like, in theory, does this mean

some have to like go backwards? Maybe like I have some people like my course has one set of teas. And like if we have to play the same set of teas, we're totally screwed with this new one. I don't really agree with that. And you know, one guy was saying like, I play the same course in Ireland. We've had the same set of teas for 97 years. And I'm like, man, I think the teas, if they worked 97 years ago, I think they're going to work with the ball that goes five yards farther for the average. Yeah, but are right. It, I don the T's, if they worked 97 years ago, I think they're going to work with a ball that goes five yards farther for the average amator, right? I don't know if this is enough of a change to make it worth upsetting the apple cart

in the way it does. I think is the best case against it. In the way that it could, I would say, because I think we haven't really talked about that enough is a lot of these projections feel like projections. We don't, I don't know that we have, I'm sure they have prototype golf balls and stuff, but we don't, like, we don't know what the 2028 golf ball is going to look like. We don't know how it's going to react. We don't know how it's going to spin.

We don't know how it's going to launch. We don't know a lot of that stuff. I don't know that we know. I saw some people flagging, changing some of the launch conditions on the test, right? Like the optimum launch that they have come up with now, which is what, 125, 2,211 degrees of launch, it sounds like that's kind of a unicorn person that doesn't really exist right now. A lot of the guys who launch it, you know, at that speed are either doing it with more

spin or with lower launch. So that could throw off, you know, who knows what that means for how that ball reacts with amateurs and, you know, maybe they end up losing more than projections. We're not going to know that until any of the golf balls actually come out, which is still a big question mark, which again, if you're an optimist, I would say, is reason to hold some of your vitriol. We don't really know how it's going to react. It was funny to me, like, where I think it was Strixon gave Keegan Bradley, like, hey, here's the balls that are going to make him play with.

Nobody knows what those balls are like. Yeah. We could make a ball that basically aligns right, like, you know, adheres to the new regulations. And I'm sure there's a hundred and like, or infinite variations of, hey, we can, you know, adheres to the new regulations. And I'm sure there's a hundred and like, or infinite variations of, hey, we can, you know what, Keegan, we're gonna give you this ball that totally adheres to this. Who knows how it's adhering?

It could be adhering via aerodynamics with the same core. It could be a shitty core with great aerodynamics. Like, that's such an unserious thing to basically poison the well with and say, you know what? Like here's the ball. And it's like, all right, you can do that at the same thing. Like there's a bunch of balls on the conforming list now that are dog shit golf balls that, you know, they're going to make you hit this golf ball. Like, no, like, well, yeah, like you could hit that golf ball, but like are you going to go out and buy that golf ball? Probably not, you know, I think giving giving people two, three, four years to go get in the lab and figure something out is probably going to yield something

better than the one that I think he and was saying it went like 40 yard shorter than his normal drivers. And like, who knows? Like they probably sabotage that to like, let's make, let's make an awful golf ball just to prove the point here. And, you know, hey, this, this adheres to the new regulations or whatever, but, you know, they didn't really try to make it optimized, right? It's just dishonest. A, a, a point I think we should make is you kind of talk about some of those launch conditions and the unicorn element of that, Dege, is to say like, look, look, again, I was pretty much in favor of bifurcation over this. I still think this is better than doing

nothing. But like what they've made here, if the numbers are to be believed from what they've released and if this test is how I understand it to be, is sort of a bifurcation element of how this is going to have an effect, right? Of it will be felt more at the pro game, which is where I think it needs it the most. And for the most part, I think it's going to be a very negligible difference. Like I think if you had a,

some a, a 50th percentile amateur player hit 20 golf balls and not go see where they, you know, you don't go down the fairway to see where they ended up. Like from the tee, you hit 20, half are the new ball, half are the old ball. And like, may ju pick after you've hit it and see where it goes. Like, was that the new one or was that the old one? They would not get 100% of them right.

I don't think I would get 100% of them right. I don't know if the pros would get 100% of them right. Like, I think the difference is going to be negligible enough at that level. Yet at the same time, like still accomplish something at the highest level to say, like, if everything works out the way it should, this should have an effect in the right areas of the game. Yeah. I think, you know, the people, I guess one reason or, hey, people are going to have to rework their golf games.

Like, that's, you know, but it feels like they've, they've done it in a way where you're not necessarily going to have to do that. Like, it's not going to, it's not such a structural change. Or I would counter with like, people have had to rework their golf games over the last two decades. And now like I grew up swinging with a negative attack angle. I'm sure a lot of people that are age or older did. And now it's, hey, you got to swing plus two.

You know, plus one, plus two, plus three. Launch it high. You know, I mean, like Tiger was probably affected just as much as anybody by this, you know? And so it's like, all right, like you've already forced all these other people to change their games. Like, that was the other thing that Keegan said, which is like, well, now I'm gonna have to change shafts

and recalibrate. It's like, fuck off, man. Like, you do that every off season anyway. Like, you know, you put new equipment and play. Like, you guys, that's why you're the best in the world, right? Yeah, it's counter to like, oh yeah, we could, we could change all this in a heartbeat. I think one other thought that kind of came to me this week

was for the people that say that, you know, this is gonna decrease my enjoyment of the game. I think that's too zoomed in of a view. I think overall, there will be less enjoyment of the game as a whole if there's less places to play. Right, I strongly, strongly again, do not believe that the final 10, 5 to 10 yards of your drive flying in the air

is the difference in you playing the game and not playing the game. And again, if you read the distance, I'll report and read the effect the distance has had on golf courses and footprints and the cost of maintenance, the only logical conclusion I believe to reach is that the far of the ball goes, the higher maintenance costs are going to be and the less golf courses that are going to exist. Like that is just a straight, mathematic formula and that's that's just there's no getting around that right in some way. So again, go ahead. I also just keep thinking about, I know this cuts both ways, right?

People talking about hitting longer clubs in the greens. I just keep thinking about how many balls I hit out of bounds by five yards, right? Just keeping more balls in the ballpark feels like an overall benefit. Which, you know, I'm lobbying for more spin, which are probably being more balls out of the ball. Probably more than make up for that. But I think some of the agronomic stuff too of like, hey, let's have those conversations about the amount of grass out there or, you know, cutting back certain amounts of rough

for whatever. Cool. Like, just because we're rolling the golf ball back doesn't mean that we can't have those other conversations as well and do that other stuff. Like, these things aren't mutually exclusive, right? That's right. Yeah. There's just so many different levers that feel like they're moving. And again, Thomas Pagel is really good at bringing this topic up whenever, whenever somebody goes into, you know, just grow the rough conversation, right? Like, just, you don't want, you don't want know, just grow the rough conversation, right? Like just, you don't want, you don't want scoring,

just grow the rough up, just grow the rough up. Guys, I'll have to hit the fairways, they'll have to pinch it in. There's a whole other podcast we've talked about that many, many times that that fallacy, but we can do it again today if you want. But the big thing he always brings up that I feel like very few other people do is

that's such a luxury to even be able to say that stuff because like golf courses are so different from one another and try and just grow the rough up in Southern California where it rains X number of days per year is very, very different than just grow the rough up here in Wisconsin where it's we rains all the time. Grass is always super lush and Greek. We can do that whenever you want, right? But that's very different than Australia. That's very different than Thailand. That's very different than Thailand.

That's very different than Japan or all the superintendents and be like, Hey, Argentinian superintendent, like, can you grow the rough up at your course rather than us regulating equipment? Like how do you implement that? And that's where I think, maybe again, maybe I'm going to change my biggest takeaway from this, but where I keep coming back to is it feels like there are legitimately interesting conversations on both sides. And I almost feel like when one comes up, you put it into that pile or that pile, right?

Like you put it on the right or you put it on the left. And it's, yeah, that's a good point about, you know, whatever. That's unfair to people who don't get the most out of current equipment, how are you going to roll them back even further? That's interesting. Okay, the pro game's going too far. Okay, now let's talk about the old course. Now let's talk about water usage. Now let's talk about, you know what I mean? And you just keep going on and on and on. And I think these, the two sides of this argument, it's not, it's not black or white. It's not right or wrong or one or zero. They're, I don't know what they are.

60, 40 towards we have to do something or 70, 30 or 55, 45 or 49 and a half to 49.4. Like, I don't know what it is, but it, I think at the end of the day, that's where I keep coming back to like the USGA has to look at that, all of those different conversations. What is the cumulative answer from all of those? Which pile is bigger?

Okay, now we need to act. That's where it just frustrates me to know. When you just say, well, actually at this tournament, the ball didn't go farther. Why are we doing any of this stuff? It's just so much more complicated than that. And it's pretty dishonest to start looking at it that way, I think. I think there's some interesting stuff in the different reactions or responses from different stakeholders or companies or governing bodies. Solid, do you want to get into any of that?

As far as just... Yeah, did I read the PGA tour one already? Yeah, I did, right? Uh, no, maybe I didn't. We, the PGA, PGA tour said we continue to provide feedback to the USGA and R, in RNA that we believe the proposed increase in test clubhead speed to 125 mile an hour is disproportional to the rate of increase that we see when analyzing PGA tour, rate our data on launch conditions using best practices for analyzing data. It says in their disproportionals, grammar mistake, but that was the, that they had to remember. That's what I thought. I think they have a grammar mistake in their memo. They said, they're like, oh, I got a lot of that.

Therefore, we do not support today's announcement regarding the increase to 125 miles an hour, believing a more moderate adjustment is appropriate. It's like how much more moderate are we going to get? Because this is a change from 127 to 125, which is what was proposed in the, in the MLR. And again, for people that don't follow this closely, what the overall distance standard, what's summarizing it, you know, kind of really dumbing it down. It's because the ball can't go longer than 317 yards plus three yards of tolerance, tested at a certain speed and in certain launch conditions. And the spin and the launch angle change, but if we're just folks on miles an hour for

a second, the current test is tested at 120 miles an hour swing speed, meaning the ball at 120 mile or swing speed at the current launch conditions, it can't fly more than 317 plus three. Now they're changing that, the proposed for the bifurcation was 127 miles per hour, meaning a more significant rollback. So like at 127, it can't fly farther than this 317 yards plus three yards of tolerance.

Now they've changed this to now being 125. So at that very fast clubhead speed, it cannot fly farther than 317 yards plus three. It's just funny to me too, like the USGA and the RNA have adhered to exactly what they've laid out as far as the Vancouver stuff. And hey, there's going to be this very, very, people that probably don't know what that is. The Vancouver protocol is basically lays out, hey, here's the process for making these changes. It's a long process of notifications of the process for making these changes. It's a long process of notifications of, you know, communications between the stakeholders of just very, very kind of bureaucratic, you know,

and slow-moving glacial process to make sure that everybody is heard and listened to and feels like their seat at the table is at least represented in the discussion. And then they propose this, there's a comment period, da da da da. And it seems like the tour is just waiting and not participating and then waiting until the last possible moment, trying to torpedo it with leaks

and diminishing certain things and then crying foul. It's like they do everything. It's just so arrogant. From Jay and I think Billy Shredder is doing this, it's really, really bad. I think there's an interesting conversation around the shot like data I was thinking about too. I was just at a title shoot this week talking a lot of driver stuff with a lot of different people and just asking There were a couple players there and was asking kind of philosophies on drivers and almost to a man a lot of them were we're saying As my career's gone on I've had to put a higher priority on hitting fairways and You know, I have more gas in the tank and I don't you know

I rarely use it out on the golf course And I think you can look at that either way right like you could look at that as see I have more gas in the tank and I don't, you know, I rarely use it out on the golf course. And I think you can look at that either way, right? Like you could look at that as see this is kind of regulating itself and the game is, you know, it's working out and these guys, you know, it's not all about distances. These guys still do have to hit fairways, which I think is part of the conversation, just like I was saying earlier. But I think the fact that all of them have it in the tank and the fact that they're able

to get more and more optimized in that way, them have it in the tank and the fact that they're able to get more and more optimized in that way, like when you start looking at like the lower levels of golf, the other thing that they said was when you're not playing on the courses that we're playing on, you just fucking mashed it as hard as you can't. And that's where you start getting into junior golf, college golf, high level amateur golf, corn fairy tour golf, mini tour golf. Like that's where that different style is, is, uh, just yeah, they said like certain guys that on the corn fairy tour, they're, their swing speed went down when they made the, right, the PGA tour, their average driver speed went down. And then so that's where again, it's like if you, if you zoom,

I know it all has to be data driven, but if you zoom extra closing on a lot of the PGA tour data, maybe you're seeing some of that as well, right? TC, that's where the I test. We got to bring the I test back. I just I just struggle with like, all right, we're not against doing something, but we just don't think we should have done this. Then like, what do you want to do? Like what else is there to do?

And like put out some some ideas, put out some solutions here. I think the best PGH2 or statement that they could have put out is just like basically like the smoking Popeyes employee meme would have would have been the best. The best thing that they could have said is just like, dude, we're just fucking exhausted right now. We can't deal with this. I can't eat a true from the desk of the PJ tour commissioner. I can't even right now. That is honestly, honestly, if they just, if they would have said why now, I would have respected that. I'm like, honestly, kind of appropriate right now, because you're unsure if you're going to exist in 2028 as it stands right now.

Um, yeah, but like it just feels like they're saying, like, you surprised us with this, like, no, like, like, I think the, you were joking. The mind for this is your phone. They laid this process out in 2011. They've been going with this this You know down this path at least for the last five years, you know, and I think as a fan talking specifically about pro golf I think it'd be a hell of a lot more entertaining if there's just more volatility down the stretch of a tournament off the tee of if there's just more volatility down the stretch of a tournament off the tee of,

there's so many times now where it's like, yeah, like this guy's not gonna never gonna make worse than Bogey here, cause he's gonna swing as hard as he can with the biggest club in his bag and it doesn't go offline. Yeah. Which again, is not addressed by this, right?

And I think it, we can probably spend another four hours discussing this element of the game of like the bigger issue being the players having full permission to weigh along golf balls and the role that technology and equipment plays in that is largely encouraged by, you know, toe hits that draw towards the middle of the fairway, heel hits that cut towards the middle of the fairway, heel hits that cut towards the middle of the fairway, center hits that go really far and the floor of your misses being so high that there's no reason. It's riskier to not swing hard

and to not, you know, to give up distance to the field. And that is a way bigger problem when it comes to the appropriate, like Tiger Woods is way better at hitting out the center of the face than Scotty Schaeffler is. I'll say that and Scotty's one of the the best ball strikers in the world. Like that video that Taylor made released of Scotty pounding drivers and towing them and hooking them at and carrying like three 12 was like, should have been alarm bells. Hopefully it alarm

bells of like that is a bigger problem than just the total distance that the ball flies. So which also it feels like it's a heck of a lot easier to bifurcate Equipment than does the ball Right like if you know like let's say everybody's got to be playing the same same balls, right, but Driver-wise cool. You've made it to the tour That that feels more similar to me than like you know, you got to play a different ball and a different Club versus like that feels more similar to like college baseball to MLB. Cool.

You know what? Driver size goes down to 300ccs and you know, you can make the same, like, you know, the companies are making many drivers as is right now. Like you can make a driver with similar characteristics to what your consumer model is. You know, I feel like that's a lot more equitable to, you know, because I feel like with bifurcation, the big thing that stuck out in my mind was, hey, at what point, like, if somebody grows up playing a certain ball, and then you're just going to totally throw that away when they make their pro debut, like that, it feels really, really tough. Whereas with driver, it's like the ball,

like if you hit it on the center of the face, get it to where it performs relatively similar and it just degradates as you get farther, farther away from the center of the face and it's a smaller face. That feels like if you're one of the best players in the world, you should be able to adapt to that. I both fully agree with it and would sign your petition for exactly what you're describing right now. But then I'm also like, why is the PJ tour voting to put that in or why are that like, why are they voting to enact that in their own rules, right? Because that's a different, that's different than the USJ rules. So that would have to be something that they're like, I'm saying like the USJ basically says, Hey, for high level tournaments, they could say, Hey, this is what we're doing for the US for the US open and the RNA for the bridge open. And even for the US amateur,

right? It's like, Hey, if you're going to play a high level content, you know, competitive golf, it's, you know, here's, here's what, here's what the deal is. You know, and then and I would say too, like, I don't know. Maybe that's what they'll do with it. Like, there was a bullet point in the announcement today that they're going to continue to continue investigating, you know, forgiveness and all that stuff. Maybe that's where they end up there was a bullet point in the announcement today that they're gonna continue to continue investigating forgiveness and all that stuff. Maybe that's where they end up is the model local rule on equipment for super high-end stuff.

Because that's stuff that's like, hey, if you do shrink the driver head and make it less forgiving, that does affect the retail golfer. That does make it harder to play. That does, all right, when I want to put our money where our mouth is cool, let's look at that then. Um, you know, I would just say

to like the, the tour based off on everything that they've like all their behavior, not to mention of all things they say on a day-to-day basis, they like, they don't give a shit about the game at large. Oh, God. You know, like, they don't care about like, you know, the, like, like like the state of golf world wide, like that's part of the reason we're in this mess to begin with with live. And you know, like they've they've totally turned their backs on Australia and South America. And the app, like the app is is is terrible. Yeah. So it's like, well, yeah, like I'm not looking at them to lead the game. And if, you know, that's absurd to me, you know.

One other like thing that I think probably should have said this closer to the beginning is like, where we see this sliding scale is what makes in theory, what makes recreational golf more fun is the easier element of it, right? At the more easy, you make the technology, the less appealing the professional game is going to be, right? There's a constant tug of like pro golf, probably at its best with really dial back equipment where the top players are identified by skill a lot easier than they are. Like I'm sorry, professional golfer mishits should not travel

315 and go straight. Like that, that, that should be punished for that. More so than like your average 50th percentile male golfer should be right. So there's such a, there's such a, like that, that sets such a poor example for retail golfer's all over the world when it comes to set up in course conditions and agronomy to where like, you know, every time you have to push a major venue or even a regular PGA tour venue to the absolute limit in order to challenge these guys or create any sort of separation. Players see that at their home club, hey, I want the fastest screens possible. Why are our fairways this wide? There's, whether people, it's human nature. Like there's so much creep from the professional level that gets down to the amateur level. Like that's just people end up playing teas that are farther back

because you know, they want to play, you know, a number that makes sense for them, but like it's closer to the level that the tour players play at. Like it's just just human nature. It's unavoidable, really. Which it's so funny too. Like how many people have no idea? Like I would even raise my hand. I don't even know how far I hit the ball. I think it's, you know, it's probably, you know, like the very near a year and a half, it's, like I hit the ball 20 far just shorter than I think I hit the ball, right? I probably carry it to 55, to 50, to 50,

Oh, you carry it longer than that. And no, but then it rolls out a little bit, but like I probably hit the ball 272 75. And if you asked me two years ago, how far you hit the ball? Oh, like 290, you know, 290. It's like, all right, are you being real? Like everything's relative. What it is. Yeah, but like I don't know, everything's relative.

All this stuff feels, you know, everybody's got an outsized sense of their own game. So that placebo is gonna creep in here too of people are gonna say, oh well, you know, I used to hit the ball a lot farther than this rollback. It's like, no, actually, like if we were to compare the data, you only lost this, but they're gonna exaggerate it in their own head.

Now, I will say, I think that the USGA and the RNA could do a better job of, like, let's agree on what the parameters are here. Of, hey, what's the date? Like, all right, let's say we're going to look at historical driving distance data. Like, going back to what's the problem that we're identifying? Cool.

When did this problem start in earnest? When, like, all right, if we're gonna look at shot link data, we're gonna look at average driving distance on the PGA tour, how they used to measure it. How are we gonna, when are we gonna start that? When are we gonna end that? Like, what's the sample size? What's the date range there?

And then we can drill down on cool. Like then, because I think right now it feels like they're like the tours wanting them to basically just pick something out of a hat of like Because they haven't Basically said what's the what's the desired outcome here, right like What are we trying to solve for and they're just saying hey? Let's let's pick five yards out of a hat That feels like we're solving for we're arresting the the progress here and then we're, you know, staving off any future gains. But how do we know that's the right number, right?

Like yeah, I'm a good yeah, don't have a good sense of how they got to that. Because it feels like, you know, as far as the conversation goes, it feels like anybody can just cherry pick it and say, well, yeah, over the last 10 years, gains are driven by different factors, right? Like maybe from 20, from 2005 to 2015, the gains were dictated by the longest players on tour, getting a lot longer. And maybe over the last eight to 10 years, the gains have been dictated by the mules, by the middle of the pack guys or the shortest players raising their floor and getting longer and the longer place or getting replaced.

Yeah, longer guys. Exactly. Because like there's so much noise in, you know, let's figure out what the right data set is or what the right date ranges and work off of that. I feel like because otherwise everybody has their own subjective reality here and there's no, you know, like we're all talking about something different and there's so much noise

that it's not even worth having the conversation. LPGA torso, LPGA is a appreciative of the leadership and stewardship of the USGA and the RNA on a variety of topics within the game, including today's announcement regarding the anticipated changes to the rules governing distance. While we do not feel there is a distance issue in the within the game, including today's announcement regarding the anticipated changes to the rules governing distance. While we do not feel there is a distance issue in the women's game, we recognize the need for the USGA and RNA

to address complex challenges and endure the game's continued long-term growth, success, and sustainability. I respect the hell out of that statement. I mean, it's, look, it doesn't really affect us, but like they're the governing bodies, and they have a long-term growth success and sustainability in mind versus PGA tour being like, ah, no, we don't we don't support the number. No, it doesn't work. And I was a DP world tour. Basically, they have the same statement They basically said

It was kind of cool, man. You make the rules was was basically there. Well, no, I feel I feel like with the DP world tour I was like, yeah, cool. We'll check with our babysitter, Jay and then get back to you. We'll see what we'll see what our parents are. Sounds good. Would you like to buy it to work? PJ, have America real quick. We remain opposed to any change that may potentially lessen the enjoyment of the game for recreational golfers.

Did honest question did live come out with a statement? Yeah, they did those those those things you can do at charity things where you can launch the ball like 400 yards and drive the green. They said those are now legal on the encouraged. No, I have not seen a live statement yet. I think there's something to be said for again, they said this a lot in their golf channel appearances, but hashtag the process. I feel like if you had told me, you know, 10 years ago, like, Hey, this,

they're going to fully roll back the golf ball for everybody. I would have expected the reaction, honestly, to be more hostile than it was today. I know we haven't seen, I don't think there's been a titleless response, but at the same time, titleless has published all their responses to everything and on their website and nothing has really changed, you know, as far as like the areas of interest or what they're really looking at over the last however many years they just kind of made a final decision. So maybe part of it is guys have kind of, you know, people have kind of punched their, punched themselves tired and, you know, they've said what they're going to say over the last five or six years, but at the same time, like, it is kind of wild to see a lot of the companies and organizations and whatever, just making a point to say how much they are like, yeah, you know what? We appreciate it being a part of the process.

You kind of did it the way you said you were going to do it. You you involved us the whole way. You opened a lot of periods for comment, which again, going back to where we were with USGA, what, six, seven years ago, like when people just wanted to light the whole organization on fire, I think it is, it's a pretty market change. So I would give a hat tip to, to a lot of that. Maybe listen, some of that might have been, we're following these protocols so that we don't get sued into oblivion, but nevertheless, at least to have the foresight, to have the

protocols in place and really have that meeting, you know, whatever, at least to have the foresight to have the protocols in place and really have that meeting, you know, whatever, 12 years ago now to kind of say like, here's exactly to the letter of the law how we are going to do this when we eventually do it, at least showed some some foresight. Which, and I'm sure some of those companies, like, I know Bridgestone Callaway, I haven't seen Taylor made this thing, but like Bridgestone and Calloway, there's kind of like, hey, we always actively participate, but when our final decision is made, we will abide by it. Like, some of that's also with the ball. Like, yeah, we don't have market share,

and we're pro. Yeah, disruption, baby. Yeah, we're pro, you know, going, going Yeah, disruption baby. Yeah, we're pro, you know, going, going any route we can go that threatens title is foothold on this, but I would probably say like, I think if anything though, like quality and performance, like, especially, you know, non-distance performance are probably going to be more outsized and more important with whatever new balls are like people come out with and trust of like knowing that, hey, these guys have been making the best balls for a long time and they have the the market share, which I don't think is an accident. Like I would say if anything like, you know, if I'm titleless, I don't think it's a

it's a massive, massive threat to, you know, yeah, of course, like any sort of chaos or any sort of market change is going to be a threat, but I don't think like I would bet on title is to come out with a similar market share, you know, and bet on their confidence with a, from patents, to materials, to processes, to all that, like, seems like they're pretty, you know, having, having toward the facility and, you know, it's been on a lot of calls with those guys. I'm like, yeah, man, like they're, they're shit together. Again, and that's a big black box for a lot of people myself included, but let me just remind people how wildly complicated all of that stuff is, right?

And like, there's a reason why they have excelled to this level. And yeah, it is extremely, extremely, extremely complicated when you dive into the details on that. But yeah, and like this is me editorializing on that front. But like, you know, if I'm them, I'm pretty confident in their abilities to, you know, create a ball that bites

by whatever the new regulations are and do so. That's best in class, you know, I think the only surprise from the kind of responses department today was Calloway kind of openly coming out and saying they would have preferred bifurcation. I think that was the only which again, I think Mike one kind of spoke to this too is like, you know, you can't just say capital M manufacturers and think that even that is one unified opinion. Like all of these companies, which all have like massive influence, like the Masters Champion played a Callaway ball that they they have a pretty big role in this whole conversation. Like even they are on a wildly different page from everybody else.

And so if you're one in slumbers and trying to navigate all of those different opinions, again, that's where I go back to like the two piles and just I hear you and I'm putting you in this stack. I look at looking at how tall it is. We've got a lot to think about, but looking at all this stack is we've got a lot of that to think about too. You know, it's just it's not an enviable job, but it seems like they've done a pretty good job navigating it. A couple other questions we got that I we I feel like they've done a pretty good job navigating it. A couple of other questions we got that I, I feel like we've addressed a lot of the questions that we're sending as best as we possibly can.

The Lauff, the life alpinus says, I might be alpinus, I don't know what he's trying to go up for there, but he says, what courses, if any might be available for tournament play, again, did distance really make any courses obsolete or did it have more to do with logistics and sponsors? I think this is going to be the most frustrating, I think this is the most frustrating answer of the day. And Mike Wong was very open about this too. He said there's a folder on my desk of courses that we are no longer able to go to because of distant stuff because of

you know operational footprint stuff because of whatever. I really don't think that this moves any courses out of that folder into the other folder. All it does is try to slow down the rate that we're losing courses from going into that folder. I would say it's the courses on the fringe or, you know, maybe like the Latham is kind of like, are you in the rotor? Are you out of the rotor? Like, I think you and I'm like a Mary and Mary has been on the books for 20, 30 US open, which I think they've known. There's going to that's going to be with a rollback golf ball for quite some time.

But that like the Marian and Lhythm would be the two in the category that I'm like, this make these courses make sense to continue to play with a rollback ball. Otherwise, like I would, I mean, like a runner-mick is going to stick out to me as far as PGA and not getting in out of the gun on that one. Like that's going to be, I don't, I still don't know how they're going to do that one because they tore it up, you know, like in 2018 and the ball is going to go farther in 2026 than it did in 2018. So. Yeah. Well, I think too, it's, it keeps that folder from getting bigger, you know,

demonstrably bigger and then be it probably, I think it may take some, you know, on the US amateur side or with the AM or with, you know, the, I would say even the mid-AM, like certain courses that were even risking falling by the wayside there, or hey, you got to put new teas in here to, you know, create shot value on these holes if you want to host this tournament. Like, I think there's probably something that camp, right? And can we also dismiss the narrative there there of like the only thing driving this is

like members of certain clubs that want to have big dick tournaments at their events, or at their courses like, if that's just not what's going on here. Again, most of these clubs don't want it. I think a lot of it is people think that people like us or Andy or whoever are sitting around like if they would only do this, then we could have the US Open at Cypress Point. Like I don't think we're saying that, man. I think we know that that's not the case.

I think we just want to keep being able to go to, like at least some of these courses, and we don't want them to all be, you know, not to pick on anything, but we went to PGA Frisco for the NIT this year. That's what a modern golf course looks like, man. And if that's like the direction that we're headed, I had a great time.

I had a, you know, it was a very, very challenging golf course, maybe two challenging for me, but it was one of those things where I'm like, oh my God, if this is what all of these places are gonna have to look like if we keep going this way, that is not it, man. That you can't do that everywhere. They happen to have the space there to be able to do it.

That's more what I'm trying to get at here is like, yeah, you can't just like drop one of those in the middle of Chicago or New York or Boston or Florida or whatever. That's only possible in a couple of places. Panther National. Panther National is sweet. More on that to come. like that that's only possible in a couple of places and panther national panther national suite more on that to come I actually I know you don't want to hear that TC but I don't I'm so biased against it like that's my thing like like my bias is towards like good golf interesting golf whether to play or to watch or whatever, whatever is going to make you know, be helpful for that happening, whether it's at existing courses or at new courses,

with variety, with you know, kind of interchangeability, like it's not just driver, driver, driver. You know, and I think that that actually again going back to the skill set thing, that actually favors the guys that are actually better drivers of the golf ball benefit from this, right? Like there's... Yeah, another question from Jay Luke's, I mean, we kind of address this in some way, but how does this affect the complete test of skill that you are always clamoring for?

Doesn't this just put more of a premium on distance through fitness, swing speed, launch optimization since it will be harder to come by. I think, yes, there's like there, there's more of a emphasis put on distance yet at the same time, more of an emphasis put on your ability to differentiate with like mid-Irns, right? Like that, that is also increasing, right? Like the value of hitting it far is still going to be there.

Like it's still like the longer players will continue to have an advantage at the same time. Like it's almost like how it works now and this is reductive and exaggerated for the purpose of this statement is like now you drive it so far, they end up with wedges and like you just are not going to hit back. You're not going to hit bad shots with wedges again, reductive like of course you are sometimes, but like you almost can't screw it up from where a lot of these guys drive it to. Whereas now, it's like there's still going to be a differentiating element of mid-iron approach shots, you know, with more frequently. It's not going to be astronomical, but it's more frequent, and that's just straight math of like, you're going to see more seven irons than nine irons.

Nine irons are going to become seven irons, both through how far the ball is going to fly from them from that distance and the drive, the decrease driving distance off the team. Which I wonder how noticeable that is to just in everyday fans, right? And I think that gets back to the, is it, is this worth it conversation?

Yeah. Because again, it does slow the rate of increase. I, I understand that. But I, I'm almost thinking about like, okay, we're wrapping up this podcast here. Like, what's the, what's the main takeaway from this? Part of it for me is just like, honestly, if you're a golf fan or a recreational player, you probably don't really have that much to start thinking about until like mid-2029. Like, I don't think you're going to notice all that much on TV. I don't think it's really

going to affect you all that much on your game. Golf ball companies are going to keep pumping out golf balls. Players are probably going to bitch about it and talk about how they're coming to take your guns. But really, I don't think there's much to worry about for like, I don't know, five years. And even then you shouldn't be worried about it. Like you should not. Like I don't, but I guess where I'm going with that in this context is like, I don't think you're going to notice, I'm not going to talk myself into like, you know, you're going to notice some big massive change on the PJ tour. I think it'll be incremental. I'm with you that like with those guys live on the margins anyways, and maybe there's a couple more

guys that are, you know, do a little better each week. It's almost like, yeah, I mean, over like, you'll see macro trends probably of guys that will probably have better seasons, but I don't know that you'll notice it constantly all the time. And if you talk to any caddy and player, like they, we talked to Michael Kim about this couple of weeks ago, like an element of this that people have not talked about enough is like what, like, tour and professional golf setups have become.

Like if you didn't see where they put the pins at Oak Hill, literally every player is like, that's maxed out. You can't bear him anymore. They call them three and threes. It's the minimum you can put on like from the front of the edge or the back edge and a left or right edge. And like they do that on repeat because guys are coming in with such high-lofted clubs, that is the only way to challenge them

is to tuck the pin in the hardest possible spot, which decreases aggressive and exciting golf. It makes people play more to the fat parts of greens. Whereas if you don't have to set up a course with three and three is all over the place, there's going to be built in more variety in the approach shots from farther away. In theory, there's just more value that I, again, that's not going to be like, oh my gosh, people are going to be lining up at the gates to watch these six irons come into this. People aren't even going to believe how exciting this is, but it is just a more interesting product than a dark contest.

For the top rated players in the world, I think you're going to be able to identify better who these guys are. And I think that there's a ton of value in that. I think the stars will be able to separate themselves out just a little bit better. It's not, this is not monumental, but it is worth doing. That's my humble opinion. I don't know if we accomplished what we set out to accomplish with this episode. Like I know this is what many people will call an echo chamber.

I promise we've listened as hard as we can to a lot of debates. I'm happy to have Brando back on. I feel we'll return my text from the last couple of years that we could do this again. If there's other suggestions, of people that will do like a genuine, like not disingenuous impression of a debater on the show where happy to have them on and discuss why they feel passionately the other way.

But man, I don't know. It's just logic. I feel like my logic has led me to where I believe things. I think other people can have other influences in there to make them kind of reached for the conclusion that they've reached, but that's just my opinion. Anything else? I'm so excited to just get this conversation over with. So we can get back to talking about the real stuff and golf that matters.

Like the tour going to all their, you know, tournament directors and title sponsors and saying, we need more money. Can't give as much money to charity. We want more of a revenue share. You got to prop up these bigger purses. You got to find a hundred and fifty million dollars somewhere. That's that's what we need to be talking about more. Can I tell I looped back to something we said earlier Again, I don't want I'm the takeaway from this if the takeaway from this is You're an idiot because you didn't go read the 115 page distance insights report Like I think we're probably doing this wrong, right? Yeah, if I'm if I'm a very casual

Yes, not your job. I'm looking at the whole landscape right now You know, it would be a pretty easy conclusion to come to is like those fucking guys that I keep hearing about casual golfing. Not your job. I'm looking at the whole landscape right now. You know, it would be a pretty easy conclusion to come to is like those fucking guys that I keep hearing about wanting more money and more influence. And now they're taking money from charity and now they're threatening to go to other leagues. Those are the guys that are like forcing me to essentially lose five, seven, 10 yard. Like fuck that. That's really those guys is like, yo, I'm not talking you off that opinion.

That is, that is a very, very good conclusion to come to. And, you know, I think it's a little more nuanced than that. But if you want to talk about it, but I fully support you in that, in that conversation. I think that's only going to get worse as the next time. What did Jay-Han and Chris Stroud think about distance? That's right. Now you're going to do this now. Yeah, I also like getting to live right as I've tried to,

right as I've tried to get it this promotions of it. You're going to do this now. If your, your job is not to cover golf, I wouldn't expect to do. Read the 100 page, you know, distance report and understand all the elements of that. That's why hopefully you hopefully you view as a trusted resource on this and we both read and do the research and give you our opinion on it. And that doesn't mean you have to agree with this necessarily, but, you know, hopefully you learned a little bit in the process. If we further your your your belief that nothing should be done. That's also fine. I mean, it's a reasonable, depends on what your logic is, but there can be a reasonable way of reaching that conclusion. I really do think so.

So. Yeah. Any ROM stuff we want to add in before we go? I think it's really quiet right now. Everything's just kind of, all recording it. All recording it. This is the osary yet.

350 PM on Wednesday, as we know, I would have thought it would have been announced by now that he's going. I mean, literally every science seems to be still pointing this direction. We cover this in much greater detail and all the effects of this on on Sunday. Now we're just kind of waiting for it to drop, but still has me very confused. The whole thing, not adding up, but I don't have anything additional to say that I didn't say on Sunday. I do. I do have a Mayacolpa. The nibblix actually turned into the range goats

and punched turned into a river. I said on Sundays, pod that punched turned into the range goats and nibblix turned into a river. I got my genealogies mixed up there. Thank you, TC. Hand up. I also thought Adam Blan was Richard Blan on the pod last week. And I will apologize for that.

That's big of you. It was not. Thank you. Not Blandi that was down there. The Australian opens. You were you were you were you said it was a compliment, but you were you were being derisive towards my guy Blandi. That's a lot of it.

It's a lot of it's an honor to have tied a top 20 finish with the PJJP chips. So what is what is blocky thing about rollback? Oh, I'm tired. I'm tired on a lot of different levels. This is, I don't even know if blockies play the ball. He says he's playing let alone. I would just encourage people to go follow that thread. Let's leave that there again. All right. Yeah. If you made it out, our 45 into this, you deserve that nugget. So I think we've already talked about that. I think we have. again. All right, yeah, if you made it out of $45, it was you deserve that nugget. So I think we've already talked about that. I think we have.

Okay, yeah. Yeah. All right, well, if you'll allow me to wrap it, I think that's it for today. Hopefully you have an interview with some key folks from this decision tree later this week. And we will attempt to get more and color information on this as we continue to work through it. I'm sure this will not be the last time we discuss it.

But thank you everyone for tuning in and trusting us with where you turn for discussion on this and making it this far into the show and Dej and TC for all the research and efforts that went into today's episode and we look forward to everyone agreeing with us completely. TC, I need you on the record. What teams were I'm going to? I think they're gonna give them the cleaks.

I really do. I thought you were just going to team. Isn't that like, well, I know, well, there's two teams that aren't owned. Right, but I think like a new team I thought it was gonna be. Like a big reason they, I think the reason that that had teams that aren't owned right now is because he'd give those to someone and then you know,

switch some guys around. So maybe Blandy would go then to the, you know, ripper or something like that. Gosh, Kenny lofted. Pastor had Blandy turned it into a massive great, back in great day. Do they have a spot for Sevy on this team? Do they have, do they hold one, they're holding one spot. Yeah, yeah, I mean, Sevy might be team. Do they hold one? They're holding one spot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Sevy might be the captain, right? He's the fifth man, not the third teeth

bit. So God, I gotta get my hands on some ghost balls, you know, some, some balls that are, you know, seen it a certain way so that they look, they look legal, but they're not. I do want to point out the last person we haven't made fun of on this pod is the person say, what am I supposed to do with all these golf balls? That's six more years to use them. And, uh, you know, if you're buying golf balls six, seven years in advance, then I, I think you, you got to own what you're getting here. Uh, all right. The hoarding process starts right now. These guys are going to be worth millions in the 2030s.

You don't even know. Great. All right, that's a wrap. Thanks a lot for tuning in. We'll see you back here on Sunday. Cheers. Cheers. Be the right club today.

Yes. That is better than most. How about him? That is better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most! Expect anything different?