LICC

What point are you trying to make, bringing up tournaments when the courses were 700 yards shorter and the setups were not as you described that you want to see?

Was Winged Foot set up that way in 2020? There is no strategy in targeting a small landing area. Hit the one available spot you're good, miss and you're not. That is not strategy.

When 90 players in any given tournament can reach most of the par 5s in two, that is all of the relevant field.

So more woods and irons off the tee... boring. This is about keeping strategy and challenge in the game. Not about leveling the field.

George Bamberger: While we’re at it, let’s bury this pretentious word going around golf: bifurcation, splitting something into two parts. Golf, as the best players play it, is a cousin, but that is all, to the game the rest of us play. We use whatever ball that comes out of our bag. We change brands midround without a second thought. You pick up after making a triple. You pick up after your third putt. You’re playing match play. We mark and clean and aim-point in some sort of monkey-see, monkey-do fantasy. Our game is not their game. Please. We need to get over ourselves. ... Also, nobody is coming after your golf ball. Not in your club championship. Not in your after-work league. Not in your Sunday game. Not in NCAA play. The USGA and the R&A need to do a much better job of selling what this is: course preservation. The preservation of the par 5. A dose of humility for a game and world that needs it.

Tighten landing areas to force long hitters to lay up. Yawn ...

Using an aluminum baseball bat is also a personal choice. Amateur baseball players can use wooden bats if they like. But they mostly don't. Just like most all recreational golfers do not play from the same tees as the pros. It is bifurcation.

Maybe, by a small margin, but that is only one aspect of what makes a tournament great.

Irrelevant to the discussion. I posted much earlier a person who tested different versions of the same brand driver from different eras. Same person, different clubs. Every newer model club resulted in more distance than the older models. It's predominantly the equipment advances that have led to the gains in distance.

As a golf viewing fan this is exactly what I don’t want for course setups. Boring, one-dimensional target golf.

Things sure not going well for LIV… According to a report, the ratings spiraled downward during its second event of the year this weekend in Tucson, Ariz. Kevin Van Valkenburg of the golf-centric No Laying Up reports that LIV Golf scored a 0.14 rating in the key 18-49 demographic across 33 markets from their Arizona-based showcase on Saturday. It’s a worse performance than just three weeks prior.

Ok you are talking about tournament golf. I was talking about recreational golf. Recreational golfers don’t play the pro tees.

The blue tees at the Black are not the tee boxes used for the majors. Most of those tee boxes are generally not even maintained well except for those tournaments. I’ve played the Black countless times and have never once seen anyone use those tee boxes.

Equipment hasn’t been the same since 2007. The advances have slowed but they have still happened. Shaft technology, more forgiving driver heads, etc.

Just about everything you posted here is irrelevant to the point and quite misapplied. The moderator has asked to move on from this discussion. You can go back to early pages of this thread and read all the commentary on this point and learn more about it. Let’s respect the moderators wishes and move on.

“Non conforming” is a misnomer here. There will be two different levels of conformance. Both types of balls will be conforming to the rules as structured.

Bryson gained distance from changing his swing. He kept bulking and didn’t gain any further distance. Then he slimmed down because he wasn’t healthy and still hit long distances.

It would be within 2-3% probably. Strength training does little to increase distance on any given swing. The equipment is the predominant factor. There have been several examples of today's players trying older equipment, and they all basically hit the balls the same distance as players did back when the equipment was being used. You can also look at the Champions tour and how much massively farther those same players hit it now compared to 25-30 years ago. They don't gain physical strength and speed in their 50s compared to their 20s.

Sure, anything can happen with mishits. But for the most part, among the top golfers on Tour, you will very rarely see anything close to a 35 yard difference on a drive on any given hole.

Bifurcation is already part of golf. Recreational players don't use the same tee boxes at anywhere near the lengths of the courses that pros play.

200 player difference. You just supported my point.

How often do you see someone outdriven by 35 yards?

4 iron to 7 iron is a thirty-plus yard difference. That is an unrealistic straw man argument. Yes if someone outdrives you by 35 yards you are at a disadvantage regardless.

That is not what I have read at all, which is that the effect will be exponentially less for slower swing players.

That is not a direct comparison, because we were discussing 190 from the rough compared to 160 from the rough.