Jump to content
Testers Wanted: RUNNER Golf and Byrdie Golf Design ×

Franc38

Member
  • Posts

    114
  • Joined

  • Last visited

About Franc38

  • Birthday 10/24/1974

Contact Methods

  • Instagram
    Franc38

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    France
  • Interests
    Golf? / Family / Watches / Music / Maths

Player Profile

  • Age
    40-49
  • Swing Speed
    101-110 mph
  • Handicap
    7.8
  • Frequency of Play/Practice
    Multiple times per week
  • Player Type
    Competitive
  • Biggest Strength
    Approach
  • Biggest Weakness
    Putting
  • Fitted for Clubs
    No

Recent Profile Visitors

1,946 profile views

Franc38's Achievements

  1. We had the EGU handicap system until 2 years ago... quite different from the USGA or R&A ways. Now we've joined the WHS... with some adaptation (like everything has got to come from federally sanctioned stroke play competitions, and some other stuff). Rules are sort of public domain to a point, I don't see why they wouldn't if they wanted to. Well, likely not just the French but I could see a EGU ruling body thing appear, if the uproar is big enough.
  2. That might be true, with many caveats, of the RandA, certainly not of the USGA, at least outside of the US They have not invented or standardised the game and have no real authority outside of the US, as the name says it Being in France I don't care a bit for them. So far I adhere to the rules coming from the join efforts of them and the RandA... because they're somewhat sensible, and because of the RandA historical relevance, but I can see many other national federations, which have the same 'rank' as the USGA say they won't follow anymore (for example, the Federation Française de Golf, if it wants to keep me as a paying member...) Edit Plus, they're supposedly in the business of 'preserving' golf, so "making changes" should really not be their "prerogative".
  3. It's indeed Matt Blois who was often on the TXG, now Club Champion YT channel. Nice video, by the way... It matches my numbers. A good, high, well hit 7i is about 1.9 times clubhead speed for me too.
  4. Meaning that if PGA and DP announce, along with LIV that they'll keep using the old balls, and amateurs seem to generally favour doing so as well... the OEMs are not going to produce the "conforming balls". Or would do so very reluctantly. That's James Robinson's take.. And he thinks that, for that reason, the roll back will not really happen.
  5. The thing is, MLR or not developing a new golf ball conforming to new rules and still OK for the best players in the world (feel, spin, control, wind reaction) will cost exactly the same. This cost will be borne by us the paying customers (their tour staffers get balls for free). So ultimately this cost could have been spread between "our balls" and the "tour balls" in some way, maybe making the tour ball very expensive and progressively raising the price of the others, but with the "general rollback" the price will be here for everyone, no smoothing out progressively! i.e. the cost paid by us will be the same but potentially would hit us more brutally. No other way around. Again the USGA has the average golfer at heart... Or so they say.
  6. I hear "don't worry that will impact tour players but not the recreational amateurs"... Well, I maintain a (French, so 100% stroke play official competitions based) 8 to 6 index with a mediocre putting, some mighty lateral dispersion with the driver BUT distances that are "middle of the road PGA tour". So I will be penalised way more than other 7 handicappers who are short but great putters, or short and very straight. Why is that "fair" or "not a problem" when I've never "over powered" any course? (By the way, if you follow Kyle Berkshire on YouTube you'll see that even him, three times world long drive champ, 160 mph club head speed and all that jazz doesn't "overpower courses"). This is just ridiculous.
  7. One thing I don't understand that the USGA could explain to me (or the proponents of the 'rollback'). The MLR was rejected supposedly because ball producers said the cost was going to be too high (I understand from that that the research to develop and the production of reduced flight balls isn't cheap) but now we're supposed to believe that imposing the same reduced ball to every one isn't going to be costly? Adding new tee boxes back for the select few courses that host your events is too costly but adding forward tees to thousands of everyday courses so they Joe (average) Public can still play isn't going to be a problem? John Daly was driving it 317 yards in the early 2000s and courses were fine but now Rory driving it 319 or 320 threatens the integrity of the game? What about charging rules every 4 years so that the guys who had played in their teens and return to the game now are totally lost with hazards, droping and so on... That would preserve the integrity of the game but having 40 guys driving it past 300 yards on tour instead of 10 guys driving it the same distance would threaten the integrity of the game? There is a lot of explaining that needs to be done. And also why the USGA and the R&A instead of England Golf and the Federation Française de Golf or the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers and the Federación española de golf? Historical reasons, sure enough... But this is an historical event that could lead to a change in "golf rules stewardship"...
  8. Sorry to put it this way, but we have had "official word" and that's what reignited so fiercely the thread... Sure they can back pedal but that's hardly the USGA way. They tend to see they were wrong, not admit it and double down!
  9. At the moment on tour some guys hit it 300 in the air, and they are only a few. That's barely more than what Tiger or Daly did back in the days, but since it was then only one or two guys and the rest at 270 and now it's 40 guys at 300 and the rest at 270, the average has increased. And will continue, slowly as more long hitters replace retiring short hitters. Strokes gained and logic are showing that longer courses (or shorter balls) give a bigger statistical advantage to the long hitters, so if you introduce a ball that reduces the distance in the air from 300 to 290 for the big dogs, the 270 crew (now 261-ish) will be at a bigger disadvantage. Provided that distance is the key with courses the way they are, the shorter hitters will very soon either hit it further or be replaced by younger, further hitting, new pros. So now the top distance is 293 (yeah, even the top guys work out, improve and optimise their equipment and the tour set up courses to get even more distance as that sells) and 90% of the tour players hit it 290+. What happened to the average? Well, it's increased! Meanwhile the average Joe, who doesn't optimise or train anymore and can't count on the tour to set up faster fairways, has lost 7 yards on his drives, 4 on his long irons and can't find new more forward tees... And if courses have to create these new tees that's a lot of money and environmental impact, way more than the occasional hole made longer at Augusta Well done USGA, you have created a problem for short hitters while increasing the "problem" (which only existed in your mind and that of the people listening to you) you said you wanted to solve without really explaining why! I'd say you well deserve that a competing new organisation organising the game emerged and puts you out of business (I don't know if it will happen but I certainly hope so).
  10. By the way... People complaining that now tour pros hit driver then a short or mid iron, like a 8 or 7 onto par 4, keep in mind that the tour average 7 iron in 37" and 33 degrees plus some change, while "in the golden age" of "good golf" the same club was called a 5 iron... plus, the guys on TV tend to lie on what club the PGA tour pros hit. I vividly remember a time they were saying "Ah, and now for 185 yards, he'll hit a controlled 7 iron" and on the next image you could see the club and it was written 6 on it!
  11. Well, for the newcomers, indeed a shorter ball will not be a problem, they will not loose anything. For me, having worked to gain distance over the last 6 to 7 years, despite being almost 50 and having kids and a rather busy life, getting back to my former distance not because of age but because of some guys decisions, that will be a bummer. That will be a bummer even more because I play more often than not with gentlemen who drive the ball shorter than my 7 iron and already struggle with the "pars" as they are, and don't have the choice to "tee it forward" (as, rather ironically, the same people who say that distance is a problem, shout about all the time... Maybe they really think that distance is a problem as players are hitting too short?). Now strokes gained has shown (and logic also indicates that) that if the course is (relatively to distances people can hit the ball) long, then the longer hitters are advantaged. That makes sense if you think of it: on a 500 yards par 4 the guy who drives it 300 yards and hits his 5 iron 200 yards can be there in regulation and even if he sprays it a bit, he'll be around the green in two. The guy who hits it 250 yards and will likely hit his 5 iron 180 yards... what happens to him? well after two perfectly hit and straight shots he is 70 yards from the green. He'll have to up and down from that distance for the par, while the other guy simply has to up and down from a few yards if he missed the green and two putt if not. On average, the long guy wins, easy. Think now of a 300 yards par 4. First guy may drive it but that puts in play the bunkers and water hazards and the bumps and... around the green. Second guy is 50 yards away, in the fairway. 50 yards from the fairway vs. deep bunker and chance of penalty or a funky lie in the rough... The difference is probably still in favour of Mr 300 but by quite a bit less. And probably more because Mr 300 will hit his 3 wood to 270 to avoid the risk (and probably be more accurate with it than Mr 250 with his driver, a bit) then have only 30 yards in, instead of 50. As pointed out sometimes on the forum, the tougher holes on tour are not massive par 4 or par 5s... Not even the long par 3, but typically the well defended short par 3. Think "postage stamp" at Troon, or the 7 at Pebble... So when the pros start driving par 5s (which would have never happened, even the long drive guys do not have the distance, despite their amazing speed) just make these holes shorter, put deeper bunkers (even in the middle of the green, to really put the onus on accuracy) and the benefit of being longer will be reduced. Finally, if people don't like seeing something (like guys bombing it) they don't buy the product in question, which then adapts. So if distance was a problem on the tour level (we have already seen it wasn't for recreational amateurs and everybody agreed, sort of) then we would expect the tours to address the "issue". They don't. So that show rather clearly that we are in front of a cabal of minority elitists who want to impose on others their view of the problem (because it's the right way, obviously) against the will of the majority.
  12. They never had the power to regulate equipment... until they took it. They never had the power to regulate based on outcome instead of properties... until they took it. As they are OK saying "a ball is conforming if it does this or that distance when submitted to x or y condition", they can perfectly say "a course is conforming for handicapping and competition purposes if a conforming ball landing this or that way doesn't roll more than x yards... Or "greens are conforming if the stimp is less than x and more than y". Or "no fairway should be wider than X or Y for a course to be acceptable for competition" Would equalise some things, too. The "super long drives" they seem to cry about are way more likely to happen in high altitude during the summer than at lower altitude when it's freezing. As they don't want super long drives they should ban competitions at high altitude courses, particularly in the summer. Tongue in cheek, we could expect, for the purpose of limiting that atrocious distance that so irks them, that it is now forbidden to play golf when the temperature is more than 15° Celsius (59 Fahrenheit) and when the last heavy rain fall is more than 2 days ago. Would be just as good for the game, and just as logical as their rules on the balls. Ultimately, they never had the power to regulate distance. They just happen to try to take it, right now (well, it started, low key, before but now it's really visible and "official"). Nobody voted for that, agreed to that... And the USGA as the R&A have very little legitimacy to do stuff, except historical. I could well see national federations (or tours) branch out on ball rules, same as they had before the WHS, used very different rules for handicap calculations (and still do, to some extent).
  13. Yep. Give them persimmons only and they'll try to optimize for that. Shafts, balls, swings... And within a short amount of time, they'll hit it as far as today. Possibly more often offline, though. Us, on the other hand...
  14. Nobody said that distance isn't important, or shouldn't be important, or whatever. They just pretend that some people hit "too far". You just have to make it so that it's dangerous to hit too far for the incentive to be reduced. Strokes gained show at the moment that "for tour courses as they are" you're the same 125 yards from the fairway to 100 yards (ish) from the rough. Just make it so that in order to compare to 125 yards from the fairway you need to be 50 yards from the rough. And that partial shots from the fairway can't hold the greens as much a full shots from the same fairways. Also, make the fairways (much) narrower at 300 to 370 yards so that the risk when you're long is higher.Sure enough long players will still have an advantage, but they'll bomb less from the tee. Which is supposedly "the problem". Now courses make money, we pay it. Plus, if anything, a less manicured/maintained course would incentivize being on the fairways more, and cost less. Making fairways smaller also limits costs and makes the "bomb and gouge" a less attractive option. The reason why a lot of munis don't have the set up of the tour courses is not because it would be hard for players (like they cared) but because it's cheaper!
  15. To sum it up, if you want less distance, don't try to regulate/block distance by rules on equipment but make distance less desirable by setting the courses and designing them in ways that stop rewarding the longest hitters who spread the ball. If they manage to be long and straight, good, they should be rewarded!
×
×
  • Create New...