Franc38

I should have mentioned he had an iron in his hand waiting for the green to clear 300 yards away. 

# 1 SLOW PLAY. 
Sunday, I pulled into the parking lot, and I could see the first tee was empty. I got out my MotoCaddy, put my bag on, put my golf shoes on. Still, nobody on the first tee. I checked in at the Pro shop. He said I was good to go. There was a twosome riding that went off a little while ago and they should be on #4 by now. I get to the tee box in which the elevation is lower than the fairway. I walked up to where I could see if the fairway was clear. Not the case the twosome was not even on the green yet and it was only a 368-yard straight hole. At that rate it was going to be a 7-hour round. I waited for them to clear the green and tee off on the par three 150-yard 2nd hole before I hit my tee shot on hole 1. I finished the hole, and they were still on the green on 2. I headed over to Hole 4 to get in front of them. Never saw them the rest of the day. Heck I was probably home before they made it to the back 9. 🤣
#2. Courses need to put sand in the bunkers not a 1/4" dusting of sand and small pebbles. If you get in one rake it when you're done. 
#3. Fix your ball marks on the green.     

My peeve (in addition to the slower than dirt play)....
Trash - pick up your water bottles, wrappers, ball sleeves, etc. when you are on the course. If you see something pick it up and dispose of it in a trash can!

As many others have said, slow play/not playing ready golf is one…along these lines is the group that takes their sweet time clearing a green for the follow group to play up.
The next are those that don’t repair ball marks on the greens.  Not only does it ruin it for those behind you, but also damages the greens long term.  Please take care of the course.

That was then this is now. This is regressive. It is stopping innovation. Golf may have been fine then, but now is a whole different ball game. 
 
 

Less skill isn’t needed. If that was the case the fastest swing speed golfers on tour would be winning more. But when you look at the top 25 most haven’t won or have rarely won. Its guys like Scheffler, Mcilroy, hovland and those who are near the top in other strokes gained categories are winning.
And if you pay attention to golf on tv even with the technology in drivers the pros including the top ranked ones hit bad shots all the time and some so bad they end up deep in the woods or on another fairway.
there is still plenty of skill needed in the game and distance is one of them. If it was just technology then everyone would be hitting it 320. 

Depends on if you look at it as a sport, or if you look at it as a game. Sport should be hard. The PGA Tour players consider it a sport and it should be hard for them.
A game, played for fun, should only be as hard as one wants to make it. Otherwise we would go back to featheries and hickory shafts. Most "sports" don't really have a massive ability to be affected by technology. Hard to change a soccer ball significantly. In baseball, limited change for the ball and bats. Cricket, football, track and field, even biking, etc, aren't significantly affected by technology. The human element, training and skill, largely determine the winner. Sometimes luck.
Unless it's NFL football when the referees determine the winner.
But in golf, changes to the ball, woods, irons, hybrids, wedges, putters, all affect how one plays the game. There isn't any other sport or game that allows 14 implements and a different ball depending on preference. There are thousands of permutations to fill out ones bag. You don't usually currently see thirty handicappers playing mid sized drivers, blades, 1-PW irons, one wedge, and a bullseye putter. You can, but why would you?
If the Tour and the ruling bodies really want change, they would have one ball, one set of standard clubs, and everybody would play with the same equipment. All players would mold their game through their own athleticism and it would truly be a sport.
The players and the golf industry as a whole aren't interested in that solution.
The road for golf as a game and an industry has been one of innovation so we all can enjoy it. Taking 4 yards off a drive is somewhat insignificant, if that ends up being the actual cost of this rule for average golfers. We won't know for some time the reality of this change.
My guess is golf as a sport will lose players over the next 6 years anyway. The Covid bloom will die out as many of the folks who converted to golf will, over the next 6 years, even with technology, realize it is too hard, too expensive, and takes too much time. They will also realize that the "ruling bodies" don't have their best interests at heart because they want to keep golf a "sport" when it reality for a lot of us it is a game.
We have to continually keep in mind the original rules for golf were only created because money was involved. Prior to that, it was just a fun way to while away time. Some or maybe many of us want to go back to that.
Or as the King would say, I want all you loafing golfers to take up archery.

Bad idea to make the game shorter and take the fun out of hitting the occasional 300+ yard drive when you really nut it. It appears that the vast majority of golfers are against it. Who’s for it and what’s their rationale?

Disrespectful.  If they wanted him to get a bucket, they should still have players in their defensive positions.  They could play loose or even normal.  Give him the sense of, or actual earning the basket.  Where were the refs?  Pulling the players would be grounds for a technical foul on the bench.   After shooting the techs, if they don’t come on the floor warrants another tech foul, and another.  Even to the point of ejecting the coach.  

But those who are younger and have lots of golf to play even at the recreational level will be affected. It should be about leaving the game in a better place for those yet to play and for those who will be playing for a long time to come.
 

True but the PGA tour doesn’t want that. They could easily grow the rough in a bit, not mow the fairways as tight or water them more, but they have the course setup the way they want to promote more distance and more birdies. This is what sells viewership.
The ball rollback is the ruling bodies dictating to the tours how golf should be played. They can’t mandate golfers stop working out, stop speed training, not to use a launch monitor. They can’t dictate course setup so they have to find a way to enforce their desired way golf should be played onto the professionals. They couldn’t get them to bifurcate so they reverted to their original plans to enforce it on everyone.
It comes down to whether people like the way the pros play golf or not. If they don’t then there is a distance problem and it needs to be fixed. 

As many others have said, driving the ball farther demands more accuracy which can easily be countered with narrower fairways or longer rough, or both. This ball change is unnecessary as long as a little greenskeeper creativity or more punitive design takes place.

I agree that the most important reason for moving the goal posts was to reduce the number of severe (brain and other) injuries that were taking place. To some degree this ball change is like the kid who doesn't like how the game is progressing and so takes his ball and goes home. It is somewhat juvenile. If the limits had been put on BEFORE the increased distances we now see, it would be better, but, at this point, it would penalize equipment companies for their continuing advancing club engineering improvements and ball construction improvements. It is a stick in the eye.

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".

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.

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.

It is but as the supposed stewards of the game they should be looking at ways to not make it harder for the amateur golfer. Their one good decision was to update the rules to make some easier to understand and to help pace of play.
So if all the pros are doing this then what is the problem that the distance they hit is creating?
Heres what the ruling bodies and many pro rollbacks haven’t done and that define a problem statement. Their statement is average distance has been increasing for 20,30,40,50 years and if we don’t do something it will continue.
so what’s the actual issue and what does the rollback fix.

Only those choosing to play on any USGA sanctioned event or in any tournament using handicaps like league play or friendly competitions with friends need to follow the rules. Everyone else is free to A play golf how they choose. That option doesn’t fundamentally change the game. There are more golfers in the U.S. without a handicap than with one. Almost 25 million golfers yet only about 2.5 million have a handicap

I would bet this is closer to what they mean and what the pro rollback crowd wants. They want the eras of Jack, Arnie, Snead, hogan to be what golf is and to ignore what Tiger did for the game. I still see guys in the summer dressed in black Nike pants and red Nike or TW shirts playing weekend rounds. The change he brought with being more fit and athletic. That changed the game and they don’t like it. 
 
This is the pet that makes no sense. What they did isn’t going to solve any problems and they were too scared to roll it further back to what they actually want so they pulled this change out to make it seem like they are doing something. They would rather nickel and dime changes to reduce distance because they can get people to buy into. Like right now with people saying they don’t mind giving up a few yards. Then in 2032 it will be a few more and so on til hold is back to the 80s and people aren’t interested in the game anymore because the more they work the more gets taken away

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.

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.

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.

I’m still trying to figure out what the integrity of the game means.
The goal of the game is to score as low as possible when playing and in competitive golf it’s to be the lowest when the competition ends. Not sure how it affects that. Especially when you consider pga tour professionals have a +5 or better handicap, they are going to make a bunch of birdies over the course of 4 rounds and not going to make many big numbers 

Moving the goal post doesn’t effect the stats he shared (an attempt from the 50 yard line to a front goal post and an attempt from the 40 to a back goal post are both 50 yards in length). Ultimately the goal post move had the following effects 1) less field goal attempts from certain parts of the field (granted this has not held up long term) 2) reduction in potential injury from players running into the goals posts 3) opened up red zone passing as the goal post was no longer an obstacle.
The parallel we have in golf is that adding distance is only a short term solution that ultimately entices players to attempt to hit it farther (just as what we have seen with longer field goal attempts in recent years in the NFL). Ultimately adding length is not a long term solution to the perceived 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?
And in the 1990s/early 2000s, on what is now the Korn Ferry Tour, Victor Schwamkrug was AVERAGING 339 yards with his driver.  I also seem to recall Hank Kuehne averaging more than 325 yards off the tee in his brief stint on the PGA Tour.