Testing everything because you'll try anything

[Moecat]

http://onpar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/testing-everything-because-youll-try-anything/

 

The United States Golf Association has a testing center in Far Hills, N.J., where the many gadgets of golf are examined to see if they hew to the rules.

 

By BILL PENNINGTON

 

Inside a low-slung building off a nondescript road in a quiet central New Jersey suburb is the most powerful room in golf.

 

By the thousands every year, people devise ingenious, revolutionary and bizarre ideas for improving golf — new clubs, balls, tees, gloves and grips — and all of it ends up in this room. These prototypes might represent hours spent tinkering in a garage with an eye on making millions. In the case of major golf manufacturers, they represent millions of dollars already spent on engineering.

 

In either case, the work and time invested are broken down in the orderly laboratory of the United States Golf Association Research and Test Center. In that space, in the modest building surrounded by rolling, grassy fields, a staff of 18 decrees which clubs, balls, grips, tees and devices conform to the Rules of Golf. In other words, what is considered legal and what is illegal.

 

Recreational golfers are not required to play with conforming clubs or golf balls that meet certain dimensions and performance restrictions, but nearly everyone does. Just as the professional golf tours are not required to play by U.S.G.A.'s rules, but each chooses to voluntarily.

 

“We are not the police, and if your submitted idea is not approved, you won't be arrested,” said John Spitzer, the U.S.G.A.'s assistant technical director. “It's just not within the rules.”

 

Being within the rules could be the difference between a great idea left to languish in a garage and a groundbreaking club that finds its way into the bag of a sizable portion of America's 27 million golfers. Golf is a $40 billion industry.

 

Requesting the U.S.G.A.'s stamp of approval for equipment has been going on for decades. But in the last 15 years, the number of submissions has more than quintupled, from about 450 in 1995 to more than 2,800 in 2009. And that doesn't include golf balls. The U.S.G.A. tested 1,469 models of those last year.

 

“Everyone is searching for golf's magic bullet,” Spitzer said.

 

It is, after all, a hard game. And there have been extraordinary equipment advances — alloys that allow club shapes that hit the ball straighter and balls that last longer and soar farther than ever.

 

A ball teed up for a robotic golfer at the U.S.G.A.'s Research and Test Center. Several thousand items are tested each year.

 

A majority of submissions to the U.S.G.A. come from golf industry giants like TaylorMade, Titleist, Nike, Callaway and Ping, but as much as 25 percent are sent to the test center in Far Hills from individuals unaffiliated with any company. Their submissions run the gamut — three-headed putters, balls laced with gunpowder, gloves with padding promoting a certain grip or tees that prevent a slice. Each of those ideas was classified as nonconforming. There are, however, just as many ideas, if not more, that have been accepted. Last year, more than 60 percent of submissions were approved.

 

The most obvious explanation for the increase in submissions is the advancing technology that has overhauled how clubs and balls are constructed. Newer, lighter materials and the advent of computer-generated designs have turned the making of a driver — once formed by laminating pieces of wood — from a craft to a marvel of engineering.

 

Scores of engineers hired by the club manufacturers are trying to outfox the small band of engineers, technicians and college professors on the U.S.G.A.'s payroll. It has become a high-stakes science fair.

 

The manufacturer's engineers know there are specific, documented and minute limitations on every facet of golf's equipment, from what angle a shaft can be affixed to a club head to the amount of springlike effect permitted in a club face.

 

A change this year in the rule governing the shape of the microscopic grooves cut into an iron — measured down to the 10,000th of an inch — roiled the industry for months.

 

In this environment, the manufacturers are continually trying to find ways to get their new equipment as close to the nonconforming line as possible. Their contemporaries on the U.S.G.A. Test Center's staff stand on the other side of the line.

 

“They are trying to help their customers play better,” Spitzer said. “We get that and have allowed much progress. So we're not trying to preserve the game, but we are trying to protect it.”

 

So to make sure every new club is within the existing rules, it faces a battery of tests. The shaft is bent and the grip analyzed. There's a shadow graph test and another test for checking the club's moment of inertia.

 

The club's volume is checked and its surface roughness gauged. Spin rates off the face are calculated — and not just in normal conditions; another test uses synthetic fabric to mimic wet grass.

 

Golf clubs have their shafts tested for flexibility and their faces examined microscopically. Technological developments have transformed the making of a driver.

 

The golf balls, if it's possible, seem to face additional scrutiny. They are weighed, measured, sometimes sliced open or compressed. Most are shot by a minicannon through a 75-foot tunnel past infrared sensors and lasers with dozens of readouts produced. Other balls are hit by a mechanical golfer across a long driving range where trajectory monitors designed to follow missiles aimed at warships instead wait in the grass to chart the path of each ball.

 

Even after a ball is deemed to be conforming, the U.S.G.A. sleuths are not done. They will visit a local Dick's Sporting Goods and buy some of the same balls just to make sure they perform the same as the ones the company submitted for testing.

 

The painstaking attention to detail does not end with the testing. Every person who submits an item, including something like the obviously nonconforming three-headed putter, receives a meticulously written decision after a committee of four meets. The submission has a file, including all the correspondence involved should the person want to appeal the decision, which is allowed (the appeal goes to a different committee).

 

All the paperwork is kept on file, as are all the submitted items. More than 27,000 are stored at the test center, cataloged and kept confidential.

 

If all this seems a little much for a game that is principally about hitting a little ball into a little hole, those at the U.S.G.A. Test Center would not entirely disagree. “It might seem crazy, but if we didn't draw some lines, it could get out of control pretty easily,” Spitzer said.

 

In 2009, the center also put 1,469 models of golf balls through a battery of tests. Most are shot by a minicannon through a tunnel past sensors and lasers with dozens of readouts produced.

 

“It's pretty easy to manipulate a club to hit the ball straight and you could easily make a ball that goes 320 yards even with an average swing. So yes, it's about hitting a little ball, but without the challenge, it's not a game, either.

 

“It's about making the skill of the golfer the most important thing, not the golfer's equipment.”

 

Spitzer himself is an average golfer, a 14 handicap, who has seen in his 13 years with the U.S.G.A. just about every new club or ball invented by the big golf companies and the mad golf scientists working in their basements. So what clubs and balls are in his golf bag?

 

His clubs are several years old and far from modern technologically. Recently, when he found new, lesser-known golf balls discounted to $7 a dozen, perhaps because they were a model soon to be discontinued, he bought 10 boxes.

 

“If they made a club that prevented me from hitting a chunky chip short of the green,” Spitzer said, “or if they made a ball that prevented me from blowing my first putt 15 feet past the hole, then I would buy it.

 

“But they don't. Right now, my best investment would be $800 in golf lessons.”