Editor's Note: In a new biweekly, online-only column, CBS Commentator Peter Kostis will be filing dispatches for GOLFONLINE from the road. Here is his first installment.
Enough! I’ve had it with the people who are definitively preaching the golf ball is ruining the game, limiting competition, and making classic courses obsolete. Tim Petrovic, the winner of last week’s Zurich Classic in New Orleans, averages 278.9 yards off the tee, good for a 119th-place rank on the PGA Tour. Along with Fred Funk (260.8 yards, 187th on Tour) and Peter Lonard (280.2 yards, 107th), relatively short hitters have captured three of the last six Tour events.
Let’s bring this talk into perspective. As an instructor who has given lessons to more than 150,000 regular golfers, and in my role as a CBS Sports golf commentator, I’ve seen thousands of long drives being creamed down the fairway. But in my earlier years I was educated as an engineer, and that background helps me keep one rule of science close to heart: You can’t reach a logical conclusion if your equation has more than one variable. That inconsistency is plaguing these discussions about the golf ball.
Much of the reason for all the talk is, predictably, focused on Tiger Woods. He is clearly hitting the ball farther this year—as much as 30 yards farther according to a Nike engineer who “whispered” in a recent Sports Illustrated article that centered on the new Nike One Platinum ball. [In the interest of full disclosure, I have played Titleist golf balls and clubs for nearly 20 years].
However the ball is far from the only new element in Tiger’s 2005 arsenal: He increased his driver head size, switched to a longer, lighter and differently composed driver shaft, plus -- oh yeah -- changed his golf swing! So which of these is responsible for his being ranked fourth in driving distance on the PGA Tour? The answer is all of them, and probably more...but the golf ball somehow gets all the credit, or blame, depending on your viewpoint.
On the next page I’ve outlined factors in three critical areas -- equipment, players, and course conditions -- that all contribute to the increased distances that players are hitting the ball over the last 20 years.
