The technology debate

WE have been here before. Improved equipment is ruining golf's integrity. The skill is being taken out of the game. The importance of strength now outweighs that of finesse. Professionals find it too easy. The core values and challenges of golf no longer remain.

The themes are familiar, because the technology issue is golf's equivalent of the greenhouse effect ­ and both debates are concerned a lot of hot air. Depending on who you listen to, the game is either better and more enjoyable for all, or it is about to reach tipping point and be irredeemably lost.

To those who belong in the latter camp, the game has been teetering on the precipice for some time now. And the game's ruling bodies stand accused of a critical failure to act when there was still time, of choosing to ignore the warning signs until it was too late.

But this is not just a modern phenomenon. The same points were raised when the gutta percha gave way to the solid ball; when hickory shafts were replaced by steel; when the sand wedge was first invented; when blades were forsaken in favour of perimeter-weighted irons; when wooden heads turned into metal ones; when steel shafts gave way to graphite; when Titleist's Pro V1 set new standards in ball performance; and, most recently, when driver heads began to resemble UFOs.

And that is just the equipment. All the while, agronomy techniques have improved to the extent that we expect to play on surfaces like snooker tables ­ and that's just when teeing off, let alone while putting. Players are generally bigger, fitter and stronger than ever before. They are also, on the whole, better and more intensively taught.

Even the clothes we wear have had a profound effect on how the game is played. Think I'm exaggerating? Well, next time you encounter a mid-round shower and slip on your ultra-lightweight, non-restrictive, waterproof, breathable jacket, imagine trying to persevere in a tie, tweed jacket and a pair of hobnailed boots.

No, that things have changed in the way golf is played over the years is not open to debate. And outside of museums, the only constants are those courses designed in the 19th Century and before. Take the Old Course at St Andrews. It is considered sacrosanct, and nobody would dare touch its incomparable bunkering, absence of rough and eccentric routing, with those trademark double greens. So when the R and A enlisted the help of Donald Steel to prepare it to host the 2005 Open, there were few options available to him.

In fact, rather controversially, some of the fairways were delineated with some wispy rough down the middle of the course, but effectively the only weapon in his armoury was the ability to create new tees. One wonders how long this now-routine process of lengthening these centuries-old jewels can go on. Not just St Andrews, but virtually every other Open venue as well.

Peter Thomson, the five-time Open champion and course designer who spends several months each year living in St Andrews, said of Steel's changes: "It didn't work as much as I hoped it would ­ in the practice rounds one of my fellow Australians, Scott Hend, drove six greens.

"The top players are hitting less clubs into greens than we used to even though the courses are so much longer now. I'm so attached to the Old Course. It's the model, the prototype for any designer. The best player won at St Andrews (in 2005) so the set-up was right.

"That's what you're trying to do in The Open. The last time it was at Carnoustie was a disaster because the best player didn't win," he said.

For an idea on how much things have changed over the past century, consider this. JH Taylor won the 1923 Open at St Andrews, on a course which measured only 6,300 yards and with a winning score of 309 (the concept of par was yet to be invented, but this equates to an average score over the four rounds of just over 77).

In 2000, Tiger Woods won the same event over a course measuring 7,115 yards and needed only 269 blows ­ 10 fewer per round.
An amazing feat ­ but is it right to judge the status quo of golf based on the performance of a genius like Woods, now almost universally acknowledged as the greatest player ever to play the game?

The ability to propel the ball further is by no means the only factor modern players have in their favour when tackling the Old Course. The performance of the ball is almost beyond comparison. As recently as the early 1990s, top players had to make a trade-off when they chose their ball: essentially between extra feel and extra length. But in selecting a balata, they were also resigning themselves to a ball that would be largely at the mercy of the wind.

Nowadays, premium balls not only go every bit as far as Œdistance' ones, but they also barely seem to notice the strength and direction of the wind. It is the difference between tossing a stone in the air and a table tennis ball.

Then you have the improved groove configurations that the authorities as recently as last month announced they wanted to curb. Years of research have produced a far more efficient way of imparting backspin. It used to be that once grass was trapped between the clubface and the ball, backspin was hugely reduced.

Nowadays, how often do you see a tour pro hit from out of the rough, send his ball soaring onto the green then watch it zip back on its second bounce. Not that it is solely the grooves that are to thank for such miraculous results. Modern tournament greens are little more than dartboards, according to Irish Ryder Cup star Paul McGinley.

"If they're going to try to curb the scoring and get it so that everybody can compete, they need to address the way they are setting up the courses," he said. "A course can be 8,000 yards long but if the greens are soft, there's going to be low scoring.

"Whistling Straits (venue for the 2004 USPGA) was great fun, it was fast, it was firm, there was a bit of wind, the greens were rock hard, guys were losing their heads. They're not used to it. They can't handle it. You look at St Andrews in 2005, they talked about the length of it, but in reality you had two par fives which were really par fours because they played so short.

"You had two drivable par fours, yet second place was only eight under par. That's sixteen shots over the tournament but nobody seems to get the picture at all," he said.

At St Andrews, where those gigantic greens are protected by the bunkers, this makes a profound difference. It was designed so that an approach being played from the wrong angle was almost impossible ­ apart from by luck ­ to get close to the hole.
A bunker is always between the player and the hole. But this only works when the greens are so firm that approach shots need to be pitched short of the green. If the greens are receptive, any such hazards are simply not a factor for the better player.

Then there is the modern wedge. The sand iron had not even been invented in 1923. While as recently as 15 years ago, the most lofted wedge a pro carried usually measured around 53 degrees. Suddenly, Taylor's 1923 winning score seems quite an achievement.

But away from the professional game at the opposite end of the spectrum to Tiger Woods and Co is the average club player.
Their golf, statistically, is not improving despite all the advances in club and ball technology. There are those who believe the gap between professionals and the rest has never been wider, that the very equipment supposed to help the hacker is actually of more benefit to the experts.

Think about it. What difference does a 460cc, multi-material driver boasting a shaft with the latest in nano-technology make to a cold top? The average player can hit it further than he used to but that often amounts to being in more trouble and gives him less chance of being straight.

No, those who benefit most from the new technology and the standard of course conditioning are the experts ­ exactly those who need less help than anyone. In the circumstances, some have proposed the introduction of a tournament ball. In other words, a model designed for tournament play that travelled, say, only 90 per cent as far in the air.

But this is fraught with controversy. Who wants to see the Œbifurcation' of the game? Or to put it more simply, is not one of golf's greatest appeals that we all play the same game, using the same equipment over the same courses?

And, less romantically but more practically, would the R&A and USGA, the game's two ruling bodies, be prepared to risk massive law suits from the multi-million dollar golf industry, much of whose income is derived from the manufacture of golf balls each year?

And anyway, to what extent should the direction of the game be governed by the way a tiny minority, i.e. top tour pros, play, compared to a world of hackers who, frankly, need all the help they can get? This is no simple issue and is not a one-sided debate with a clear right and wrong. It comes down to a matter of perspective, and it is an argument that will rage on for many years from now.

It was ever thus.