Sir Nick Faldo believes plans to roll back the golf ball will make no difference to the huge distances that top players hit their drivers.
Speaking to the NCG Golf Podcast, the six-time major-winning legend believes alternative solutions such as limiting lofts on drivers, reducing the size of tees or even banning 60-degree wedges would be greater deterrents than the proposals made by the R&A and USGA.
The governing bodies intend to update the testing conditions used for golf ball conformance, which could result in the longest hitters losing up to 15 yards, and club golfers up to five yards.
The general idea is to encourage skill instead of strength, brains instead of brawn, concepts from which Faldo and his contemporaries excelled and built their careers.
“No, I don’t,” Faldo said on the NCG Golf Podcast, when asked if these plans would make a difference.
“It’s designed for the guys who have got 125mph clubhead speed. If you’re back down at 100mph – you’re going to get affected more at that end than they are.
“They’re going to lose 10/15 yards off their 360-yard drive. Whoop-de-do! They’re now at 345. What difference does that make?
“But the other end is going to hurt. It’s a bigger percentage, isn’t it? If you’re hitting it 270 and you lose 15, that’s going to hurt a lot more than at the other end. I’m not a fan of rolling back – I keep going on about skill, bring back skill. The obvious (one) is the size of the driver face.
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Having turned professional in 1976, becoming one of the world’s greatest players and winning The Open and the Masters three times each in the following 20 years required pinpoint ball-striking and precision off the tee, with equipment that is unrecognisable from what we see in the modern game.
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Faldo believes that the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Greg Norman were in a small pool of talented players off the tee in his era, those who could find the sweetspot of a persimmon wood with a balata ball. Now, the Englishman doubts if there are even ’12 bad drivers now’, given the level of innovation from equipment companies.
Some players and manufacturers are opposed to changes to the golf ball, but the R&A and the USGA have been determined to ‘reduce the impact increased hitting distances have on golf’s long-term sustainability’, and these are the plans in place to do so.
“I keep saying, if we had a tee peg, seven-eighths of an inch – you lose 10 or 15 yards just by the length of the tee peg,” Faldo said, as he began to explain his own solutions. “That doesn’t cost a dollar to write that in the book. I even thought for pros on a course under 7200 yards, which is short, say to the guys – no tee pegs this week. And if you’re good enough to place it and hit a driver off the deck, good for you.
“If we’ve got length rules, what if we said nothing less than 10 degrees with a driver? That’s like a 2 wood, but it’s a different-shaped shot. And we go to the other end, 56 degrees is the max. That’s it, no more 60s and 62s (wedges). That’s a written rule change that’s not going to cost the manufacturers a penny, but they would then start developing the driver. How can we make the driver go further at 10 degrees?
“There’s a handful of guys who can hit it 340 through the air. That is frightening, to think a seriously good driver in my day was 260,” he continued.
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“Try and bring back the skill in the game – we need that separation back to the old school. If you were in the top dozen guys who could really strike it well, you were a better player, week in week out, you were better than the average guy. Now, ball striking is simple. There are 100 or 200 really good ball strikers.
“You can miss the centre by a long way. In the old days, that would be a real clanker. If you were 12 millimetres off centre – that’s a big half inch. If you missed it by a half inch, you’d be giving it the ‘Ow!’ on your fingers. But now, you’re like, that didn’t feel great, and it’s gone four yards left.”
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What do you make of this Sir Nick Faldo roll back piece? Do you agree with his golf ball roll back solutions? What do you make of the golf ball roll back in general? Tell us on X!
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