For those of us who took to the game in the 1980s, golf was quite often the most exciting sport imaginable. It was all on the BBC, there wasn’t too much of it which made you pester your parents to take you to live events and, even to a novice teenager, it was obvious that there was so much skill involved.
They could hit the ball this way and that, high or low, drives would take off like jet planes and everything was topped off by bundles of backspin. Nothing like this happened at your local club so quickly these god-like figures became your heroes.
I sat down with five stars from the game in the ’80s – Peter Baker, Barry Lane, Roger Chapman, Andrew Oldcorn and Gary Wolstenholme – to hear their thoughts on what the game was like for them in the last century and how things have changed in golf technology since…
Oldcorn: When I was in my early teens and I was beginning to take golf seriously at Dalmahoy on the west side of Edinburgh. The East course was 6,800 yards long and that was huge for me. These were the days of Balata balls and wooden clubs and I couldn’t reach lots of the par 4s.
Wolstenholme: The beauty of the courses was that a 400-yard hole was a strong hole particularly into the wind. Now a 420-yard uphill par 4, even played into the wind, would be a drive and a short iron for most tour pros. It’s a shame as course designers come in and ‘Tiger proof’ these courses and quite often they ruin a good hole. It shouldn’t just be about the length but about testing the nerve, the course management, the ability to play a specific shot and too many par 3s are drifting outside an iron shot. A par 3 was always about the skill to manipulate an iron shot into a certain part of the green.
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Oldcorn: The strategy of playing a course is something that appeals to me much more. I much prefer classics like a Sunningdale or a Walton Heath or, from the Open rota, Royal Birkdale where it’s not all crash-bang-wallop.
It’s just my opinion but I can’t abide the modern way of thinking of huge courses with lakes and elephants buried beneath the greens, it doesn’t do anything for me.
I grew up shaping my shots because of the equipment that I had and I get frustrated these days because the ball won’t move. I’m just a product of my era. If there was a 25-year-old sat here he would call me an old fogey but I like to watch golf in a certain way. I respect how good the modern player is but they are falling off their feet trying to hit a driver.
Baker: Players are more one-dimensional now but they are also much fitter and stronger these days and they swing it better than we did, we did it more by feel.
Today’s equipment allows you to hit it harder with the way the ball is and the bigger sweet spot, now it is hard to shape it – particularly off the tee.
I used to have 12 degrees on my driver and Ian Woosnam used to have 8 degrees, so when he got a new driver he would get me to hit it. If I was only able to get the ball about six feet in the air then he knew that was right for him.
Lane: Drivers in the ’80s would look great as the ball flight looked like an aeroplane taking off but they never went anywhere, now you want 14 degrees of launch.
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When I was playing in my last Dubai Desert Classic in 2014 they asked if I had any clubs from the first year in 1989. So I took a TaylorMade driver – it is the size of a golf ball. It is ridiculous, it looks more like a putter, there is no loft on it and if you were one degree out it would go 40 yards left or right, it was such a precision tool. But you got used to it. The poor drivers of the ball were very good iron players – like Jose Maria Olazabal, he was one of the very best.
I drove the ball quite well but you had to pick a shot and most of the time it was a fade which was much easier than a consistent draw. That tended to just nose-dive out of the air, with a cut you could drive through it and get the ball moving forward.
Wolstenholme: Back in the day people would drop a ball on the ground to hit a driver into the wind and, with the spin rate that the ball had, you had to learn how to manipulate the shot with your hands. Now with the technology and fitness you hit the ball in a very different way.
Chapman: I stopped using the 1-iron 20 years ago. At Porthcawl last year, I knew it was going to be windy, so I got a 3-iron and knocked it down and that was good fun. It was difficult to get the ball in the air with so little loft but you could get run with the topspin.
Baker: Driving used to be a premium and it’s not now other than how far you can hit it. Greg Norman and Woosie were two of the best drivers I’ve ever seen and they had a real advantage as they hit it long and straight. It was no good being in the rough as you were too far back to reach the green, now they are all way up there.
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As for the 3-wood if it was a bit damp or sitting down a bit and you had to carry water then you generally wouldn’t do it. Unless you hit it perfect then you wouldn’t be able to get the height, now the 3-wood goes so high.
Interview continues on the next page, where the quartet discuss how golf changed when the ProV1 was introduced…
Wolstenholme: When I played in the Masters in 1992 John Daly hit a 3-wood over the top of the trees at the 13th so you knew then that equipment was starting to change and you could see the benefits of what technology was able to do.
Oldcorn: The first metal wood I ever used was on the range at a tournament in 1983 so I played all my amateur golf with wooden clubs. There was no graphite to be seen anywhere so a lot of the work was done with your hands rather than your body, the total opposite of these days where it is more athletic.
The driver was always my favourite club and still is, even with advancement of technology but size of old driver would be same as a hybrid these days.
My technique has pretty much stayed the same, I was never a hitter, it was always more about rhythm. In those days there was no TrackMan but I can’t imagine my swing speed has changed much in the past 30 years. With the advent of technology you are able to hit the ball harder and the ball goes straighter, if you tried to swing harder in the ’80s with wooden clubs and steel shafts the dispersion would be huge compared to these days.
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Then again technology in my era was much more advanced than the likes of Henry Cotton, Ben Hogan or Sam Snead so how on earth can you measure careers in terms of achievements?
Wolstenholme: I remember having a chat with Greg Owen and he said the guys that he was outdriving previously by 30 yards were now as long as him as technology changed – and their short game was always better so he had to find a new way to compete. Which he did very well but without technology I think you would have very different players at the top of the tree.
Lane: In our day the ball was very soft and you had to hit it very hard and very much onto the ball to generate the spin to get the ball in the air. We used a lot of long irons to drill it, they call it stingers now but you had to hit it hard and late to get the ball in the air. You couldn’t do it now with the modern ball. If you hit it out the toe or heel it went absolutely nowhere.
We used one ball every hole as they were just so soft and an iron would leave three lines on the ball. When the greens were soft you had to hit easy shots so the ball was going low and not generating the spin.
I remember Norman using a Top Flite ball and he couldn’t keep it on the green as it span so much. Into the wind it would go nowhere and downwind it would go miles.
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Wolstenholme: I can honestly say that when I was playing for England in the ’90s the big hitters had an advantage but it wasn’t anywhere as near as great as it is now. The ball span more so they had to hit it absolutely perfectly to be able to have a really big advantage as the ball would veer off more readily at high-speed impact so it was more about shaping shots. Bubba would have loved it.
Lane: You would never hit the ball straight even from 120 yards. It was all about shot making because of the equipment and the ball.
Wolstenholme: Short-game skills were incredibly important, they still are but now you have par 5s that are eagle chances even if it is a 600-yard hole. I find that so hard to conceive. When I was starting 480 was a par 5 and a decent par 5.
As technology was changing then the Pro V1 came on the market at the end of 2000 and that was the start of the modern ball. Nick Dougherty was given a blank box of them and played a big amateur event at Lake Macquarie and he won pretty comfortably. Yes he was a great player but he had the best ball on the market and he was the only one using it.
Chapman: If you were behind a tree you could manoeuvre the ball 30-40 yards. These days it just reaches its peak and then falls out of the air. The old ball would carry on bending.
I was in the top third of driving distances on the European Tour in the Persimmon days with about 260 yards, now I’m 25 years older and hitting it 25 yards further. Everyone has to go with technology but I preferred it before, the sound of Persimmon was just a great noise. Now it is just get it in the air quickly and let it fly. The combination of club and ball means they can hit it 340 yards which is all wrong, the ball should be reined back. Just move it back 10-20 per cent and all of a sudden you don’t have to build new tees or buy extra land. People are making courses 8,000 yards which is ridiculous.
Wolstenholme: A good example is the 3rd at Lytham where there are bunkers down the right-hand side. It was already a hard hole but with a fairway that gets down to 15 yards in places with the bunkers and shaping of the rough and out of bounds down the right that was unnecessary. They stretched the hole too, nobody wants to redesign a green because of the cost.
Sawgrass isn’t long but it still sets a wonderful challenge. If you create decent rough, doglegs and fast greens then you have a real test. I’m not trying to say the long hitters shouldn’t be able to capitalise on their greatest weapon but too often they are taking out the challenge of what golf’s all about and I think the game has changed forever. I don’t think the R&A and USGA can do anything about it.
Years ago golf was a more genteel sport in some respects, now it is all about overcoming a course rather than working a way round it.
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