The 400 yard drive
By Frank Thomas
 “At
the rate things are going, golfers will soon be able to
drive the ball 400 yards -- unless new technology in golf
equipment is harnessed and standards adopted and enforced
to prevent this from happening.”
This is a myth, expressing the fear of those who don’t
understand the laws of nature that govern what happens when
club meets ball. It’s true on its face, but it ignores
the simple fact that distance cannot keep increasing at
its current rate.
The first set of reliable distance data on the PGA Tour
was collected in 1968. From then until 1995, the average
driving distance increased at a steady and acceptable rate
of 1 foot per year. But in 1995 the titanium driver was
introduced, and for the next eight years the annual rate
of increase skyrocketed to 7.5 feet per year.
This increase was the result of a happy accident. The manufacturers
of the large-headed titanium drivers were trying to design
clubs to be more forgiving, with the weight distributed
away from the center of the clubface. The strength of titanium
allowed them to make the face of the club head thinner than
ever before -- so thin, in fact, that the face actually
deformed and recovered while in contact with the ball, acting
like a trampoline. This transferred additional energy to
the ball, resulting in increased ball speed and distance.
All the golfer had to do to take advantage of this phenomenon
was to hit the ball close to the center of the clubface,
the “sweet spot”.
Several years after the introduction of these drivers,
tour players made an unprecedented move: in a matter of
a couple of weeks, almost every player switched from the
traditional ball with rubber windings to a solid core multi-layered
ball. These balls have low spin properties off the driver,
increasing accuracy and distance, but retain the soft feel
for control around the greens that characterized the wound
balls the pros had been using.
These two changes, the titanium driver and the multi-layered
ball, resulted in slightly more than a 20-yard increase
in average driving distance since 1995. Fortunately this
rate of increase will soon plateau; based on recent data
this seems to be happening, not as a result of any new standards
set by the governing bodies but by natural limits. There
are no materials so resilient that a ball bounced off a
surface will rebound to its original height; there is always
some loss of energy. The changes since 1995 have brought
us close to the practical limits of this exchange.
Alongside these technological changes, there have been
breakthroughs resulting from a better understanding of the
ideal launch conditions of a golf ball. Through analysis
and study not possible a generation ago, scientists have
determined the optimal set of launch conditions (spin and
launch angle) for a particular ball speed, to provide the
maximum distance. Ernie Els is among those who have made
impressive gains in distance through proper fitting of ball
and club to achieve these ideal conditions. The only way
Ernie and others will be able to increase their distance
in the future is to increase club head speed by getting
stronger, and no rule can prevent that.
The major advances in technology have taken the club and
ball about as far as they can go. New applications of existing
technology may result in slight gains, but the quantum leaps
we saw in the last decade are through. The 400-yard drive
is not just around the corner, and any rules to set new
distance standards for equipment that are only fractionally
distant from the limits established by nature are just window
dressing.
Some of the great courses, designed almost a century ago
have, over the years, been modified to accommodate changes
in athletic ability, agronomy and advances in equipment
design. Modifications in the future will relate to course
setup rather than length. The reason for this is that the
athletic ability will continue to improve on the whole but
with insignificant changes at the top. The advances in agronomy
have been outstanding and rapidly approaching the goal of
perfection. And equipment will continue to improve but for
distance. The USGA is playing a role in this, but the real
thanks go to Sir Isaac Newton, who documented the laws of
nature, that place the real limits on the equipment-maker’s
art.
For this we can be thankful, as it will allow us to focus
our attention on some of the very important real issues
facing the game. One of the most important of these is to
more effectively preserve the enthusiasm of those who are
initially attracted to the game by making the introduction
process less stressful and intimidating.
It is not the mission of the guardians of this game to
promote it but rather to protect it by effectively governing
the very thing, which makes it so attractive, and to shepherd
those who choose to participate through the introductory
process.
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