{"id":1248514,"date":"2023-12-06T17:22:16","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T17:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/golftoday.co.uk\/?p=1248514"},"modified":"2023-12-14T08:36:13","modified_gmt":"2023-12-14T08:36:13","slug":"a-lengthy-matter-new-distance-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/golftoday.co.uk\/a-lengthy-matter-new-distance-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"A lengthy matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was a quite interesting and certainly thought-provoking piece in The Guardian<\/i><\/b> last week. The author, Phineas Harper, said that at a golf course in North London a firm of architects had put forward a draft proposal to hand over nine of the 18 holes to the general public for the creation of 650 affordable homes and community facilities which would include lakes, allotments and a gym. This particular part of the capital, Enfield, has one of the UK\u2019s highest proportion of residents living in temporary accommodation. The piece also noted that golf in London uses up nearly as much land as all other sports put together and participant-wise it\u2019s mostly white, mostly male, mostly not for the young and it\u2019s pretty expensive. In short, golf is not a good thing.<\/p>\n

That, of course, is not a sentiment with which a golfer is likely to agree, but we would surely have to concur that golf is a long thing. (Unless we\u2019re talking about my driving.) The recent announcement by the R&A and USGA that they are going to reduce the distance the ball travels made this point. The original intention was to make rule changes that only applied to elite golfers; which would have impacted tour golfers but few others. As you likely will be aware, this is known as \u2018bifurcation\u2019. Protests from the PGA Tour and equipment manufacturers have made the game\u2019s ruling bodies decide to apply the new criteria - which would pretty much ban every ball currently in use - to everyone. Martin Slumbers, chief executive of the R&A, said: \u201cThere are only three options. You can bifurcate, you can change the whole game, or you do nothing. And doing nothing is not an option.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the points here is that longer courses are bad environmentally \u2013 they require more water, more maintenance, more chemicals. \u201cWe just don\u2019t have enough property anymore,\u201d said Tiger Woods. \u201cWe\u2019ve been saying the ball needs to slow down but it has kept speeding up my entire career.\u201d Rory McIlroy said: \u201cThe people who are upset about this decision shouldn\u2019t be mad at the governing bodies, they should be mad at elite pros and club\/ball manufacturers who didn\u2019t want bifurcation.\u201d<\/p>\n