Golf / Thomas Bonk : Nicklaus Says Deadening Ball Will End Current Parity on Tour

At 48, Jack Nicklaus is two years away from playing in senior events, which means he isn’t as much a part of the PGA Tour as he used to be, only as much as he wants to be.

“My entering a lot of events is sort of on a ceremonial basis, if you want to call it that,” Nicklaus said. “I’m there, I’m part of the scene, I may get lucky and be competitive. If I am competitive, great, because I enjoy the competition.

“But I’m not going to be grinding away on the weeks prior to the Masters and play everything I can,” he said.

There are some things on Nicklaus’ mind, he told reporters at last week’s Doral Ryder Open.

Nicklaus is unhappy that just about anyone can win a tournament, unlike 20 years ago when there were only a few dominant golfers. Nicklaus said the problem starts with the live golf ball, which he contends evens the field. Nicklaus’ solution is to deaden the ball a little, restoring an advantage to long-ball specialists.

“Parity results from equipment, and I think that’s wrong,” he said. “It comes down to a putting contest.”

Nicklaus also said that square-grooved wedges should be banned.

“The ball equalizes the long hitters. We should bring the ball back about 5 or 10%, I don’t care which. Then the players would separate themselves in a hurry. I think they ought to try it, but it would take a lot of us older guys out of the game.”

Nicklaus also favors splitting the tour into two divisions, giving more players chances to develop their competitive skills.

“There are only 250 guys who are playing now. Where is the steppingstone?” he asked. “Should young players have to travel the world to get experience, when some of them can’t afford it?”

Status report: In 1987, Jay Haas won $270,347. In 1988, after seven weeks on the West Coast part of the tour, Haas has won $287,393.

Status report II: Ben Crenshaw’s victory at the Doral Ryder Open was his 14th. Only eight other active golfers have more--Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Lee Trevino, Johnny Miller, Raymond Floyd, Hubert Green, Hale Irwin and Lanny Wadkins.

The $500,000 Nabisco Dinah Shore tournament at Mission Hills, which runs March 31-April 3, is attracting a strong field looking for the first-place money of $80,000.

Defending champion Betsy King is back but she will have a lot of competition. JoAnne Carner, Laura Davies, Jane Geddes, Nancy Lopez, Ayako Okamoto, Patty Sheehan and Kathy Whitworth are all in the field.

Why are so many of the top women playing? Maybe it’s because the $500,000 Dinah Shore prize money is $200,000 more than the prize money at the U.S. Women’s Open.

Davies, the U.S. Open winner, is playing on a sponsor’s exemption. Since the U.S. Open is not an official LPGA tournament and because Davies did not finish in the top three places of any of its events, she would not have been eligible for the Dinah Shore without a sponsor’s exemption.

Pebble Beach Golf Links will be the site of the $2-million Nabisco Championships of Golf in November, the biggest purse of the year in the last official money event of the year.

The selection of Pebble Beach as the course for the tournament, has been rumored for a while, but ends a long period in which speculation arose that Hawaii could emerge as an alternate site. The Nabisco Championships, which were held last year in San Antonio, will stay at Pebble Beach at least through 1989.

The 72-hole stroke-play event featuring the top 30 money leaders of the PGA Tour will begin Wednesday, Nov. 9, and end on Saturday, Nov. 12, this year. All four rounds will be televised by ESPN.

The winner gets $360,000, biggest first-place prize on the tour.

The Southern California and Northern California Golf Assns. are going to change the way they issue handicaps for more than 225,000 golfers at the beginning of 1990.

At that time, the two groups will assign Slope ratings at nearly 600 golf courses throughout the state.

The groups will join associations in 45 other states which are using Slope, which has been an optional part of the United States Golf Assn.’s course rating system since 1980. Several women’s associations in California have been using Slope ratings for the last two years.

Beginning in 1990, SCGA and NCGA members will no longer receive a monthly handicap. Instead, each golfer will receive a monthly index expressed in a decimal that will be converted at each course into a playing handicap.

Each set of tees at a particular course will be assigned a Slope rating. Each golfer compares his index to a chart posted at the course to determine the handicap to which he will play.

Golf Notes

Mildred (Babe) Didriksen Zaharias and Ben Hogan have been selected as Golf magazine’s players of the decade, 1948-57, in connection with the publication’s year-long observation of the centennial of golf in America. . . . The St. Patrick’s Day tournament to benefit the Special Olympics is scheduled Thursday at Los Angeles Royal Vista Golf Course in Walnut. There is a $50 entry fee. . . . The Exchange Club Child Abuse Prevention Center of the Inland Valleys will hold its second celebrity golf tournament March 21 at Brookside golf course in Pasadena. Proceeds will benefit the child-abuse prevention center at Alhambra Community Hospital. . . . Former Oakland Raiders star Ben Davidson will be the host for the fifth Mission Viejo golf tournament June 20 at Mission Viejo Country Club. The tournament is a benefit for the National Foundation of Wheelchair Tennis and its Junior Wheelchair sports camp program. . . . Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) has been selected as the charity to benefit from the 1988 Santa Barbara Open, an LPGA event that will be played Sept. 22-25 at Sandpiper Golf Club and La Purisima Golf Club.