Golf Has Become Too Heavy Metal

An item in a recent issue of Golf magazine caught my eye. It noted that the ancient and august body of high protectors of the great game, the United States Golf Assn., had put manufacturers on notice that their tinkering with the sport is, well, maybe beginning to go too far.

About time.

Specifically, the watchdogs are sitting up and sniffing the air over the modern driving clubs, once referred to as “woods” but, of late, made of metal.

The driving club, once made of persimmon and of a standard length that fit comfortably in the grasp of your basic 5-foot-11 golfer, is now made with titanium and is almost as long as a polo mallet which, remember, has to reach the ground from horseback.

The USGA proposes a study to see how devastating an influence these nuclear-age implements can have on the royal and ancient pastime of golf.

They don’t need much of a study. John Daly was averaging 305.6 yards a drive this year. Tiger Woods was averaging 288.

That’s an increase of 17 yards a drive over last year for Daly. That’s an increase of 47 yards per drive over the average length of the players’ best drives of 15 years ago.

Are the players that much better? Is Tiger Woods 20 yards a tee shot better than Ben Hogan in his prime? John Daly has a better swipe at the ball than Sam Snead? Bite your tongue!

Is the equipment 20 yards better? Oh, my, yes.

The drivers, like their drives, are longer. One guy on the senior tour, Rocky Thompson, uses a 55-inch shaft. You want to ask him what he did with the pony and the pith helmet. Another senior, Terry Dill, uses a 48-inch shaft. A member of the women’s tour, Emilee Klein, has a 50-inch driver.

Daly uses a 44-inch shaft. Tiger swings a 43.5. Phil Mickelson drives a 45-incher. So does Phil Blackmar.

Do they sacrifice accuracy for distance? Hardly. From 1980-84, the average of fairways hit was 63.3%. Last year, it was 67.5%.

The evidence is clear: The technicians are winning the game of golf. You give a guy a slide rule and a bucket of kryptonite or uranium and he’ll come up with an instrument that can make a hole in one on a par-five hole even if swung by a masked man with St. Vitus Dance.

Besides, I have news for the USGA, it’s not only drivers that have overcome the game. How many times have you turned on your TV lately to hear the announcer say “It’s 190 yards to the hole, Tiger’s got an eight-iron.”

An eight-iron! I ask you. An eight-iron goes 98 yards, right? When we swing it, that is. And it may go the last 15 on the bounce.

But these guys are swinging clubs enhanced by some exotic element found in nature only in the outer recesses of Mongolia or the slopes of Everest. Who knows? They might even start to mine Mars for club heads any day now.

Guys don’t even have to use one-irons anymore. Back in my day there was no such thing as a one-iron. Jack Nicklaus was the first one I was ever aware of using one. Now they don’t need them anymore. When you hit a drive 305 yards, you wouldn’t need a one-iron for anything short of armed robbery.

What they’re doing to the balls is depressing too. You can make a ball to go any distance. Just ask major league baseball, which periodically regulates the home run rate.

They’re putting titanium in the balls now too. Plutonium may be next. You’ll only hope it doesn’t produce fission.

What is all this doing to the game of golf? Probably wrecking it.

Look! Used to be, if you wanted to build a golf course, you went out and bought yourself 200 acres of the most elegant scenery you could afford, trimmed the trees, trucked in sand, piped in water--and you were in business.

If they keep beefing up the equipment and the balls, you may have to buy yourself Rhode Island. Two hundred acres won’t even get you the front nine.

Remember, this game started out with the gutta-percha. That was a ball made out of feathers with a leather covering. You couldn’t hit that baby 305 yards with a cannon. Particularly since the sticks of the day were tree limbs cut and whittled to strike it. Churchill said the object of the game was “to put a small ball in a round hole with implements ill-suited to the purpose.”

Let’s get back to that. Today’s rocketry may destroy the purpose of the game, which is to test the nerves, guile and general gamesmanship of the player. Today, it’s a test of who’s got the best laboratories.

So I wish the USGA (and the Royal and Ancient) all the luck in the world in trying to wrest the game from the hands of the scientists.

But legislating a game today brings in a cast of characters who could become golf’s leading money-winners without ever having to sink a two-break putt on No. 18 at Augusta--the lawyers.

If a manufacturer can produce a club that will drive all the par-fives, a putter that will sink 15-footers by radar, what chance do you think golf will have to stop him?

Track and field even has trouble making a steroid ban stick. You’re going to tell a golfer he can’t have a club, even a ticking one, that will win him the club championship by 12 shots? You’re going to tell a manufacturer he can’t make millions marketing them?

Golf already lost a legal fight to ban square grooves. Look for the legal profession to prove conclusively that Thomas Jefferson had golf in mind when he drew up the main clauses of the Constitution. The right of the people to bear 500-yard drivers, for instance.

The lowest golf score in history is 59. Only two guys shot it. But 59s might not even make the cut for you if the technicians are turned loose.

The USGA is looking into “a rule limiting the length of the club.” That’s a nice start. But they better get into those No-Slice-Bubble-Bertha-Bullseye-Bombers before every golf course in the country is obsolete and they start measuring drives in miles instead of yards.