There is one issue that has been slowly manifesting in golf with each passing year: professional golfers are regularly hitting their balls further at alarming rates.<\/p>\n
The fields can\u2019t get bigger, longer, without breaking the bank for new land and mass course renovation.\u00a0 Golf is already an expensive sport with surging costs<\/a>.\u00a0 The solution? The plan is to rebuild the golf ball in a way that requires more power to send it at the same distance.\u00a0 And currently, the PGA is quietly testing these balls with their players.<\/p>\n A rookie playing in the PGA, Aldrich Potgieter<\/a>, has already set some driving records at such a young age.\u00a0 To combat this from reoccurring year on year, the PGA is teasing out the potential of reimagining the design of the golf ball.\u00a0 This option has increasing support as an alternative to tournaments needing to renovate in the past.\u00a0 Moving trees, tee boxes, and sand traps, all to compensate for players that just hit too far doesn’t seem a logical solution.<\/p>\n Facing the issue of course size, the USGA and R&A have been hard at work trying to figure out a way to take care of this issue without increasing the course sizes.\u00a0 Eventually it was decided to revamp the golf ball itself<\/a>.\u00a0 These new balls are being specially designed to reduce the distance they go when hit.<\/p>\n With the main issues involving pro players, there is unlikely to be an impact on casual players who are just playing a few rounds on the weekends.<\/p>\n The PGA performed their own single blind tests on the new balls with ten of their pro players.\u00a0 These players include Brian Harman, and Ben Griffin.\u00a0 Griffin gave some insight on the new balls and immediately figured out which ones were the new ones.<\/p>\n \u201cThey wanted feedback on what we felt that was different in the golf balls,\u201d Griffin said. \u201cLet\u2019s just say it was pretty easy to notice which balls were part of the roll back. It definitely comes out of the air faster. But it still didn\u2019t curve as much because I think the technology of the clubs is so much better. It will affect low-ball hitters the most. Tony Finau and Rory McIlroy won\u2019t experience as big a difference compared to someone like Brian Harman who relies on more roll.\u201d<\/p>\n Brian Harman is very skeptical about the effectiveness of this new policy, and even the need to have the courses renovated to begin with.\u00a0 He gave said this about the golf ball rollback at the Arnold Invitational<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cJust because a guy that looks like (Houston Astros infielder) Jose Altuve is able to hit home runs doesn\u2019t mean you make the ballparks bigger.\u201d\u00a0 Harman went on to say, \u201cInstead of trying to grab low-hanging fruit, there needs to be a more nuanced conversation about the future of the game, what that looks like, and what you want that challenge to be. I\u2019m afraid this golf ball rollback will have the opposite effect of what they want.\u201d<\/p>\n The players don\u2019t like the new balls and are questioning the need to address far hitters to begin with.\u00a0 The comparison to other sports is something to note.\u00a0 As more record-setting players push the boundaries of other sports, the fields were not increased, and the balls were not compromised.\u00a0 Instead it was the other professional players who evened out the playing field.\u00a0 Here one could argue that leaving the courses and balls as they are could be a roundabout solution for slow-play<\/a>.<\/p>\n Main Photo Credit:\u00a0 \u00a9 JEFF ROMANCE\/THE PALM BEACH POST \/ USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is one issue that has been slowly manifesting in golf with each passing year: professional golfers are regularly hitting their balls further at alarming rates. The fields can\u2019t get bigger, longer, without breaking the bank for new land and mass course renovation.\u00a0 Golf is already an expensive sport with surging costs.\u00a0 The solution? The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4860,"featured_media":433994,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,246,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-433585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf","category-golf-news","category-pga"],"modified_by":"yobodev","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4860"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Why Is Golf Ball Rollback Being Implemented?<\/h2>\n
What Do The Pro Players Think?<\/h2>\n
What’s Next For The Golf Ball Rollback?<\/h2>\n