Pros won’t be hitting golf balls that far forever, whether they like it or not

The United States Golf Association admitted on Wednesday that it had heard fierce opposition to its proposal for professional players to use balls that can travel shorter distances, but also showed no interest in abandoning its ambitions to rein in the equipment in years to come. to give.

The association and the R&A, a UK-based governing body, had proposed a rule in March that they say could shorten top golfers’ tee shots by about 50 feet on average. Framed as an effort to preserve the sport and the relevance of many of its finest golf courses, the proposal sparked backlash among hard-driving professionals, who routinely hit tee shots at distances nearly unimaginable just a few decades ago, and equipment manufacturers , who like to sell duffers on weekends, the same balls that hit the stars at events like this week’s US Open.

“Our intention is pure; it’s not evil,” USGA president Fred Perpall said at a news conference at the Los Angeles Country Club, where the Open opens Thursday. “We are not trying to do anything to harm anyone. We think about all the good things this good game has given us, and we think about our responsibility to make sure this game is still strong and healthy for our children’s children 50 years from now.”

The debate about distance in golf has been going on for years, with executives increasingly irked by stopgap solutions, such as redesigning holes to accommodate the game’s most powerful hitters. Some of the sport’s retired greats, including Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, have been pressuring golf rule writers to take blunt and urgent action.

“Not everyone has the opportunity to buy the golf course next door like you do at Augusta,” Nicklaus said in an interview with The New York Times during the Masters Tournament in April. “You can’t just keep buying and adding land. We used to have probably a few thousand golf courses in this country that could be tournament golf courses. Today we may have 100.”

In the 2003 season, PGA Tour players recorded an average driving distance of about 286 yards, with nine golfers, including Phil Mickelson, Vijay Singh and John Daly, typically hitting at least 300 yards from the tee. So far this season, the average driving distance on the tour is nearly 298 yards. About 91 players — up nearly 10 percent since the USGA and the R&A released their proposal — exceed 300 yards on average.

Under the plan, balls traveling more than 307 meters when struck at 200 kilometers per hour would generally be banned.

The USGA and the R&A are gathering feedback on their proposal, which would not take effect until 2026 and would be classified as a local model rule, allowing individual tours and events to adopt it. The USGA and the R&A would almost certainly enforce the rule in the events they control, including the US Open and the British Open, two of the four major men’s championships.

But other golf power brokers, including the PGA Tour, haven’t embraced the plan, and many of the game’s biggest stars have openly resisted the thought of deliberately curbing the distance.

Even those who have been receptive to the prospect of making balls a little less like long-range missiles have urged golf leaders to have a consistent standard throughout the game, with no differences for top pros.

“I just don’t think you have to have a ball for the pros that might be used in some tournaments, maybe not in some tournaments, then amateurs can buy different golf balls,” said Matt Fitzpatrick, who won the US Open last year. “I don’t think that would work.”

Tour players recently met privately in Ohio with USGA officials and manufacturers to discuss the proposal, and Patrick Cantlay, who is No. 4 in the Official World Golf Ranking, said this week that “tensions were high” in those sessions .

“It looks like golf is in a good place, and it would be foolish to do anything that could potentially be harmful,” Cantlay said.

Mike Whan, the USGA’s CEO, said Wednesday he was sensitive to player concerns and suggested the governing bodies could adjust their proposals in the coming months. But he stressed that the USGA is also concerned about the millions of non-professional golfers and neither he nor Perpall have indicated plans for a large-scale surrender.

“If you’re going to make major governance decisions that you think will make the game stronger 20 and 40 years from now, you can’t expect everyone to like those decisions, and that’s part of governance,” Whan said. “You have to decide whether or not you can stand up for what you think the game is long term, knowing that maybe 20 percent or 30 percent or 50 percent like it and the others don’t. But I think the feedback process is important and it makes us better. Even if we don’t like the feedback we get, it makes us better.”

Whan and Perpall’s impassioned defense unfolded as one of golf’s most influential figures, Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour Commissioner, was absent from the US Open course. The tour revealed late Tuesday that he was “recovering from a medical condition” and that two other executives, Ron Price and Tyler Dennis, had assumed day-to-day oversight of the circuit’s operations indefinitely.

The announcement that Monahan had stepped back followed seven days of unrest in professional golf. Last Tuesday, the tour announced it planned to partner with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the force behind the LIV Golf competition that rocked the sport after months of portraying Saudi money as tainted. . Monahan, who helped negotiate the deal, has been criticized as a money-hungry hypocrite, but he has at least retained some crucial allies within the tour.

“Jay is a human being,” Webb Simpson, the 2012 US Open winner and member of the tour’s board, said in an interview Wednesday. “Golf is a game, and often we make golf into something much bigger than it is and dehumanize people.” Perhaps, he said, Tuesday’s announcement would “give people a little bit of perspective.”

But Simpson said he knew nothing about Monahan’s status beyond the tour’s initial statement. The tour has declined to comment further or provide an expected timeline for Monahan’s return.

Price and Dennis said in a statement that their priority was “to support our players and to continue the work in progress to continue to lead the PGA Tour and the future of golf.”

In its own statement on Wednesday, the fund was “committed to working closely with PGA leadership and the board to advance our previously announced transaction to invest significantly in golf’s growth for the benefit of players, fans and its expansion.” of the game around the world.”