As a player, Ben Crenshaw sounds almost bewildered by what he sees today.
“I can tell you how I played with the guys I played with on the Tour, and I know their distances, what they can do,” the two-time Masters champion said. “Occasionally we’d have somebody who could hit it a good way, like Tom Weiskopf. He was long for his time. I remember one year when Dan Pohl led the driving statistics — I think it was 275 or 280. That was the leader on the Tour.
“Now these guys carry the ball 320. They carry the ball 320.”
Then there’s Crenshaw the course designer.
That dual perspective makes him a compelling voice on golf’s distance boom, and his comments on Wednesday, ahead of the PGA Tour’s Austin Championship, were worth hearing. The surge in driving distance is by now well documented — to take another example beyond the one he offered, the Tour’s driving-distance leader in 1984, the year Crenshaw first won the Masters, was Bill Glasson at 276.5 yards per drive. This year, the lowest average among 168 measured players was 282.8.
The larger question, of course, is whether the boom is a problem. The consensus seems to be that it is, and in 2030 golf’s governing bodies plan to rein in the length of the golf ball — and possibly go further still. Part of the rationale is that, while courses have tried to expand to keep pace with longer hitters, many have either run out of room to do so or can’t find any to begin with.
That raises more questions. Is equipment to blame? Few would argue that club and ball technology hasn’t advanced over the years, but is restricting equipment the solution? Could tweaks to course design be an answer instead? Jon Rahm addressed that very point on Wednesday, speaking at a press conference ahead of the DP World Tour Championship.
“I think a lot of the courses that stand the test of time are narrow, short golf courses where you need to place the golf ball,” he said. “I use the example of Valderrama. Valderrama hasn’t really changed much since I remember watching it, and it’s just as difficult every time you play it. Colonial, before they redesigned it, was one of those. Harbour Town, if it’s not windy, the scores do get low, but this past year, it showed how difficult it was.
“I think there’s a discussion to be had in both cases. I think there’s something that can be done with golf course design and golf course setup. And it could also be an idea to entertain to change or limit clubs or the golf ball, but I’m not a proponent of that. I think there’s so much freedom in design in golf that you could make golf courses that are anti-distance.”
So what does Crenshaw the designer think? It’s worth remembering that Crenshaw and his design partner Bill Coore have crafted some of the finest courses in the world.
On Wednesday, Crenshaw noted that one goal of course design is to make layouts playable for both professionals and amateurs — “but it has stretched way out there now.” Still, he argued that the legendary Old Course at St. Andrews accommodates every type of golfer better than anywhere else. “St. Andrews,” he said, “is still one of the examples of you can accommodate the best players in the world and entertain beginners or someone with lesser skill.”
But what if a course isn’t St. Andrews?
“It’s where the hazards are,” Crenshaw said. “If you don’t have so many carrying hazards to make it really difficult for a short player, and it has undulation and ground as hard as this table that spreads everything out — which is unusual. Not every course in the world has those capacities.
“So it’s very, very difficult.”
For now, Crenshaw and others will wait until 2030. In the meantime, he’ll keep watching.
“So it’s very interesting how it all comes together,” Crenshaw said. “I know there’s been discussions about the ball and the capacity and if you slow down the ball or something — you’ll hear more conversations about that.
“I know a lot of people would not like to have the ball slowed down because it’s spectacular to watch and see these statistics. I mean, the ball can only go so far.”
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