About that golf ball rollback
While it's only 2025, the rollback for professionals is just three years away — five for amateurs — and not everyone is on board with the decision, especially the PGA of America.
ORLANDO, Florida — The countdown is quietly underway and it’s time to start paying attention because liftoff for The Great Ball Rollback is at T-minus uh-oh and counting.
The rollback, proposed by the United States Golf Association and the Royal & Ancient Golf Society, is probably not going to go as smoothly as planned. By decree, professional golfers will begin using a ball that flies shorter in 2028, followed by the rest of us hacks in 2030.
The czars of Augusta National and the Masters Tournament stand behind the governing bodies’ rollback. The PGA Tour opposes it. So do the PGA of America’s leaders, new CEO Derek Sprague and new president Don Rea, who have each been on the job for only a matter of days.
Sprague and Rea exhibited loads of enthusiasm about their new leadership roles and also made it clear Wednesday that The Great Ball Rollback will happen only over their inert, lifeless Twitter feeds (not their words, I spiced them up for sex appeal).
Speaking during the PGA Show at the Orange County Convention center, Sprague and Rea claimed the moral high ground on behalf of all the recreational golfers who didn’t have a say in this rollback proposal. And they feel very strongly about this issue.
“I don’t think it’s controversial where we stand,” Sprague says. “We know where our PGA professionals stand. Our PGA professionals do not want the rollback, I do not want the rollback. This is not good for the game. We’re seeing a great wave of play at the recreational level. I don’t know one recreational golfer who wants to hit the ball shorter, I don’t know too many tour professionals who want to hit the ball shorter.
“Our PGA of America coaches and instructors, 30,000 strong, teach people how to play the game and how to hit it farther. It think the rollback sends the wrong message.”
Added Rea, who came from an Arizona executive-length course named Augusta Ranch, “I work at a short course and no one wants to hit it shorter there, either. Everybody at Augusta Ranch doesn’t like this. I’m not talking about the five PGA professionals who work there, I’m talking about the 10,000 people who play there all the time, from 88 years old to 8.
“I think the more important part is who talks to the 28.1 million golfers that I heard about in 2024? Who talks to them? Who’s their voice? They’re our constituents, the way I look at it, and they’re telling us, ‘Please help us.’ We have to get this message across. We’re involved in the implementation of the rollback but more importantly, we’re the voice of golfers in the game. That’s why this is critical.”
Golf is currently a sport divided but only at the professional level where LIV Golf is a new-ish competitor for the PGA Tour. The rollback could be a considerably more important rift, possibly a game-changing one, if this debate turns into the world’s biggest pro tour, the PGA of America pros and all recreational golfers versus two governing bodies and some green jackets.
A worst-case scenario could lead to a split where major tournaments would have different equipment rules, much like the British Open used to require players to use the smaller British ball instead of the larger American golf ball. The small ball rule ended in 1974 for the Open and it was ruled illegal for recreational play 14 years later.
Imagine a scenario in which only the Masters, the U.S. and British Opens used the rollback ball. That would include all the women’s Opens run by the USGA and R&A, and presumably all of their respective amateur events. That would be more confusing than Oprah Winfrey’s taxes. And what about college golf? Would the NCAA go along with the USGA? It’s a complicated issue with a lot of fallout and unforeseen consequences if resistance to the rollback proves to be strong.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan has said “there is widespread and significant belief” that the rollback “is not warranted and not in the best interest of the game” and that the PGA Tour “is not able to support” the proposal.
It’s starting to sound like golf’s governing bodies are the underdog in this process even though they seemingly hold most of the cards.
Enforcing the rollback is a problem and that’s another reason the PGA of America opposes it, because that enforcement will happen at the grassroots level where PGA of America pros work at courses.
“The rollback will be very, very challenging for our pros,” Sprague says. “We’ll have to be at the first tee making sure the golfers are playing a conforming golf ball. Do we have to follow them to the second or third tee and beyond to see if they switched out golf balls? This is not a one-year or two-year or three-year implementation because there are thousands of golf balls lost by recreational golfers and tour professionals, and even though the current balls may be off the shelves in stores, people will be finding the older balls. That will be a serious challenge for our professionals and professionals around the globe, who are opposed to this.”
When USGA CEO Mike Whan originally announced the rollback, he admitted that “governance is hard” and that “while thousands will claim we did too much, there will be just as many who said we didn’t do enough to protect the game long-term.”
Distance gains in professional golf have been alarming for decades. In 1980, the first year the PGA Tour compiled driving distance stats, Dan Pohl led the tour with an average of 274.3 yards and the tour’s average was 256.9. In 1997, John Daly was a unicorn when he averaged 302 yards per drive, the first to do that on the tour, and he was 30 yards longer than the tour average. By 2021, the entire tour was averaging above 295 yards and Bryson DeChambeau was over 320 yards.
Once the major equipment manufacturers rejected the obvious compromise — separate equipment rules for amateurs and pros — the only way out of the distance dilemma was seen as rolling the ball back modestly for everyone. That’s where the process stands now. Sprague hopes to ask for a mulligan and revisit the subject.
“I’m going to dive into the data on maybe my sixth or seventh day on the job,” he joked. “The data I’ve seen does not support that courses need to be lengthened. What we’ve seen on the ground as PGA pros is that we’re moving forward, not backward. Players want more forward tees built, whether it’s at Malone Golf Club, Liberty National or TPC Sawgrass.
“That’s what we want to discuss with the governing bodies. My goal is to get everyone together in a room work this out and I think it will work out. We can help, let’s have a reset and think about this. It’s not about saving face, it’s about growing the game. The recreational game is healthy, we want to make the professional game healthier.”
Rea would like to see more industry professionals involved in the decision-making process who maybe didn’t have a say the first time around.
“How can you evaluate whether a solution is the right solution when we don’t agree about the data?” he says. “Let’s talk to everybody and make sure we’re on the same page. Let’s talk the superintendents, the course architects, the builders, golf course owners, club managers — these are the stakeholders and they don’t have a voice. We’re their voice because we happen to have two major championships.
“Derek is most collaborative person I’ve ever met. He’ll get in the room and explain how this impact isn’t just about the one percent who play professionally or at the nicest clubs in America, it’s about the 99 percent of the 28.1 million who play recreationally. We want the game to be unified, not separated by professional and public. We would say, ‘Don’t roll the ball back, keep it the same.’”
There is still plenty of time to adjust the rollback, do it another way or revoke it. It remains to be seen whether the decision by the USGA and R&A is final or can be reconsidered. The clock is ticking, quietly, but the new PGA of America leaders show that there is significant dissension on the subject.
Uh-oh time approaches.
MORE FROM GARY VAN SICKLE
> 2024: A banner year for golf books
> Hughes Norton still has plenty to say
> It’s about time … seriously
Only courses that need to be longer are for pro tour events. Few if any recreational golf sites, public or private, need to lengthen their courses. It's only a pro golf issue. So it's very limited and in that sense, i understand why avg golfers are annoyed that they have to share the pain with pro golf.
I’m 73 and I’ll hit any damn ball I want. But it’s darn sure stupid to penalize millions of amateur golfers who just want to have fun because there are a few dozen professionals who can drive the ball >300 yards.