Rolling back the ball, Butch Harmon says, isn’t the answer.
And reeling in the driver might be too late.
“Unfortunately, I think we passed the time for that to happen,” Harmon said.
“The manufacturers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing these clubs.”
But there may be another thought to solve golf’s distance issue, the GOLF Top 100 Teacher hall of famer said. And it came from Jose Maria Olazabal, a two-time Masters winner.
Appearing on the most recent episode of “The Smylie Show” podcast — which you can watch in full here — Harmon had been asked by host Smylie Kaufman where he stood on potential distance-curbing changes, a subject that saw some news two weeks ago at the U.S. Open. There, four of golf’s governing bodies — the USGA, the R&A, the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour — said that instead of a ball rollback arriving in phases — 2028 for pros and 2030 for other golfers — a single-date implementation of January 2030 would be in place. The groups also said changes beyond the ball could be made.
Then there’s what Harmon heard from Olazabal.
He said you don’t have to adjust the ball.
Or the driver.
Or any of the clubs.
Just cut the number of them in play — from 14 to nine.
Then, Olazabal said, you would learn “who can play.”
“You know, I’m thinking to myself, well, I don’t know how we ever got to 14 anyway,” Harmon said on the podcast. “I don’t know where that came from. Wouldn’t it be great to be a tournament where you could only use nine clubs? And if you got a putter and now you only got eight clubs.
“And like he says, “Oh, you have to hit golf shots. You can’t bomb the thing out there and wedge it out of the — you have to play golf.’ It would be interesting.”
Could it work? Maybe. Of course, club sales would decrease with lighter bags. Still, players would have to control trajectories better and shape the ball, said Kaufman, himself a PGA Tour winner.
“Think about this, Smylie, and you know this,” Hamon said on the podcast. “You’ll have a guy who’ll go out and shoot 62 or [6]3. And they’ll say every yardage was perfect; I had stock yardages. And then the next day he shoots 73. ‘Oh, I was in between yardages.’ Well, imagine if you only got eight clubs to pick from. You’re always going to have an in-between yardage.
“I would like to just see one tournament played like that just for the heck of it. Just to see what the scenario would be and what they would choose and how they would do it. It would be fun.”
Editor’s note: To watch the entire The Smylie Show podcast with Harmon, please click here.
