Tom Dunne: "We don't want Hummers anymore, and unless we're playing on TV, we don't need 7,400-yard stadium courses, either."

You may recall John Solheim's three-ball solution for the game and while many of us laughed it off at the time because of liability concerns introduced by a longer flying ball, Tom Dunne has made me reconsider with an absolute must read piece asking pertinent questions about what we really want from this silly game.

The future of golf is not a zero-sum game, and the 80 percent solution is not about replacing the modern golf ball. It's about the game's governing bodies legitimizing—and the manufacturers developing a market for—an alternative to golf that is still Real Golf. We don't want Hummers anymore, and unless we're playing on TV, we don't need 7,400-yard stadium courses, either.

There's more than one way forward.

So his premise is this: would "a good limited-flight ball wouldn't bring back some of the sporting nature of golf without sacrificing its fundamental qualities."

It's taken as an article of faith that Americans like Big Things—unless the free market dictates otherwise, we'll buy Hummers all day long. But the market did exactly that to the Hummer—it buried it—and the same thing is happening in golf. Gigantism. To create venues to suit the modern equipment and ball, developers face enormous land costs, huge construction, commodity and maintenance budgets—all expenses that are finally passed along to the consumer, who in turn chooses to find some other way to spend his leisure dollar.