Nobilo: "The professional game has never been more divorced from the amateur game. I think that is extremely dangerous."

Frank Nobilo talks to Golf Australia's John Huggan about a range of topics, but his comments about fearing for the health of golf due to cost, length and a growing divide between professional and amateur games. He wants to slow down the ball.

That sense of connection is always mentioned by anti-bifurcation types looking to protect the golf ball, yet all playing the same ball the divide is growing. Nobilo sees and doesn't like the lost connection, which he even sees between the most recent generation of greats and today's major winners.

We have equipment that is really designed for the recreational player, but which produces unhealthy distance for the elite players. I remember playing in pro-ams and occasionally being out-driven by an amateur. Now that never happens. Now the pros hit their 5-irons past the amateur’s drives.

The professional game has never been more divorced from the amateur game. I think that is extremely dangerous. I’m not one for bifurcation though. One of the beauties of the game should be that everyone can play. But if we went to different equipment we would lose that. The game wouldn’t be what it is supposed to be.

As with most people, it all goes back to the Old Course...

When they started messing with the Old Course at St. Andrews and adding yardage, the R&A lost me. Can you imagine if the All England Club did that to Wimbledon and made the centre court smaller so that the game would be more difficult? In tennis they slowed the ball down. I think we need to do the same in golf.

I know many people do not place value on this, though it's never for a reason beyond personal financial gain:

I am amazed when I go to Wentworth now for the BMW PGA Championship. It isn’t the course I remember playing. So any comparison between now and then has been lost. Martin Kaymer, for example, should be able to compare himself with Bernhard Langer. But he can’t. He isn’t playing the same game or the same courses.