Marsh: Manufacturers "Bamboozed Everybody" On Distance Growing The Game

Powerful stuff on this week’s Inside the Ropes podcast from Australian golf great and architect Graham Marsh, talking about how quickly bunkers he placed early in his design career are now, and how little the race to add distance has done to grow the game.

Martin Blake reports the comments for Golf Australia.

“It’s been one of the great tragedies of the game. We were given this load of guff by the industry, that if we were to go with these game-improvement clubs, that everybody was going to play better, and of course the ball was going to go further, and they kept developing that with a good commercial arrangement, to make more money. That’s what you do in that industry.

“But the problem is, the players didn’t get better, the handicaps have gone up, the equipment’s more expensive and there’s less people playing the game. It was a great lie. They bamboozled everybody, including the USGA and the R and A. Completely bamboozled everybody.’’

You can listen to the full podcast here:

Here’s the distance talk: