Distance Debate: Do Manufacturers Who Circumvent Current Equipment Rules Deserve A Seat At The Table?

Now that we’ve had a couple of weeks to contemplate the impressive USGA/R&A Distance Insights study, comments have been largely predictable from elite players and the equipment industry: all is well, grow more rough, tuck pins, move along.

This ignores the six-or-so million who have quit the game over the last fifteen years despite amazing equipment advances. And yet there seems to be a pressure to skirt the rules, market increased distance and create equipment that can sell at a premium price.

The governing bodies are forced to preach diplomacy in dealing with so many factions and factors. But what if the manufacturers are working around the rules? Or as Callaway CEO Chip Brewer acknowledged last summer, his company puts drivers in hands of players that cut it close to non-conforming.

And then more recently there was this from Bridgestone’s Elliot Mellow on Golf’s Fully Equipped podcast. At the 1:01:00 or so mark (full January 15th show embed below), Mellow responded to a question about the biggest area for future “growth” (i.e. distance). Thanks to reader M for catching this.

Without getting into too much trouble with our friends at the USGA, there’s 72-plus shots per round with 14-plus clubs and you know there’s not necessarily regulation on all of those clubs, or shots at this point in time, so we play within the rules that exist and then we innovate beyond them where there’s opportunity. And trust me, there’s a lot of opportunity.

It is 100% optional for equipment makers to follow the Rules of Golf. A USGA/R&A “conforming” stamp of approval is a selling point to customers and therefore, a privilege manufacturers should theoretically respect.

But when you highlight working around the rules or bemoan surprise tests or fight rules bifurcation, then maybe this is a sign governing bodies need to stop working around the “needs” of clubmakers. Perhaps these are signs for the USGA and R&A to simply make the rules they deem best.

If skirting the rules will deliver such enjoyment for the masses and “grow the game”, why won’t manufacturers just make non-conforming equipment? Oh right, because core golfers have shown they’d rather play by the rules than be seen as skirting the rules. Perhaps the folks making the clubs should adopt a similar ethos or give up their seat at the distance debate table.