Whan Expands On USGA's Role In Distance Debate, Provides Timeline Update
/New USGA CEO Mike Whan continued his busy interview schedule, this time, appearing on the Fried Egg podcast with Andy Johnson to talk distance.
This is not going to please those who feel restoring lost skill or design dynamics is needed:
“I think we’re going to establish some guidelines. I think those guidelines are probably going to slow some of the pace of progress over the next 10 or 20 years.
But are [equipment manufacturers] going to figure ways around that to continue to push the envelope? I’m actually counting on it because I think that’s what makes the game exciting. I also think that I have a responsibility to make sure that, when you look at [this issue] over the next 50 years, the decisions we made to control some of that pace didn’t obsolete every course in the country.”
As previous generations of the USGA leadership have felt but ultimately were unable to back-up with action.
Regarding timing:
”I think at this time next year, next summer, we’ll be talking about some real specific suggestions, recommendations, and be going through the same process [of taking feedback]. In the beginning, we put out the distance results. We then talked about some of the areas we want to look at. We’ve listened to feedback. I think, come this off-season, we’ll take all that feedback in and try to determine some specific directions. And then we’ll do the same thing. We’ll put it out there and let people [give] feedback.”
The suspense is not killing us.
He’s taken an interesting tact on where courses are built going forward, which I think would have been practical for his predecessors some time ago to acknowledge. Today? I’m not sure enough are going to be built for this to matter, but the sentiment is appreciated:
“More importantly, do you think there’ll ever be an urban golf course built again if it needs 8,600 yards to build the golf course? People say to me, “Well, you don’t need 86 [hundred] unless you’re building a golf course for the top elite.” But I’ve never met somebody who’s got a plan to build a golf course who doesn’t want to have a course that can host major championships. I just don’t think we want to make this game only a suburban game, only a game for the wealthy.”
Whan also spoke of finding a place in the equipment rules that have engineers working hard to circumvent the rules in the spirit of innovation and “energy”. Kind of like they’ve been doing for the last thirty years.
“But I think my job is to make sure that there’s as much energy about the future of this game three years from now as there is today, and 20 years from now as there is today. I want engineers to wake up every morning and say, ‘I see the rules that he put in place, but I’m going to spend a lot of hours today working on how to get excitement even within that space.’ I can’t throw a wet blanket over that or I’ll lose one of the things that makes this game truly exciting and great. If I see a package under the Christmas tree that looks like a golf club, I’m just like anybody else: I get pretty excited about ripping it open because maybe there’s two strokes of handicap in that box. And I don’t want to lose that excitement.”
Shop to drop (your handicap)!
Of course, that’s been the approach of the last few decades and average handicaps have not dropped substantially but costs have gone up. And until the pandemic, the number of people playing has steadily dropped under this approach. One born out of feeding the desires of public-traded companies, not necessarily the majority of golfers.
