The Gear Guy Speaks

Champions Gate, Fla.

In that great scene from "Annie Hall," Woody Allen is stuck in a movie line behind a blowhard discussing the theories of media philosopher Marshall McLuhan. When he can't stand it any more, Mr. Allen deliciously produces the real Marshall McLuhan, who happens to be in line behind him, to explain the facts of the matter. To settle golf arguments, the person I'd most like to be able to produce in this fashion would be Frank Thomas.

Playing Fair: Frank Thomas in 2005 at a PGA teaching and coaching conference in Germany.

Mr. Thomas, a tall, vigorous, 69-year-old originally from South Africa, retired in 2000 after 26 years as the technical director of the U.S. Golf Association. He now lives near Orlando, Fla., oversees his small putter company, plays golf twice a week and frequently writes about the game on his Web site (www.franklygolf.com) and for magazines and the Golf Channel. Recently he published a book called "Just Hit It: Our Equipment and Our Game" that summarizes all he has learned over the years.

He is not a pessimist. "The game will always be here, because it's the most bewitching and beguiling game that man has ever devised," he told me during a recent visit to his office and putting studio. "But the thing that concerns me is how commerce now dominates golf and is trying to squeeze the last dollar out of its most avid customers rather than trying to open the game up to more participants. If the goal is to improve the overall health and enjoyment of the game, that's the wrong direction."

A big part of the problem, he believes, is the disproportionate attention paid to the tiny percentage of players who compete at elite levels.

"The Tour pros play courses that are 7,200 yards long, so every developer feels he has to build a championship course of that length to attract home buyers even though there will never be a championship played on the course," he said. "That means the homeowners get stuck paying for huge courses that are too time-consuming and difficult to play and extremely expensive to maintain."

Telecasts of pro tournaments, especially the upcoming and exquisitely green Masters tournament, create an unwarranted obsession with speedy greens and meticulously maintained fairways. (Mr. Thomas levels this criticism even though it was he who redesigned and popularized the Stimpmeter device for measuring the speed of greens.) "A little brown grass here and there never hurt anyone. Some fairways today roll as fast as average greens only 30 years ago. That's ridiculous," he said.

In Mr. Thomas's view, the problem of too much bang for too much buck also extends to equipment, which is his specialty. Before coming to the USGA in 1974, while an engineer at the Shakespeare fishing-rod company, he was instrumental in developing graphite shafts for golf clubs by adapting the expertise that Union Carbide had developed with the material through its work with the space program. At the USGA his main responsibility was devising equipment standards and testing new balls and clubs.

"Certainly there has been a lot of progress in equipment. Anybody who hasn't bought a new driver in the last five years is really missing out," he said. "But a lot of what's advertised is hokum. That's understandable, perhaps, because the market is extremely competitive. The equipment makers have to convince you that this year's model is better than last year's model so that you'll part with another $500. But the fact is that in most cases, players will do just fine with what they have. Significant changes are rare." (See the sidebar for Mr. Thomas's recommendations.)

In the last 30 years, Mr. Thomas contends, there have been only three innovations that had a major, beneficial impact on the game. The first, led by Karsten Solheim at Ping, was perimeter weighting on putters, irons and, later, metalwoods, which helps keep shots on line by preventing clubheads from deflecting as much on off-center strikes. The second was graphite shafts, which make clubs lighter and thus easier to swing faster. (He believes that in time graphite shafts will become nearly as common in irons as they now are in woods.)

The third innovation, spring-like effect in driver heads, came about by accident and, in Mr. Thomas's opinion, was regrettable. "In the 1990s clubmakers started using titanium in drivers because it was lighter and stronger than steel and they could make the clubheads larger. That made them more forgiving, which was the purpose. But then they discovered that the big heads were hitting the ball farther, too, because of the trampoline effect it got from the thinner, bigger clubfaces," he said. For pros who swing at 115 mph and make perfect contact, the added distance is 8 to 10 yards from increased ball velocity alone.

Mr. Thomas, who in 1984 revised and strengthened a regulation specifically banning spring-like effect, believes the USGA should have stopped the new clubs with spring-like effect as soon as they were discovered, because they only created potential expense and problems for the game (such as the need for longer courses) and violated tradition. "The first paragraph of the first equipment regulation published by the USGA in 1909 prohibited clubs that 'contain any mechanical contrivance, such as a spring,' " Mr. Thomas noted. But instead, over his objections, the organization in 1998 merely set a limit on spring-like effect a little above the then-current levels. That decision, he believes, was primarily motivated by fear of lawsuits from clubmakers who were already marketing the clubs.

Combined with simultaneous advances in ball technology, swing-motion analysis, player training and agronomy, spring-like effect boosted the average drive on the PGA Tour an alarming 24 yards from 1995 to 2003. But in the last five years the distance creep has slowed (the average is actually down a bit so far this year) and Mr. Thomas is convinced current regulations will keep it capped.

For all the hubbub, the practical impact of spring-like effect for most everyday golfers is minimal. At typical swing speeds of 90 mph or slower, most players pick up an average of only four or five extra yards -- "Don't get me wrong. I'll take that. I want that myself," Mr. Thomas said -- because they so seldom strike the ball on the sweet spot and get the full benefit of the effect.

"The bottom line regarding equipment for amateurs is that the magic is in you, not in the club," he said. "When you hit the ball well, when it all comes together, that's the most wonderful feeling in the world, and it doesn't matter what club you're using."

THE FRANK THOMAS BUYER'S GUIDE

Media Reviews of "Just Hit It"

Click here to read the other latest media reviews of "Just Hit It". Listen to Frank discuss the book with Peter Kessler on PGA Tour Radio and read the latest media commentary on "Just Hit It", which is proving to be quite a "hit".

Order "Just Hit It" by clicking here.

Frankly Golf Research Presented at World Scientific Congress of Golf

Frankly Golf "Growing the Game" research is presented at the World Scientific Congress of Golf at Arizona State University. Click here to read.

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