New York Times
June 22, 2003 By FRANK THOMAS
The PGA Tour is thinking about experimenting with a portable machine at tournament sites to measure whether drivers conform to regulated limits with regard to the trampoline effect. Tiger Woods is the most outspoken proponent of such testing.
Certainly, the technology exists that will soon allow for the drivers of all golfers to be tested on site. The upgraded and very innovative device designed by the United States Golf Association to measure a club's trampoline effect, or coefficient of restitution( learn about COR), is portable and nondestructive. This means that the effect can be measured without disassembling the club in the lab.
But do we really need to check the bags of all players?
Before addressing that question, some background is in order. The trampoline effect, more officially called the springlike effect, came about by accident. Manufacturers looking for ways to increase the size of the driver head to make it more forgiving found that to maintain an acceptable head weight, the shell and face of the hollow steel head was so thin that it was collapsing on impact. A lighter and stronger material, titanium, was introduced to solve the strength problem, and this allowed for the design of even bigger heads, with an unexpected bonus. The thin, flexible titanium face acts like a trampoline, increasing the ball speed and thus the distance that expert golfers can drive the ball.
The average driving distance on the PGA Tour increased by a rate of one foot per year from 1968 to 1995. After the introduction of titanium, the rate increased to 7.5 feet per year. This phenomenon was caused almost entirely by the springlike effect and continued until 2001 while Tour players were taking advantage of it. Another contributing factor to this latest jump in distance is the recently introduced multilayered ball, now widely accepted on the Tour and in the bags of a number of golfers who wish they were on the Tour.
These changes in equipment performance are probably the most significant ever, if we consider how rapidly they happened. The good news is that ball technology has peaked, and the U.S.G.A. limit on the springlike effect will slow the rate of increase in the average Tour player's driving distance to approximately one or two feet a year. The only significant near-term increases (three or four yards) will come from the matching of players' launching conditions to approximate the optimum launching condition for a particular ball design, plus increases in club head speed.
Even if Tiger thinks that players can gain 15 yards or more with improper drivers, the facts are that even if the U.S.G.A. had no limits on equipment, the laws of physics would prevent that. Even a relatively major infraction of the existing rule on the springlike effect will not deliver more than three or four more yards. Yes, golfers will get stronger and swing the club head faster, but we can't restrict this.
Most recreational golfers don't drive the ball far enough, so for them this springlike effect is a wonderful innovation even though they don't get nearly as much benefit from it as do the pros, because finding the sweet spot is not a common occurrence for most of us.
So the question remains: Should we check the bags of all golfers, as Tiger suggests?
The new technology is accurate and will quickly tell if the driver conforms. This is good, but there may be a temptation on the part of an overly aggressive official to use this device as a radar gun, simply because he can.
Therein lies a potential problem.
If it is ever decided that we need to police the conformity of a player's clubs, we will fracture the integrity of the game and the very thing that separates golf from other athletic activities: in golf, we call infractions on ourselves.
It is an obligation of the manufacturer to provide the player with conforming equipment, but ultimately it is the player's responsibility to confirm this and ensure that any alterations do not violate the rules.In spite of the temptation to check a player's clubs because of innuendo, rumor or extraordinary performance, this portable device to determine conformity must never be used for policing. A PGA Tour official has stated that the device will be available, when introduced, only for the convenience of the player when he or she is in doubt as to the conformity of a new or altered driver. Please let it be so.
Frank Thomas, the U.S.G.A's technical director from 1974 to 2000, heads his own company, Frankly Golf, whose web site, FranklyGolf.com, is a clearinghouse of information about equipment evaluation and research.