Jim Furyk has admitted that he may not be too popular after responding to being asked what golf rule he would change if he could.
There are plenty of rules in the game of golf that divide opinion among players. It does seem incredibly unfair to find the fairway and have to play from an old divot.
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Meanwhile, there are many golf fans who would happily see long putters banned. Interestingly, Sir Nick Faldo called for a ban on wedges with higher lofts than 56 degrees.
But Jim Furyk has opted for a change at the other end of the bag.
Jim Furyk calls for a rule change concerning drivers in the professional game
Furyk won on the PGA Tour for the first time in 1995, while his final victory came almost 20 years later at the 2015 RBC Heritage. In that time, he will have seen the equipment change dramatically.
And speaking on Golf Live, the 2003 US Open champion called for significant driver reform.
“I’ll tell you what I would do. I’m not going to be very popular for this, but I would reduce the size of the driver head. Maybe not necessarily for the average golfer, but I would do that for the golf professional,” he said.
“Because you can hit it all over the face right now and it’s pretty forgiving. You don’t lose a lot of distance. I play a mini driver in my bag for my three wood. And when I hit that mini good, it goes darn near just as far as my driver. It’s less than 10 yards difference. But if I mishit it, if I hit it a little thin, a little on the toe, a little on the heel, I lose a bunch of yardage.
“I think you’ve gotten these young guys that are rearing back and swinging 110 per cent at it, and you can kind of cover areas on the face and get a lot of forgiveness and a lot of distance. I just think it would show an extra skill set. They’re extremely talented, don’t get me wrong, but I think it would also limit guys swinging 110 per cent at it all the time. They’d have to pick and choose their spots and maybe golf courses wouldn’t have to be quite as long.”
The R&A and USGA’s policy on changing the rules around driver heads
It does appear that there is a chance of the rules around drivers changing in the coming years. The Telegraph reported in 2023 that there was an announcement from the R&A and USGA that they were monitoring the forgiveness of driver heads.
There is obviously a plan in place to reduce how far the golf ball travels. That is set to impact the professional game from 2028, while amateurs will have until 2030 to comply.
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Clearly, it would not be ideal for the driver manufacturers if they could no longer make outlandish claims about how far their equipment can hit the ball.
But when Furyk makes the case that smaller driver heads would increase the level of skill within the professional game, it is hard to disagree with his argument.
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