The 2025 event is set to be the penultimate Ryder Cup played with golf balls as we know them today, with significant changes coming in three years.
The R&A is planning to introduce new rules around the golf ball which will ensure that they do not travel as far. The idea is to provide more of a defence for shorter golf courses.
The new rules come into effect in 2028 at the elite level, while recreational golfers will have another couple of years to comply with the changes. But it is fair to say that the decision has been controversial.
It does appear that plenty fear that the changes will have a much greater impact on the recreational golfers, and make little difference at the very highest level.
And Sir Nick Faldo believes that there are better options.
Sir Nick Faldo issues his verdict on the golf ball rollback
Of course, Faldo was one of the players who saw the rapid advances in the club technology around the turn of the century. The Englishman enjoyed his success at the top level in the previous era, but he did play in all four majors in the same year as recently as 2004.
And speaking on the Sliced podcast this week, the 68-year-old suggested that he would be much more in favour of the PGA Tour stopping tees being used at certain events, or wedges with higher lofts being outlawed.
“I wanted to bring back ball-striking ability, the skill of striking, because in my day, as you know, the size of our old drivers and the sweet spot was the size of a pea. You had to nail it, that’s why you say coming out the screws, right out the middle. If you mishit it, we had a hook and a slice, and we lost 25 yards. If you were an excellent ball-striker, you were in the top five percent of golfers. Now, anybody can do that, because the sweet spot is probably the size of a quarter now. Completely different,” he said.
“I’m much more of a fan, and we could do it, I blurted out years ago, ‘well, what about banning tee pegs then?’ Then I thought about it. If there was an official length to a tee peg for tournament play, let’s say it was 7/8ths of an inch, that means you can’t tee it up like that and get a 60 inch driver launching at 13 [degrees]. The tour could say, ‘hey guys, when we’re playing a golf course under 7100 yards’, which is short, isn’t it, ‘guys, no tee pegs this week’. Hilton Head, you wouldn’t need it, you’d hit three wood. But it’s not stopping the guy who’s good enough. If a guy’s good enough to place it and hit a driver off the deck, all the power to him. If he can still run it out there over 300, that’s the skill. Good luck doing that on a Sunday afternoon if you had to do it into the wind, that would be a skill.
“Here’s another one that wouldn’t cost anything, it’s just writing in a rule book, we could say we have nothing less than 10 degrees now. 10 degrees is the minimum for the driver, and go the other end and say can we stop at 56 again? The wedges stop at 56, no more 60 and 62s. That doesn’t cost a penny to write that in a rule book.
“These companies are going to spend hundreds of thousands retooling, and how do you market it? ‘This is our brand new golf ball, it goes 20 percent less than the last one’. That’s harsh, that’s cruel.
“I would love to bring back the skill somehow.
“Rolling back the ball, Bernhard Langer made a great example years ago. When Bernhard made the cut, he said ‘I’m hitting wood into these par fours and I made the cut just’, he said, ‘if they roll back the ball, I wouldn’t play the tournament. I wouldn’t be able to reach anything’.”
What Rory McIlroy said about the golf ball rollback in 2023
Faldo’s comments will receive a lot of support. However, others will understandably argue that being able to hit the ball further than most is also a real skill.
Interestingly, one person who did back The R&A’s decision was Rory McIlroy. Speaking in 2023 – in comments reported by BBC Sport – the Northern Irishman suggested that he was baffled by the debate over the issue.
“I don’t understand the anger about the golf ball roll back,” he said.
“The people who are upset about this decision shouldn’t be mad at the governing bodies, they should be mad at elite pros and club/ball manufacturers because they didn’t want bifurcation.
“Elite pros and ball manufacturers think bifurcation would negatively affect their bottom lines, when, in reality, the game is already bifurcated.”
Something definitely needs to be done. Longer and longer golf courses are definitely not the answer, particularly given the environmental factors.
They also rarely provide entertaining spectacles for fans. It is surely easier to put less thought into constructing a 500-yard par four than one that is 375 yards and has to rely on a clever layout.
Clearly, Faldo is not entirely convinced that The R&A’s decision is the right one.
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