North Shore Golf’s ahead of the curve

 In the Spring 2017 issue of North Shore Golf, Bob Green in his Shades of Green column asked whether today’s golf balls go too far. It appears the Tedesco CC head pro was

onto something.

    The PGA of America this month sent out a three-question survey to its 29,000+ men and woman PGA pros.

1. Do you believe that increases in distance are detrimental to the health of the game?

2. Do you believe that advances in golf ball technology have been beneficial or

detrimental to our efforts to grow the game?

3. Would you be in favor of or opposed to a rollback of the golf ball?

   The USGA reports that data from seven worldwide professional tours show that the average distance gain was more than 3 yards since 2016.

    According to statistics on pgatour.com, in 1980, Dan Pohl was the tour leader with an average of 274.3 yards. Dustin Johnson led the tour in 2015, averaging 317.7 yards. That’s a difference of 43.4 yards. Where did those yards come from?

    Green in his column cited many factors playing a role. You can read his original

column here: northshoregolfmagazine.com/shades-of-green-has-the-golf-ball-gone-too-far/

    Some are leading the charge to scale back

the ball, or even to have all tour players play a scaled back version of the same ball.

     Green opines: All because 1/20th of 1 percent of the world’s golfers hit the ball

300 yards? They’re worried about the classic courses becoming obsolete? To who?

300 tour players?

     Let us know what you think.

     Here’s the USGA’s “Distance Report”: usga.org/content/usga/homepage/