Elling Rebuts "Where's The Balance?"

Steve Elling fights back with a note to Acushnet CEO Wally Uihlein over the "Where's The Balance" commentary.

I've never thought of myself as "unequivocally biased," the term your Web site ascribed. But like lots of fans -- most of them don't have the forum to express themselves -- I've become downright contemptuous of the lack of finesse on display at many tour stops. It's not golf as we once knew it when a kid like J.B. Holmes is bombing his 3-wood more than 300 yards in the air while winning last month at Phoenix. Or when Tiger Woods wins tournaments despite missing half the fairways.

And... 

As for the notion of credibility, the Sentinel has zero financial stake in the technology issue. With regard to the latter, no sooner had Holmes won while hitting 197-yard 8-iron shots than did he become the poster boy for your Cobra subsidiary.

Within days, highlights of Holmes' jaw-dropping performance were edited into a new TV ad, featuring narrated snippets from CBS Sports commentator David Feherty uttered during the live broadcast.

There's no conflict of interest here. Feherty, meanwhile, is a paid Cobra endorser. Sure, the animated Irishman has a tendency to get carried away at times, but when he fawned over Holmes, claiming that he hadn't been this excited since he watched Tiger Woods play as a rookie, it sounded like your office was feeding scripted lines into his headset.

Oh there are going to be some busy bloggers this afternoon!
 

Comments

[Smolmania]

Geoff,

The media's starting to get on board. The question becomes, will the public? We can only hope.

[Ned Ludd]

My gut tells me the public in general will be slow to hop on the Bandwagon. First, few people care about the integrity of the game; all most care about is how far they can get the ball down a long par 4 and having an occasional putt for eagle on a 5. The fact that certain hopped up tour players can hit it past the 400 mark is just added hope and proof that technology can indeed help their own games and their attempts to hit the ball 275. To understand what the equipment is truly doing to the game one needs an appreciation of its history and course design/architecture. Unfortunately, 75% of the players out there have no idea what it means to eject the likes of Merion from the American Open rota, and could care less.I don't know about you guys, but when I am playing with other golfers described above and I start talking about things like architecture, history and integrity of the game, their eyes either glaze over or start rolling. What is even more incredible is that the yearly purchase of new equipment to keep up with technology is more a badge of honor than a costly necessity.

I hope I am wrong.

[Sean Murphy]

I can tell you guys from my conversations in some of these locker rooms on Tour that there are players (not the ones with the HUGE endorsments) that are concerned about the "History" and the "Integrity" of the sport. But more directly, it's skill factor, or lack of skill factor evidenced on the PGA Tour today. It only takes a couple of players to go on the record about the abusive advances in the golf balls today to get the rest of these players talking. One of two things has to give, or stop giving. That would be the give in the Driver faces today, or the give in the core of the golf ball. One of these has to go.

These manufacturers are dialing in face give and core give and creating a Super Spring like effect. Players want some of the spring taken out of the spring. The simplist way of going about that would be to come up with a specific core give number. A core give number that 95% of professionals on the PGA Tour could compress. This would restore the sport to a skill level where every professional golfer is created equal. Just like it use to be with wood faced drivers and 100 compression golf balls. Don't worry boy's the press is beginning to become educated in the physics of what is really taking place today. It's just a matter of when, now.

[Smolmania]

I hope Sean is correct. If not, the days of Corey Pavin winning the Open and Fred Funk winning the TPC will become footnotes in history. Should Bubba Watson have a chance to win? Absolutely. And when he putts lights out as he did at the Sony, he will. But technology should not be permitted to make the ball strikers, the players who are so highly skilled but don't hit it forever (like Kenny Perry) irrelevant. It's not, or it shouldn't be, about agendas or prejudice. . . it's about what's right about a game that we love.

[njmike]

That is why I love seeing a Olazabal or Maggert in contention on Sunday.

Hey- keep the ball- ban the Driver. No club under 14*

hmmmm

[Smolmania]

I don't think a change or limit on degrees will do it. They'll simply adjust the ball to create the optimum launch condition for the swing speeds generated by the new generation of floggers. Tiger can hit his 2 iron 290 yards. How is being forced to hit a 14 degree driver going to help?

[Scott S]

Yep. Your average 3 wood now is between 13 and 15 degrees (at least, they call it a 3 wood). Not much of a step up there.

Frankly, shortening shafts isn't going to do anything, either. You have to keep guys from getting exponential gains from incremental swing speed differences, and drivers from being big enough that it hardly matters where on the face you hit the ball.

[Sean Murphy]

Hey, you guys are starting to catch on. Congratulations. Golf is (or was) a game of integrity, and it is a "Gentleman's Game" based on (well it use to be) sportsmanship.