What is rollback? How a potential new golf rule would affect everyone from Tiger Woods to you

Change is once again expected to come to the world of golf, and this time, if enacted, the change will affect everyone who swings a club, from Tiger Woods to weekend hackers. The USGA and R&A, the golf world’s governing bodies, are expected to introduce new rules this week mandating a “rollback” of golf ball distances, a rollback that would affect every single golf ball played by every single player, whether they’re on the first tee at Augusta National or at a local muni with beer on ice in the golf cart.

Here’s what the potential rollback means, for both pros and you.

What exactly is “rollback”?

“Rollback” is the act of shortening the distance a golf ball is permitted to travel. Manufacturers will achieve this by creating a new ball that requires greater club speed to travel the same distance — or, put another way, if you hit the new ball the same way, it won’t go as far.

A report by Golf Digest indicated that manufacturers would change the swing speed of testing from 120 to 125 mph, with the ball calibrated to travel the same distance of 317 yards. (Worth noting: Those swing speeds are far faster than what most amateurs can manage.)

In plain terms: the changes could take an estimated four to five percent off the ball’s distance for everyone. A pro who regularly drives the ball 320 yards could lose about 16 yards off their drives. A weekend hacker who drives the ball 180 yards could lose about nine yards.

Why a rollback?

As players get stronger and golf equipment gets better, courses have struggled to keep up. Unlike other sports, where the boundaries of the playing area are fixed no matter who’s playing, golf courses must either grow to accommodate longer drives, or surrender to obsolescence. Already, the Old Course at St. Andrews, the most famous golf course in the world, is in danger of falling into irrelevance because today’s players are so much stronger, and their equipment so much better, that they are overpowering a layout that was designed more than a century ago.

From an aesthetic and competitive level, bashing the ball into orbit off the tee and then chipping onto the green eliminates all the artistic design and strategy built into golf courses over the course of decades. Augusta National’s 13th, for example, was created to force a risk-reward decision between hugging Rae’s Creek on the left and leaving yourself a safer landing but more distant approach on the right. A player who can just pound the ball right over those two challenges simply overwhelms the course. Augusta National has addressed the changes by moving the tee box farther and farther back, but few courses have the resources or the available land that Augusta does.

The resource question is the more practical one. Golf courses take up enormous resources, both to acquire and to maintain, and an extra few hundred yards of necessary driving distance means tens of thousands of extra square feet of fairway and rough that must be purchased and maintained. Golf courses are an easy target for critics focusing on everything from property values to inclusion to environmental sustainability, and the sport simply can’t be seen any longer as one that voraciously claims land for the benefit of a very few. Will a five-percent rollback help?

Why are some pros opposed to a rollback?

To rephrase an old Nike slogan: “Chicks dig the environmentally sustainable and historically respectful ball” doesn’t really flow off the tongue. Pros love hitting the ball far; the closer you are to the green, the fewer decisions you have to make and the more you can focus on getting the ball into the cup, not just onto the putting surface. Plus, many pros have bonuses built into their sponsor contracts for recording eye-popping stats such as driving distance.

In short, rollback will require an adjustment to something that right now is working very well for most pros — driving the golf ball — and if there’s one thing golf pros loathe more than dealing with the media, it’s making adjustments that they haven’t had to make before.

What are the pros saying about this rollback?

Predictably, many pros are outraged about the potential change.

"I think that the USGA … everything that they do is reactionary," Keegan Bradley said last weekend. "They don't think of a solution. They just think we're going to affect a hundred percent of the population that plays golf. For the amateur world to hit the ball shorter is monstrous. I can't think of anything more stupid than that. I don't think it's very smart at all, especially when golf's growing in popularity literally coming out of COVID."

“I don't see how [the rollback helps] when we're at the best place the game has ever been," Rickie Fowler added. "'Oh, you love the game? Yeah. Hey, thanks for joining us over COVID. Now we're going to make you hit it 20 yards shorter. Have fun.' I understand both sides. But looking at it as far as the game and everyone talks about growing the game, I think it's going to be a huge step back.”

Rory McIlroy, on the other hand, doesn't think the potential changes will affect everyday players, and puts the blame on the pros and manufacturers who didn't want bifurcation (different balls for pros vs. amateurs) in the first place:

McIlroy's statement is worth reading in full:

Woods indicated that he saw no problem with bifurcation, comparing it to the way baseball allows aluminum bats at lower levels but only wood bats at higher and professional levels. "We just [don't] have enough property anymore," Woods said. "We've been hammering [the idea that] the ball needs to slow down, but it has kept speeding up my entire time on tour, and here we are."

But I’m not going to be hitting the ball 300 yards. Why would this affect me?

This is one of the key questions of the entire golf ball debate: Why do amateurs and pros have to adhere to the same rules? The concept of dividing the game between pro and amateur levels is called “bifurcation,” and to an extent it already exists; amateurs play off tees much closer to the hole than pros. It seems reasonable enough — create one ball for the pros and one for weekend hackers. After all, NASCAR drivers don’t wheel off-the-showroom-floor SUVs at the Daytona 500, do they?

From an equipment perspective, manufacturers don't want to roll back distance on the golf ball. Golf is a hard game, and golf equipment manufacturers live and die by promises of making it easier. Having to admit to your customers that their new balls won’t travel as far as their old ones is tantamount to admitting that this hamburger is five-percent less tasty than last year’s version … but you should enjoy it anyway for the good of all.

Bifurcation is also problematic for manufacturers. This would require them to divide their efforts between the two classifications of golf ball. Research and development, marketing, production … two different balls would require two different production lines, a change that would be difficult for large manufacturers and potentially impossible for smaller ones.

Realistically, some amateurs won't notice a difference, while others will. But perceptually, the difference is significant — if you feel that an already-difficult game is getting made harder by forces outside your control, how much longer will you put up with that game? What's more, this won't help a sport that is already grappling with the issue of slow play.

Why focus on just the balls? Why not focus on the clubs, too? Don't they have something to do with distance?

All excellent questions, which club manufacturers would prefer you stop asking, right now.

Why do these organizations get to tell me what I do with my golf balls?

The USGA (United States Golf Association) and R&A (Royal & Ancient) together govern the rules of golf — the USGA in America, the R&A in the rest of the world. They’re tasked with creating the rules that govern the game, from equipment to on-course procedure.

Since this is golf, however, every change, no matter how small, must go through literal years of negotiation, tinkering, nitpicking and grandstanding, with stakeholders ranging from the tours (like the PGA Tour) to the majors (Augusta National, U.S. Open, etc.) to the players to equipment manufacturers to sponsors all having some degree of voice in the proceedings.

Golf’s greatest strength is its creation of rules that govern the game. Golf’s greatest weakness is its obsessive enforcement of those rules with a zeal that ranges from nearsighted to maniacal.

Fundamentally, there’s nothing stopping you from hoarding golf balls for the next few years and playing them on every weekend trip until you run out. There's also nothing stopping you right now from buying and breaking out special "illegal" non-conforming balls that will add dozens of yards to your drive. But golf is a game of honor, and the honorable thing to do is to conform to the rules in place at the time.

When would this rollback occur?

If enacted, pros will need to begin using the new balls by 2028; amateurs will have to conform by 2030.

The rollback is likely coming, and it will be a seismic change to the game. But at least you can say that you and Tiger Woods are now facing the same challenges on the golf course.