The secret nature of driver testing in professional games raises sticky issues

Charlotte, North Carolina – Modern drivers have the same face as thin as a dime. It’s indeed much thinner. Thin, lightweight, flexible – live. For the best players in the world, the less digging length is. They wanted that golf ball to jump off their face like a kid bounced on a trampoline. Trampoline effect It is a term for art. The same is true for COR – the recovery coefficient, the term in physics turns this phenomenon into quantity. Bryson DeChambeau is happy to explain the whole thing to you. He could also explain Cor’s cousin, the unique time-the length of time the ball sat on the club.

Rory McIlroy is probably the most famous and popular figure on professional golf courses at the PGA Championship in Quail Hollow, when the driver he used in Augusta last month did not use the same driver he used in Augusta when he won the Masters and completed a career grand slam. Tour players have been changing clubs, but according to solid reports, McIlroy has not retired due to his will.

According to Sirius XM, sometime before the PGA began, ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt aired Friday’s Scott Van Pelt on Friday, and McIlroy was told his driver was not qualified by USGA standards. How it makes this random check fail is unknown. Sometimes the score line is considered too wide or too deep, although this usually happens on the wedge. When a driver is considered to be unqualified, the problem is usually the thinness of the face, which degrades over time and uses, and the length of time the ball may remain in contact with the face. There is a test.

McIlroy’s driver in Augusta is a shiny but without the new taylormade Qi10. The drivers he uses here are the same make and model, but have less experience. His driving in Augusta was great. His driving at Quail Hollow was sloppy, and he laid off employees on that number. The driver’s race characteristics certainly won’t explain the difference. The engineering of these Space Age Clubs is too precise. McIlroy’s familiarity and belief in the club is another matter. Tie Byron is the name of the USGA test machine. Golf is played by humans.

Baseball figured this out after the 1919 World Series, which tried to solve: If the public was not confident about the legitimacy of the game, the whole thing could collapse. The basic reason for Quail Hollow is that there are thousands of viewers spending millions of dollars here to watch these players, and that’s where we have confidence in the results. They calculated each shot and followed the final rules, including all the rules for managing the device. Comply with golf ball, comply with head, comply with shaft.

The PGA Championship is the PGA Tour. If you win the game, it counts as a PGA Tour victory. The money players earn and the FedEx points are part of the Players Tour save. Masters, the same goes for the US Open and the UK Open. Apart from that, anything else is semantic nonsense. The PGA Tour has its own non-temporary competition testing system, but it all meets USGA testing requirements. None of these happens in a vacuum or silo – it’s too complex and important and expensive. At the PGA Championship in the US Open, the US Open operated by USGA, the USGA equipment standard Whizz was tested.

McIlroy, the two-time champion of the race, said nothing about why he changed drivers when he headed to his 10th tee on Saturday to start his third round of PGA Championship at 1:38 pm. Of course, that was his privilege. I would say his millions of fans deserve some explanation.

Three minutes after McIlroy’s start time, the US PGA made its first comment in a 191-word statement by US PGA chief champion Kerry Haigh. Declare read:

“We can confirm that USGA is invited to conduct club testing at the PGA Championship as required by the USGA. The testing program is consistent with the same level of support USGA provides for PGA Tour and other champions as part of its regular program as part of its driver testing. Among the one-third of the drivers of the program, this is a week’s driver. Consistency is not a rare event, especially for clubs that have been hit thousands of times over a long period of time that are kept secret to protect the players of the club who do not conform to consistency, not just players who do not conform to the club, and therefore there is no scope. The unnecessary USGA and US PGA are not concerned about player intentions.”

A reasonable mind may think about why players are not responsible when they realize that drivers are facing becoming more and more hot over time. The rapid development of sports betting has raised another question around the lack of test transparency: If you know, McIlroy plays the new driver’s head in a given game, are you less willing to bet on him?

When asked about the Sirius XM report Friday night, USGA said of its testing process: “The results are confidential.” On Saturday morning, a PGA Tour official provided this:

“The PGA Tour will not comment because we are here to support the US PGA this week. Any questions about the test this week should be directed to the US PGA or USGA.”

I believe that the PGA Tour should support the public’s belief in the “product” that is presented to the public every week, including that belief.

There was no advice here when McIlroy won the Masters. It is almost impossible to imagine players intentionally using a club that is not qualified. This will violate every principle the game should represent.

However, this issue will only become more prominent in the coming years. This is an easy solution. It won’t heal everyone, but it will help:

In addition to random, pre-match tests, the top ten players and tied were tested Sunday morning. If your club is good, play. If not, go back to the car trunk, equipment trailer or anywhere.

Players can’t make a fuss about this demand. After all, they think Play a consistent club. Correct?

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments via michael.bamberger@golf.com.