Golf ball rollback still contentious, but USGA's Whan says prototype collaboration has been helpful

NEW YORK — While golf’s ruling bodies mull whether to delay the timeline for the start of the golf ball rollback, USGA CEO Mike Whan indicated that the rule maker has been collaborating with manufacturers to study prototypes to clarify exactly what these new shorter golf balls will and won’t do.

MORE: USGA chief explains golf ball rollback timeline

The USGA and R&A indicated in January that they were asking for comments on whether to change the proposed implementation timeline for the golf ball rollback that was announced in 2023. The original guidance was to set the shorter balls in place for elite golf in 2028 and then for the rest of golf in 2030. The ruling bodies will now consider not staggering the implementation, with the rollback starting in 2030 for all of golf.

While Whan said no decisions have been made on that issue, other than a commitment to act expeditiously, he revealed that the USGA is sharing test results with manufacturers on the loss of distance based on prototypes that already have been submitted. He was not prepared to share results but made it clear that the process was collaborative.

“One of the things that's happened in the last few months is we asked the stakeholders to all come together on testing some of the prototypes we've now been receiving, and to build that test together,” Whan said Saturday at the USGA’s annual meeting. “Because what happens at the end is we go do a test and we share it with somebody and they’re like, ‘I don't like the way you did that test because it didn't address this and this.’ So, everybody kind of attacks the data, and so we said, the one thing as an industry we ought to be able to get our heads around is the data.

“So we had everybody bring in their data experts, and we decided what we were going to test, how we were going to test it, and how we'd interpret the results. And we're just coming through the back end of that, and I don't think we're ready to go public with those results yet. But what I would say to you is this: There is a unified perspective among the data experts of the stakeholders of the game on how the current prototypes we're receiving perform relative to expectation. That's been a great advancement because at least that's taken a lot of the noise and myths out of the room. We’re able to say here’s what’s actually happening and we both agree on these result outcomes. That doesn’t mean your members have to like it, but we can at least both know that some of the things that are being said aren't factual relative to the actual product.”

Whan thinks that while the game is in a period of disagreement on the distance issue now, he believes such acrimony is the natural progression of rulemaking. Certainly, manufacturers have voiced objection to any kind of rollback, but so too has the PGA of America. Even the PGA Tour has done some testing with players, and many of those reports have been negative. But some are wondering whether the prototypes in those tests were the best examples of how the best rollback balls might actually perform. Whan thinks the collaborative testing may change the tenor of the discussion going forward.

“We have this area we don't agree on, but as I've said publicly a million times, the game's got to be able to make small adjustments to make sure that we don't wait for the crisis to come,” he said. “If you did a history of rules and equipment changes in American golf, you would have to say every time: tough decision, followed by huge anxiety and pushback, followed by implementation, followed by ‘Really, that's all it was?’

“I think when people see the actual impact here, or quite frankly the lack of impact for 99 percent of the game, it'll be another one of those, ‘Why did you scream about it for eight years?’”