So far and no further

The death of Ely Callaway has not only deprived the game of one of its foremost innovators but re-focussed attention on the controversial ERC driver – a club that is banned in the United States, Canada and Mexico but legal in the rest of the world.

The latest in the Big Bertha line of clubs that took the world of golf by storm and named after the founder (Ely Reeves Callaway) of what is today the golf world’s most successful manufacturer of clubs, the ERC features Variable Face Thickness (VFT) technology that is said to give it “spring-like effect” when it is used to strike a ball.

It is this so-called “spring-like effect” that helps golfers, both good and bad, to hit the ball further that has caused it to be a bone of contention between the game’s rule makers and created the almost unprecedented situation whereby the USGA says it is illegal and the R&A deems it to be okay.

But what is spring-like effect and can it really make such a difference?

Like most golfers I had been puzzled by the technicalities – especially after Arnold Palmer was drawn into the furoré when he endorsed the ERC – and was delighted to come across a succinct explanation by Dick Rugge, the USGA’s senior technical director, in the association’s official magazine, “Golf Journal.”

In answer to the question, “what is spring-like effect?”, Rugge explains: “I can best describe it by describing the test. We fire a golf ball at the face of a clubhead, and we measure the velocity of the ball just before it hits the clubhead.

“It strikes the clubhead and rebounds in the opposite direction. We measure the velocity again after it bounces off the clubhead.

“For example, if the ball started at 100 mph coming in, bounced off the head and went back at 75 mph, we would say that the club has a coefficient of restitution, or COR, of 75 divided by 100, or .75, or 75 percent.

“If we put a persimmon clubhead in that test, the ratio of the outgoing velocity is about 78 percent. When we replace that club with a first generation of steel clubs, it’s a tiny bit faster going out, about 78,5 percent.

“First generation titanium clubs are about 79 percent, maybe 79,5. It’s hard to notice a difference. “But then titanium clubs started to evolve; they became larger and the face became thinner. We started out at 78 percent with wood, 79 percent or so with first-generation titanium, went to 80, 81, 82 percent. So the ball’s going out faster than it had with previous models.

“The USGA developed this COR test and put a limit in of 83 percent. That has been the limit for than two years. Since that limit was put in place, some clubs have come on the market place that have exceeded that limit. They’ve gone up to 84, 85, and as much as 86 percent,” said Rugge.

And, dear reader, you don’t have to be rocket scientist to know that the quicker the ball rebounds the further it will go.

Dick Rugge explains: “Let’s assume a good PGA Tour player swinging that wooden club hits it 289 yards – a long poke. As he changes his club and increases his COR, let’s say he goes to the USGA conforming limit of 83 percent. He’ll get another 10 yards and that 289 will become 299. If he continues on with the highest COR club we’ve seen so far, that will be a 305-yard hit, and if he continues on with what we expect to be the maximum (COR that can be achieved) it’ll about 309. So he will have gained 20 yards from his driver.” Although lesser players will see less of a difference it is clear why the USGA is keen to rein in the driver and protect golf courses.

In my own experience I am longer off the tee today than I was 20 years ago and one of the consequences of the quest for length is that course administrators have not only responded by making holes longer but also by making them more difficult and complicated.

More difficult and complicated translates into more bunkers, additional water hazards and greens with intricate shapes – all designed to make it more difficult to score. The problem of course is that all these additions are expensive to build and costly to maintain; creating a vicious circle in which the club is becoming not only better but evermore expensive while the courses required to respond to the advances in technology are also more pricey.

Makes you think that perhaps the USGA is right to decree – “so far and no further.”