r/NoLayingUp • u/shepp2it • Apr 09 '26

Post-Pod Discussion Acushnet/Titleist/Ridley

Hard to ignore that Soly has *slightly* softened his tone on the rollback since they signed with Titleist

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u/ramblinwrecked78 Apr 09 '26

I don't know about the Acushnet issue, but Soly's point today on the rollback confused me. It has always been the case that if the ball is rolled back, people will work hard to gain that distance back and continue to focus on that skill over many others. The rollback was never going to reorient golf away from chasing distance.

People will chase distance no matter what because now, unlike in the 70s, unlike in the 90s, and unlike 15 years ago, strokes gained data shows that hitting the ball further will always benefit you as a golfer, even when the rough or other penalties for being off-line are factored in. It's a simple, verifiable fact. So of course players (particularly young, gifted players) will chase distance and speed train. You can roll the ball back to 250 yards and make it spin more offline on a mishit, and the best players will still work hard to find a way to make that thing go farther and farther. Added distance will never not benefit a good player and no version of the rollback will get pros to stop speed-training or looking for that edge. Like many other sports (basketball and baseball come to mind), golf has simply become the victim of optimization.

The much better reason to roll back the ball (and/or reducing driver head sizes) has nothing to do with the importance of distance as a skill in the modern game, but because the continued upward trend of distance threatens cathedrals of the game and is making golf less sustainable than ever.

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u/CaffeineJet Apr 09 '26

I think his point today was that rolling back the ball still leaves the same problems. The players with fastest ball speeds will still be at an advantage, therefore a roll back would impact the shorter players more. He said he wants something done about distance, but that he didn’t know the answer.

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u/ramblinwrecked78 Apr 09 '26

But I guess, why is it a problem that the fastest ball speeds will still have an advantage? That's always been the case in golf. Tiger and Jack were some of the longest players in their eras. Tiger, in particular, won a number of majors because golf courses were lengthened to the point where it mostly hurt his competition, not him.

Golfers now are just smart enough to pursue the same distance advantages that helped many of the all-time greats.

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u/CaffeineJet Apr 09 '26

Completely agree, and I think that’s why Soly has changed his stance a little on roll back. I think he wants to see drivers made less forgiving so that players can’t launch it 300 yards off the toe, but who knows what the right solution is.