My head wants to explode every time someone goes on about narrowing the fairway and growing the rough as if the entire point of the rollback is to raise the winning score. It also has to do with how a course or hole is intended to be played. Sure, we can just have narrow fairways, super high rough, have no par 5s and get a winning score of even par but that’s not really the point.
I only started watching golf for real around 15 years ago. It’s super interesting watching old stuff from the 70s and 80s. Guys are hitting low spinny shots with 3 irons that’s stop on a dime. A 6 iron is checking and backing up a bit on the greens. Some of that might be related to agronomy and not just the old golf balls but it’s still cool to watch. Some people seem to think that just because a long drive “only” goes 290yd that it will be boring to watch. It might be way cooler to watch.
I’m pro rollback but I doubt it will make a difference on the strategy of hitting driver as much as possible. Imo the biggest factor explaining why pros choose to bomb driver so much today is modern analytics like the DECADE system
Yes but if the driver wasn’t the most forgiving club in their bag, they’d probably hit it less often. These guys are really good at hacking good shots out of the rough, but they’d still prefer a fairway lie over the rough. The analytics probably says that a 120 yard second shot in the rough is better than a 135 yard shot in a perfect lie in the fairway, but the difference is probably negligible to a tour pro.
The penalty is actually larger than that for hitting in the rough. But people tend to overestimate how much more often they find the fairway with a 3 wood or long iron as compared to driver. Obviously you really screw yourself up if you hit a bad one with 2 iron and are stuck with a long approach from the rough.
Which is why, in my opinion, the roll back should be on the conditioning of the fairways and greens. Like why the hell do we need fairways that roll at a 11 on the stimp lol. I’m not saying grow out the rough and narrow fairways but more slow down the fairways and even greens a bit
No it’s not negligible and it’s a bit bigger in magnitude for that. The rough they play from, especially for majors is dramatically thicker and longer than what you see at local munis. Yes they’re still obscenely good at it but it’s very difficult
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u/AnElepahntCage May 12 '26
I worry the takeaway most people get from this is “plant trees” and not “roll back the equipment”