newjerseynewsroom.com

BY JEREMY SCHILLING

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Keegan Bradley. Webb Simpson. Ernie Els. What do they all have in common? They use long putters. All three of them happen to specifically use belly putters. And the three of them have combined to win three of the last four major championships.

Some people want that changed. They want the long putters and the belly and anchored putting techniques that golfers use with them banned. They believe they give golfers an unfair advantage and were not what golf’s original founders intended.

Two groups of people will come together and ultimately make that decision, possibly in the next couple of months. The United States Golf Association (USGA) and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews (R&A) are golf’s two governing bodies and whatever decision they make is final. They set the rules that the rest of us – sometimes – play by.

In response to a piece I did last year on how some golfers are skirting the rules using new products on the market, I was invited to visit the USGA’s Research and Test Center and see for myself how they go about making the decisions on what balls and clubs are legal and which are sent back to the companies’ drawing boards.

Earlier this year I did exactly that and made the trip to Far Hills. It may surprise some to learn that the USGA is actually based in New Jersey – and, for example, Florida, which is where the PGA Tour is based – but there they are, on a sprawling campus set away from Route 202. On the property are the main offices of the USGA, a museum called Golf House and the Research and Test Center. The museum is a walk through golf history, with artifacts ranging from the beginning of golf to today’s young guns. It is a must visit for any golf fan.

Set back on the campus, behind a putting course where you can use both putters and golf balls from yesteryear is the research and development lab.

I joined a group of about 10 or 15 other golf fans and were taken around the facility by our tour guide for the day, Jeff Banchansky, Equipment Rulings Liaison for the USGA’s Equipment Standards Department.

He showed us the tests that the 1,000 golf balls they get for approval go through, including testing for initial velocity, size, and diameter, in addition to the overall distance that the golf ball travels.

Banchansky then took us over to the golf club testing area, where they test some 3,000 different pieces of equipment every year, ranging from clubheads to the clubs themselves to shafts to, believe it or not, tees. In one area Banchasky talked about C.O.R (coefficient of restitution.) In layman’s terms that’s the spring-like affect that happens when club and ball meet. Golf clubmakers are always trying to tote the line of face-thinness and clubface size to give golfers the biggest sweet spot possible. The bigger the sweetspot, the better chance of the golf ball going straight and far.

But he explained that in 1998, the USGA found that it was getting a little out of hand.

“We were finding that they were making these faces so thin, that when you’d swing through the face would actually flex, on impact,” Banchansky said. “What we did in 1998, we said ‘well is that this is a road that we don’t want them to go too far down’ because…If this guy is getting 15 extra yards from just buying a club that’s not what we want to see. We want to see him get better through practice, through his own blood sweat and tears, so to speak.”

So they instituted new standards on C.O.R. to reign in the explosion of distance and also created the pendulum test, which is used to test the C.O.R. and spring-like effect of new clubs that come into the center for testing.

And in subsequent years we have seen a greater influence of weight training and gym work in golf as the ability to get more distance out of the golf clubs themselves becomes harder and harder.

Banchansky also showed us the computer test they use to simulate rough and how that plays into all their testing of golf club grooves to make the rough a true penalty versus just a brief interruption in a golfer’s quest to get on the green.

But my favorite tool was the “Iron Byron." It is a device used for years now by both governing bodies and golf club and ball companies themselves to test brand new products to see how they work under, real, actual golf conditions. The USGA uses it to test golf balls. It’s called the Iron Byron because it is modeled after Byron Nelson’s golf swing – considered one of the most perfect swings in golf history.

The USGA’s facility actually decided to tweak it, according to Banchansky.