Golf has a distance problem.
That’s now the official position of the game’s governing bodies, which released their long-anticipated Distance Insights Project Tuesday that comprehensively outlines how the distance boom has had an undesirable effect and is detrimental to the game’s long-term future.
Nearly two decades after warning that further significant distance increases would “have the impact of seriously reducing the challenge of the game,” the USGA and R&A finally appear poised to tackle one of the sport’s thorniest issues. Relying on data from industry experts, tours and stakeholders, they unveiled their two-year findings that included a 15-page statement of conclusions and a 99-page summary of the research that was gathered from 57 individual reports.