I have made an issue of how modern technology has made ball-striking much easier, especially with the metal woods and getting the ball in play off the tee with the shoe-box-sized driver heads and lower-spinning, longer flight balls.
One thing that has happened is that you’ll hear Modern Golf Swing proponents saying that “the lighter equipment has changed the way you swing” a golf club, which makes no sense at all.
Nothing against Rickie Fowler, this is about equipment and marketing hype.
You’ll remember the Mark Twain line about there being, “Lies, damned lies, and statistics,” I’ll wager – and I’m not accusing anyone of lying here, just of the same old “hype” over numbers that mean absolutely nothing they are meant to mean, but tell you all you need to know.
This time is Golf.com’s Extra Spin piece about Rickie Fowler “crushing” a persimmon driver, but if you look at the Trackman numbers and read some of the Twitter responses to the piece, you’ll see that no one who knows even a little about golf, equipment and technology was fooled for a second (or at least, not many).
