You’ve heard, I’ve heard it, we’ve all heard it before: size doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to use it.
Like many other things in life to which this would apply, the Length in a driver shaft doesn’t mean anything if you’re delivering bombs 45 yards to the left or right of your desired target. No one is really getting satisfied then, either.
The @USGA and @RandA have announced a new Model Local Rule that will reduce the maximum shaft length from 48 inches to 46 inches. https://t.co/JrHSm2kzlf
— Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) October 12, 2021
It seems the USGA and R&A didn’t get this memo and they’re fighting the wrong battle.
Under a new model local rule provision, akin to what we see with ground rules in baseball stadiums, events and more can now legally limit a player’s Driver Shaft Length to 46 inches. In the end this is also just a recommendation or a suggestion to lower the length of a driver shaft, not a hard and fast rule or edict.
The charge for these longer graphite rods have been championed most openly by a trio of pros who have played or do play a longer shafted driver: Bryson DeChambeau, Phil Mickelson, and LPGA star Brooke Henderson. All can absolutely send a piss missile like no one’s business but they’re also rather wild at times with their control of the really big stick.
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Phil claimed this rolling back of driver shaft length would lead to injuries and I feel this is a misnomer as well. The only persons who really need to game a driver whose length is 2- to 3-inches beyond standard length (usually 45”) are usually your super tall golfers or ones with unique body shapes or needs.
So I’m not really worried that we’re going to see ER’s across the country dealing with someone blowing out their L-5 vertebrae because of driver shaft length concerns.
When it comes to distance and technology there’s really not a whole lot more the USGA or the R&A can do to limit the advances in golf equipment. Springy thin metal faces, internal springboard effects from the cage, whippy graphite shafts, stronger athletes and more all can lead to more length if the player hits the ball correctly.
Players and manufacturers will continue to find ways to dodge, dip, duck, dive, and dodge their ways around these things to make the ball go farther. This is a losing battle unless the organizations actually change the materials allowed for design and build of drivers.
What these two organizations can do is finally realize the battle that can be won and should be banned: the arm-bar style putter.
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Made popular by the likes of Bryson DeChambeau, Matt Kuchar, and more, the arm-bar style putter is literally just a new version of anchoring, the same thing that caused popular putter styles and grip methods to be banned almost six years ago. That sucker is literally stuck to the inside of the forearms of many touring pro golfers.
Much like the length argument, the players found the loophole to create an anchored advantage without it looking like an anchored advantage.
I grew up watching pro wrestling. Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura used to always tell his co-commentator that “It ain’t illegal unless you get caught, Monsoon.”
What the players who use the arm-bar style putters are doing is technically illegal anchoring.
And why are players using this technically illegal putting method?
Because no one is enforcing the rules they just made.
I guess there are short memories in New Jersey and St Andrews when it comes to their rules committee’s decisions.
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Driver shaft length means nothing in the grand scheme of the distance game because it’s useless if you don’t know how to use it. But the arm bar putters of today are just a clever cheat to a rule the USGA and R&A implemented not much more than a half decade ago and can definitely create a massive unfair advantage.
But as you already know, length matters…right?
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