Tiger Woods sat down with legendary Uconn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma for his “Holding Court” podcast.

And while the 14-time major champion was candid and conversational about a range of topics, it’s his remarks about the distance the golf ball is travelling that are getting the most attention

Rightfully so. Woods, who’s old enough to remember the days of persimmon and balata and was once the tour leader in clubhead speed and driving distance, spoke thoughtfully about the issue of distance at the professional level.

The coach asked Woods for his thoughts on modern golf equipment.

“The only thing I would say is that we need to do something about the golf ball. I just think it’s going too far because we’re having to build golf courses…if you want to have a championship venue, they’ve got to be 73, 7400 yards long and if the game keeps progressing the way it is with technology, I think that the 8,000 yard golf course is not too far away. And that’s pretty scary. We don’t have enough property to be designing these types of golf courses. And it just makes it so much more complicated.”

Woods says there’s plenty to be ironed out at the professional level  in the event of a rollback.

“The USGA is already looking at it. They’re doing some research on what the world would look like if you rolled it back 10 percent, 15 percent and 20 percent…the game of golf is on the kind of, there’s a down cycle as far as participation. We don’t have a whole lot of new golfers coming into the game. We don’t have any sustainability in the game as well. So, with that being said, you don’t want to give up the amateurs from hitting the ball further and straighter. But with the tour pros you might want to roll the ball back.”

“The talks we’ve had on tour with the Commissioner and our board is where is the line of demarcation. Do we have it at PGA Tour levels, do we have it at the Web.com Tour level, do we have it at the mini-tour level, so there is that debate as well. I don’t see it happening in the near future but at least there’s talks about it now.”

Woods sees tennis and tennis ball constraints as a parallel.

“I think a good analogy, or good comparison would be tennis. Back in 2001, 2000, somewhere in there, Goran Ivanisevic served over 200 aces for the fortnight, since then they’ve rolled the ball back, more fuzzy, a little heavier so the ball doesn’t travel as fast. They did the same thing at the U.S. Open, and the Australian Open.” 

“So they’ve made alterations to the ball to accommodate the strength and the power of the equipment and the strings and the racket as well as the pure athleticism of the bigger servers. Well that’s the ball analogy with another sport so why can’t we do the same thing with another ball sport, golf, and slow it down just a little bit.”

What do you think WRX members? With Jack Nicklaus and now TW strongly in favor of rolling back the ball (and seemingly bifurcation), is the era of the “tournament ball” approaching?

You can listen to the full interview via the tweet below.

Episode 2 featuring @TigerWoods is LIVE. Click the link to listen! https://t.co/M2iRy5MXBK

— Holding Court (@GenoPodcast) November 3, 2017

 

(s/o to Geoff Shackelford for doing the yeoman’s work of transcribing Woods’ remarks)