Jack
Nicklaus slates modern ball design
Six times Masters champion
Jack Nicklaus has urged golfing authorities to modify modern golf
balls in order to reduce the distances currently being reached off
the tee.
"If you are going to continue
to let the golf ball do what it is doing, you've got to keep lengthening
the golf course," Nicklaus told a news conference on Wednesday,
eve of the 2001 tournament. "Pretty soon we'll all be teeing off
downtown somewhere."
Nicklaus, 61, said golf
balls had gained a yard in distance a year for about 15 years.
"In the last three or four
years it's gone five a year and now with the new golf balls out
there now it's got another 10 or 12 yards," he said.
"I hit the ball right now
on this golf course almost as far as I did when I was winning and
I'm not even going to be remotely close to contention.
"Augusta National is a
wonderful course, it's one of the great golf courses in this world
and it's diminished by a golf ball because the manufacturers can't
stand to have their ball go shorter.
"The game gets ruined.
It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to allow the golf ball to
do what it is doing."
Nicklaus said the British
Open at St Andrews last year, won by eight strokes by Tiger Woods,
had been an "absolute joke".
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Jack
Nicklaus in conversation with Aaron Baddeley during practice
at Augusta. Allsport.
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"That golf course withstood
the test of time for hundreds of years and, all of a sudden, there
wasn't a bunker in play for not only Tiger but dozens of other guys,"
he said.
Earlier on Wednesday, Hootie
Johnson, chairman of Augusta National, said the committee planned
to alter the course for the 2002 tournament because of the greater
distances now being hit.
"The equipment is making
a huge difference," Johnson said.
Nicklaus said if golf balls
were continually improved courses would have to be lengthened.
"You have to do what Hootie
is talking about doing, otherwise, every hole is a driver and a
wedge," he said.
Elaborating to reporters
after the formal news conference, Nicklaus said even if distances
were reduced by changing the ball Woods would still out-drive everybody
else.
"Tiger Woods is still going
to hit the ball 50 yards past me," he said. "If Tiger hits the ball
25 or 30 yards past you people are still going to go 'wow'."
He said he was not opposed
to changes in technology but added that if changes were not made
to the ball every golf course in the world would be obsolete.
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