R&A happy that hot drivers not an issue

Open officials are confident that no one in this week's field at Royal St George's is deliberately using an illegal driver.

Tiger Woods, the 2000 champion, suggested last month that illegal clubs existed on the PGA Tour, but Royal and Ancient Golf Club (R&A) secretary Peter Dawson said on Wednesday that any such practice would be inadvertent.

In any case, he added, there were no practical means of testing it at the moment.

"I have no personal knowledge or reason to believe that golfers in this championship have drivers that are non-conforming," Dawson told a news conference.

"It is possible that they do, inadvertently, have these without any way of finding out themselves.

"I don't think that anybody is doing anything untoward here but, come January, we will have the means for players to assure themselves that their clubs do conform."

Dawson explained that the R&A had been working on a new method of testing the legality of drivers, which should be available for use by the end of the year.

"It's a revised and simpler test called the pendulum test, which is at an advanced stage," he said.

"We're just evaluating final manufacture and other interested parties' comments. We intend that the test be available and become the standard test at the turn of the year, if everything goes as planned.

"So we're going to have to wait until January for the new test to come in."

The subject of illegal, or 'hot', drivers has become a major talking point on both sides of the Atlantic in recent months.

World number one Woods suggested at last month's Buick Classic that PGA Tour officials should check players' bags before they hit their opening tee shots, and there is a growing feeling that not every professional conforms to regulated limits with regard to the so-called "trampoline effect".

Twice British Open champion Greg Norman said on Tuesday that spot checks should be carried out at tournaments.

"I think a player knows when he picks up a driver and it goes 30 yards further than it did the day before," said the 48-year-old Australian.

"We should be able to police it, and it should be a mandatory spot check."

In golf, distance is becoming an increasingly dominant factor and the key issue over driver legality relates to the "coefficient of restitution" (COR), a scientific measure of how fast the golf ball leaves the club face at impact.

If a driver face is too thin, a greater trampoline, or "spring-like", effect will result.

Asked at the Buick Classic if he believed illegal clubs existed on the PGA Tour, Woods replied: "You could say that."

However Dawson said there was no test available at the moment that would work.

"There is a weakness in the current system in that the test for COR is a destructive test of drivers, and therefore no individual is going to put his favourite driver forward to be smashed to bits," he said.

"The test that's currently used is what you might call a type test, so that if a particular batch of a model of driver is tested and found to conform, it is assumed that all drivers of that type conform.

"Clearly there are manufacturing tolerances which can make drivers in manufactured batches vary in their performance."

The PGA Tour has long been considering the use of a portable machine at tournament sites to assess the legality of drivers, and had intended to use it for the first time at last month's Western Open.

But that plan was abruptly shelved and PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem wants all parties concerned to be entirely comfortable with it.

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