Arnold Palmer in call to limit golf ball speed

Arnold Palmer, who will play his 50th and final U.S. Masters this week, has called on the game's authorities to curb the speed of the ball.

The 74-year-old American, Masters champion in 1958, 1960, 1962 and 1964, believes a slower ball is preferable to the lengthening of courses if the rapid advance of golfing technology is to be contained.

"Like it or not, I think the ball needs to be slowed down," Palmer told a news conference on Tuesday.

"I think the best thing that we can do, rather than continuing to try to extend the real estate and make the golf courses longer and longer and longer, is to look for a way to slow the ball down a little bit.

"You can probably lighten it a little. You can probably enlarge it a little. There are all kinds of ways to look at slowing it down.

"But I think that if you're going to try to do something about the distance these people hit the golf ball, that's where you have to go.

"If you don't slow it down, as time goes on, the problem is going to become more severe because these young people are growing stronger, and equipment and the modern world is going to get better, and I'm not just talking golf ball.

"I'm talking equipment, the things that they (the manufacturers) do to shafts and clubs and heads and all within the rules."

Augusta National was controversially extended by 285 yards for the 2002 U.S. Masters in what is widely considered the biggest overhaul in the tournament's 68-year history.

Nine of the holes were lengthened to stretch the famous layout to 7,270 yards, a move described by Augusta National chairman Hootie Johnson to "keep this golf course current".