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August 17, 2005
Long Drives Are to Golf What Dunking Is to Basketball?
Posted by Nick
Here's an interesting observation:
All this worry and hand-wringing over advancing technology in golf equipment strikes me as a little hysterical.
It reminds me of that era when basketball fans were clamoring to have the basket moved higher than 10 feet, when it seemed like everyone and his brother was dunking. Thank god the basketball gods never did, because it would have changed the game, making it different from the one you and I play.
Do others see it this way? I must admit, I'm inclined for the moment to agree.
Comments (1)
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Nick Schulz is the Editor of Tech Central Station and has worked in media circles and the ideas industry as a writer, editor, television producer and policy analyst. His writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Slate, The National Post of Canada, The Baltimore Sun, Investor's Business Daily, The Washington Times, National Review, Reason, Policy Review, and several other publications. He is also, it should be said, a rabid sports fan whose fandom is inversely proportional to his overall athletic ability.
1. Primis on August 17, 2005 01:09 PM writes...
Two things.
One, the difference in golf is tech, whereas the difference in basketball was a human one.
Secondly, the dunk died out (including the slam dunk contest for a time) when people got tired of them. Remember when Vince Carter was all over Sportscenter dunking, and nobody seemed to care much? The result was, the dunk dropped back to a more-sane, respectable level of acceptance. Even though the human factor (more-athletic players) never changed. To force change of the dunk, large changes would have needed to have been made to the game to change the humans playing.
The problem with the long drive is that it's not the players doing it, it's the tech. So the backlash is going to be even worse, and it's not as if it'd take great change to roll things back -- it's just taking away some club tech. This is changing nothing fundamental with how golfers play the game, save for making them rely on skill again rather than tech.
So the comparison of dunks to drives is incredibly flawed. Basketball players weren't suddenly dunking all over because of new shoes, they were doing it because they trained better and more-often to be able to pull it off, and because the media overhyped the dunk.
Golfers aren't suddenly hitting the ball 400 yards though because of better training and skill -- they're doing it because of their clubs.
Big difference.
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