In its continuing effort to ensure that improvement in the game comes from a player's ability rather than the equipment used, the USGA Executive Committee has adopted one test and approved two more that will limit the distance that the most highly skilled players can drive a golf ball.

The first test measures the "spring-like effect" of driving clubs. The second refines the Overall Distance Standard, by which a ball's total flight and bounce distance are measured. The third updates the Initial Velocity test, which places a limit on the speed that a ball may travel off a clubhead.

The decisions were reached during the Executive Committee's autumn meeting the last two days of October at USGA headquarters in Far Hills, N.J. The test protocols will be added to the Rules of Golf for the version released in 2000.

Adoption of these tests should not affect a manufacturer's ability to produce innovative equipment for use by millions of middle- to high-handicap players. Virtually all balls and clubs that are now in use would continue to conform to the Rules of Golf.

"These measures will not take balls or clubs out of golfers' bags," Executive Director David Fay said in making the Nov. 2 announcement. "The average player will not be affected much by these actions. The best players will be impacted the most by reducing the distance they gain from spring-like effect in driving clubs, and the amount of potential increased distance of balls."

While the USGA takes a neutral stance on equipment innovations, increases in distance achieved by the best players have underlying effects.

"If the history of the game has taught us anything over five centuries, it is that the immediate reaction as the ball gets longer is that the game gets bigger, slower and more expensive in every respect," Fay said. "If we don't act, golf courses will require more acreage, construction and maintenance costs will escalate, the pace of play will slow and the game will suffer."

Perhaps the most notable example is the ball developed at the turn of the century by Coburn Haskell. His wound-rubber ball flew about 20 yards further than the gutta-percha ball of the time. The distance revolution from the Haskell ball caused nearly every existing course to be lengthened to counteract the innovation.

Equipment makers were told in December 1995 of the USGA's intention to update the Overall Distance Standard (ODS). They were informed in December 1997 of the intention to develop tests for spring-like effect.

The test protocol for spring-like effect was announced during this year's U.S. Open (Through the Green, July), and an open forum was held Sept. 28 (TTG, October). Relevant information is available through the USGA's Web site: www.usga.org/test_center/.

That test deals with wording that was added to Rule 4-1e of Appendix II in 1984. The clarification will make more precise the definition of spring-like effect, and make explicit the fact that the clubhead is involved.

In the test, a ball is fired from a ball launcher at a clubhead and the rebound velocity is measured. That determines whether the ball exceeds prescribed tolerances when it rebounds off a clubhead. Among the suggestions adopted from the open forum was a change from a stipulated ball launcher costing about $200,000 to an air cannon costing less than $10,000. The test is effective immediately.

The ODS ball test, which the USGA refers to as "Optimization," will be conducted on an indoor ballistic range. That move signals the retirement of Iron Byron ("A New Test Pattern," May), the mechanical golfer that for 26 years struck all balls submitted to the USGA for conformity testing.

Iron Byron was set to a single launch angle and spin rate, and required hours of calibration for each day's testing. Under the new procedure, each ball's optimum launch characteristics will be quantified, then the ball will be tested using those characteristics to determine if it exceeds the ODS. Although the numerical expression of the ODS will increase — the old limit was 280 yards plus a tolerance of 6 percent — the net result of the new ODS and Initial Velocity numbers is a virtual freeze on the contemporary ball's length.

The Initial Velocity standard originally was adopted in 1942. This test formerly was done by striking a stationary ball with a 250-pound metal wheel. Now the ball will be fired by an air cannon into a stationary plate. Each ball will be fired at higher velocity than the old test, to reflect the clubhead speeds of the longest-hitting players.

The measurement, stated as a percentage, represents the efficiency of a ball's utilization of the energy imparted by the mass of a clubhead. This "coefficient of restitution" can somewhat be likened to the fuel economy ratings given for new automobiles, which reflect a car's ability to travel on a gallon of gasoline.

Adoption of the protocols for golf balls will involve a series of informal consultations with manufacturers, followed by a notice-and-comment period and open forum.

— Brett Avery

Next Time, It's the Shuttle

It wasn't the best of starts for Tom Borsello at last month's U.S. Mid-Amateur.

It was a cold and rainy Saturday when Borsello, 44, of Wilmington, Del., pulled into the parking lot at NCR Country Club in Dayton, Ohio, for an 8 o'clock starting time. After fiddling with his clubs, he slammed shut the trunk of his rental car, only to discover that his keys were in his golf bag, which was also in the trunk.

He went into the golf shop to inquire about a tool that might help jimmy open a lock, but that plan went nowhere. With precious minutes wasting away, Borsello figured he had no other choice. "I've come halfway across the country," he said. "I'm not going to miss my tee time."

He called for a hammer and smashed open the rear window. (Estimated repair costs: $212.) After securing his keys and the clubs he needed, he installed a crude patch of duct tape over the broken window, hit a few quick practice putts and went to the tee, whereupon he received yet another jolt. Borsello had misread his starting times; he wasn't scheduled to play for nearly five hours. His 8 o'clock time was for the next day.

Lamented Borsello, a former Delaware State Amateur champion: "I just want to go back to the hotel and start all over again."

Tinkering With Golf's Copy Machine

Imitation may not be flattering for three world-famous golf courses. But, according to a federal appeals court, it may be legal.

In a critical decision on the growing field of copycat golf, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently ruled that the Tour 18 fantasy golf course's reproduction of Pebble Beach's 14th hole and Pinehurst No. 2's third hole did not violate those courses' "trade dress" — the trademark protection for a product's unique appearance (similar to Coca-Cola's bottle shape) — since those famous layouts merely offer "variations on commonplace themes in the design of golf holes."

However, the court also ruled that the Tour 18 in Humble, Texas, crossed the line concerning the course's replication of the lighthouse at Harbour Town's 18th. It found that the "source-identifying" lighthouse served to make the famed final hole "inherently distinctive."

Tour 18 was ordered by the court to remove its faux lighthouse and to cease using the famous courses' names in its advertising.

— Ted Curtis

Saint-Gaudens got the Drop on Watering

Of all the golf-related anniversaries, perhaps you overlooked the one for Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

Saint-Gaudens was a hard-working, 37-year-old sculptor when he first visited Cornish, N.H., in 1885. He went at the urging of Charles Beaman, a New York City lawyer.

In his early New Hampshire years, Saint-Gaudens, born 150 years ago this year, used his disciplined New York work routine as an anchor in the unfamiliar world of country living. In Cornish he would produce many of his noteworthy monuments, including two Abraham Lincoln statues for Chicago, the Shaw Memorial for Boston, the Sherman Monument for New York and the Adams Memorial for Washington, D.C. He relied on young assistants to complete his works, and to entice them to his remote studio, a nine-hour train ride from New York City, he needed pleasurable diversions. He built a swimming pool and bowling green on his grounds, with a baseball diamond and tennis courts nearby. Winter amusements included a billiard room, a skating pond and two toboggan runs. He also created a golf course and may have been the first man involved in golf course irrigation.

A journal left by Beaman suggests the initiation of golf was a joint venture between himself and Saint-Gaudens. The first mention of the game being played came at a gathering on Labor Day in 1895. By the next season, a nine-hole course measuring 1,897 yards was in play. Many of the journal's references indicate the course was well utilized, and it was on Sept. 8, 1896, that Beatrix Hoyt, three-time Women's Amateur champion, set a course record of 44.

Starting in 1897, Saint-Gaudens chose Paris for his summer home and was largely absent from New Hampshire for three years.

In 1900, Beaman died suddenly and Saint-Gaudens was rushed home from Paris for surgery in Boston. His doctor was Francis B. Harrington, a member at The Country Club and the enthusiast responsible for introducing the game to Woodstock, Vt., five years earlier. After a remarkable recovery by Saint-Gaudens, then some painful setbacks, Harrington wrote to his patient, "It seems very probable to me that the cause of this return was a mechanical one due to straining sensitive parts which had not become strong enough to bear the pressure and jolting of a carriage drive or the twisting of the golf movements."

Allowing himself a slow wintertime recovery, Saint-Gaudens was determined to play hard when the spring of 1902 arrived. Recounting this period of his father's life, his son, Homer, noted, "Perhaps even more vital to my father's happiness, aside from the members of his own family, were his studio assistants. 'Play, play!' my father would say to them. 'I wish I'd played more when I was young. I took things too seriously.' "

In 1902, Saint-Gaudens studied irrigation with Arthur A. Churcliff, a Boston landscape architect. Their efforts led to the installation of irrigation pipes to the greens. The turf on the sandy soil responded by growing a lush green coat of grass. "That would be the earliest irrigation system I'd know about in the states," says golf course architect and historian Geoffrey Cornish. "The National Golf Links on Long Island was irrigated and that went in during 1911. I've always thought of that as the first."

Today, the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site encompasses 150 acres and hosts some 50,000 visitors annually. Returning the property to conditions at the turn of the century is a goal of the facility. "This is the hope," says superintendent and curator John Dryfhout. "I don't see why we can't do the whole thing. We have the plans and the hydrants. It's just a matter of setting our minds to it."

— Bob Labbance