Long distance disconnection

Once upon a time -- long, long ago, before we learned the moon landings were all faked and the astronauts were all Tom Hanks in various disguises -- Alan Shepard took out a golf club and hit a golf ball.

He was on the moon at the time (allegedly!). The golf ball, owing to the moon's having 1/6th the gravity of Earth, went forever. It may still be out there, sailing along toward the No. 6 green on Ceti Alpha 5 or something.

If so, it will probably find Bryson DeChambeau's ball there.

This is because DeChambeau hauled off and slugged a tee shot 423 yards at the Memorial yesterday, which is ridiculous and should not be possible unless, like Alan Shepard, you are on the moon. But DeChambeau did this because he is bigger now and stronger and golf clubs and golf balls are not what they used to be.

Golf clubs are registered firearms now. Golf balls are Superballs with dimples. Which means just about any weekend jamoke can go out there now and spank a tee shot to within hailing distance of 300 yards.

Which, you know, just ain't right.

Or so says this guy, who knows a little bit about golf.

The Memorial is Jack Nicklaus' tournament at Jack Nicklaus' track, and so Jack Nicklaus gets to weigh in on stuff there. As usual, he is absolutely right about this. You can't keep making golf balls that sail 423 yards when struck solidly, Nicklaus says, because eventually you'll have to re-configure every course on the PGA Tour. And there simply isn't enough land to do that unless, say, half of every state becomes one mammoth golf course.

Welcome to the Masters, a Tradition Unlike Any Other. I'm Jim Nantz, standing here on the veranda at Augusta National. Let's go to Verne Lundquist now in Atlanta, where Bryson DeChambeau has just made birdie after driving the green on No. 9, a 23-mile par-3 ...

You get the gist.

You also get, or should, that this is the classic example of technology not just advancing a game but overwhelming it. Back in the day, and it wasn't all that long ago a day, a 300-yard drive inspired gasps of awe. That's what John Daly was doing at Crooked Stick in the 1991 PGA. I was there, and every time he launched one, people's jaws hit the ground.

Today they'd say, "Wow, guess he didn't get all of that one."

This gets us back to Jack's point, which is that golf is getting perilously close to not being golf anymore.

His solution is to re-design golf balls by taking 20 percent off the distance they travel now, and then "rate" balls to match the course being played. That way, he says, the course would play the way it was designed to play.

This sounds astoundingly sensible. And apparently the USGA, after years of Nicklaus bending its ear about it, is starting to listen.

Which is good. After all, can you imagine how hard it would be to follow Tiger through an entire round at a reconfigured Muirfield Village?

I mean, Columbus to Cincinnati is a hike, man.