Patrick Cantlay is a deep think and if you ask him a good question, he’ll give you a good answer. Cantlay, who is sponsored by Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, took part in a Q&A with the company’s CEO David Solomon, who also happened to be his partner in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am earlier this month.
The entire Q&A is worth your time, but it was one of the final questions that caught our attention. Asked about what should be done with the golf ball, Cantlay gave arguably the most thorough, thoughtful and insightful response by any current player in an era when virtually all of them are paid endorsers for various golf ball companies and simply recite the company’s talking points on the subject. He began: “It’s not a lightning round question. That’s an extremely difficult question. I’ll answer it theoretically with the caveat being I won’t even go to the implementation of it.”
“That’s the hardest part of it. The knee-jerk reaction is don’t do anything. They may mess up the implementation, so it won’t be worth it,” he said.
“Theoretically, the golf ball needs to go shorter,” he continued, “Every golf course I go to has different tee boxes farther back than even 4-5 years ago when I visited the golf course. It’s getting to the point where the tee boxes are already to the perimeter of the property, so much so that Augusta National has been buying up all the adjacent pieces of property so they can put more tee boxes and change the holes.
“That’s not sustainable. Not only that if pace of play is one of your biggest concerns, how many golf course do I go to on Tour where the tees are 100 yards back? They can’t keep going in this direction.
Cantlay added: “The technology isn’t only better but young guys are trying to hit it farther and farther because the stats say the farther I hit it, the better I’ll play. Something has to give.
“I think the biggest shame is that I can’t go to Cypress Point and play the course the way the designer designed the golf course to be played. The biggest problem for me is when we lose the architectural integrity of the golf course. We’re to the point where that’s where we are. Something has to give.”
But Cantlay repeated his caveat that he’s still not convinced anything should be done because of concerns over the implementation
“Which could be everything,” he said. “It renders everything I’m saying irrelevant.”
The USGA and R&A are expected to give an update on their distance insights report soon. Until then, the wait and the debate on what to do with the golf ball continues.