Ball Striking Performance
The PGA Stats section has a category entitled "Ball Striking". The Ball Striking statistic is computed by totaling a player's rank in the Total Driving and Greens in Regulation statistics. Total Driving is computed by totaling a player's rank in both driving distance and driving accuracy. Ranking players only tells us that A did better than B, but nothing of how much better. There are no quantifying characteristics of this category making it useless for our purposes. There are three categories that do have quantifying characteristics. Let's begin with driving accuracy.
There are some interesting observations to make about this graph. First, the average and annual median performances show some slight, but definite improvement. But note that there is no improvement at all in the performance of the most accurate players. If club design or technology improved driving accuracy, would it not be logical to assume that it would improve the performance of the most accurate drivers at the same time? Note also the closing of the gap between the average and the best and please also note that the worst players improved even more than the average or the median. This narrowing of the gap between these groups without any improvement of the best, favors practice making perfect and is against technological improvement. Staying with driving but turning our attention to distance:
The increase in driving length is unmistakable. Before we attribute this all to club design and technology, we do need to consider some other important factors. I don't have actual data, but no one will dispute that tour players are getting taller, stronger and better conditioned. The enormous purses guarantee the commitment and dedication of the winners. Bigger, stronger, better conditioned, better coached, more committed athletes should equate to longer drives. We know that ball technology advanced at greater rates than the USGA's monitoring capabilities until just a few years ago. Without furnishing data, I feel comfortable in saying that some of the increased distance observed above is due to ball technology alone. In addition, the data above is not controlled for a known variable of driving distance. We know that increasing the length of the shaft of the driver, can increase driving distance without any technological advance being present. It seems reasonable to me to assume that players who have improved their driving accuracy through practice might choose to exploit their improvement in accuracy by using longer drivers to add length to their drives. One other factor comes to mind, and that is closer mowing of fairways could lengthen drives, the lawn mower effect. Finally, I feel confidant that manufacturers might be able to provide iron clad data proving that today's technology has in fact lengthened driving distance. That is not proof that this extra distance has lowered scores. If this distance is of practical benefit, we would expect the players to hit more greens. Do you see any evidence of improved ball striking in this telling chart?
Is there other evidence and are there other authorities that we could consult to confirm that there is no evidence that any modern "improvement" in golf club design or technology has lowered the score of a single golfer? Yes, there are other authorities. And there is some additional derived data and some indirect evidence.