Forget the golf ball – it’s another ever-changing piece of equipment that needs rolling back, according to Jim Furyk…
Has Jim Furyk found an alternate solution to the golf ball rollback?
The 2003 US Open champion’s controversial idea would certainly go some way to reining in those pros who are threatening to make the game’s historic courses obsolete at the highest level.
It was announced three years ago that the USGA and R&A – golf’s leading governing bodies – were planning to introduce a manufacturing limit which will reduce how far golf balls can fly. The plan is to introduce the new balls to the professional game in 2028 and then to recreational players in 2030.
Furyk, however, believes bifurcation is the way forward. Not with balls, but with driver heads.
“I’ll tell you what I would do,” he began on the Straight Facts Homie podcast. “I’m not going to be very popular for this, but I would reduce the size of the driver head.
“Maybe not necessarily for the average golfer, but I would do that for the golf professional. Because you can hit it all over the face right now and it’s pretty forgiving. You don’t lose a lot of distance.”
Furyk backed up his argument with some vital evidence.
“I play a mini driver in my bag for my three wood,” he explained. “When I hit that mini good, it goes darn near just as far as my driver. It’s less than 10 yards difference. But if I mishit it, if I hit it a little thin, a little on the toe, a little on the heel, I lose a bunch of yardage.
“I think you’ve gotten these young guys that are rearing back and swinging 110 per cent at it, and you can kind of cover areas on the face and get a lot of forgiveness and a lot of distance. I just think it would show an extra skill set. They’re extremely talented, don’t get me wrong, but I think it would also limit guys swinging 110 per cent at it all the time.
“They’d have to pick and choose their spots and maybe golf courses wouldn’t have to quite be as long.”
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Indeed, with a smaller driver head akin to Furyk’s mini driver, the game’s longest hitters like Bryson DeChambeau are required to focus more on accuracy. Furyk’s hope is that the change would make the ‘bombers’ more minded to control their swing rather than wildly throwing their whole body weight behind the ball for maximum distance.
Furyk’s intriguing comments coincided with an eye-opening Instagram post by Colin Montgomerie.
Montgomerie dug out the driver he used in the Final of the British Amateur against Jose Maria Olazabal in 1984 and put the club alongside his 2026 weapon of choice. In comparison, Montgomerie’s latest driving head looks the size of a frying pan.
“A lots changed in 42 years… Amazing,” the Scot wrote. “Dare I say it the game’s got easier.”
For some weekend warriors, it’s been a merciful evolution. At the very highest level though, Furyk and a growing number of other golf obsessives have seen enough.