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The owner of one of golf’s biggest equipment companies believes that an equipment rollback is unlikely to happen.
Bob Parsons, the dot-com billionaire boss of PXG, shared his views on the latest episode of The bunkered Podcast in association with Motocaddy.
Parsons admitted that he hasn’t particularly been engaged in discussions with the game’s governing bodies over proposed changes that would limit the distances achievable with modern technology.
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However, he added: “I will tell you that the rollback they’re looking at is just a few yards, and that’s if the ball is hit perfectly by somebody at high speed, so it is insignificant.
“I don’t think they’ll do it. I think they might draw the line where they are now but I find it just incredible that they’d roll it back because then that puts everybody in a situation that they don’t want to be in. That sort of thing happened with PING years ago and it was an immediate lawsuit so I don’t see why this would be any different.
Last month, the R&A and USGA issued a statement saying that they have re-engaged with the golf industry on their Distance Insights Project, set-up to “help achieve a more sustainable long-term future for golf”.
They outlined proposals to curb distance at the top end of the game, including reducing the maximum club length limit from 48 inches to 46 inches and changing the testing tolerance of Characteristic Time (CT), which is, in essence, the spring-like effect of a clubface.
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Parsons, who launched PXG (Parsons Xtreme Golf) in 2015, told The bunkered Podcast that he is happy to sit out those discussions.
“I’ll let Callaway, and TaylorMade, and Titleist, and PING fight that fight, and I’ll just see what’s going on,” he said. “I don’t know that I’d be involved in it and I don’t exactly talk to my competitors. As you can imagine, they don’t exactly call me and say, ‘Hey Bob, let’s talk about what’s on my mind.’ Not at all. So I’m just going to wait and see what happens.”
• To listen to the full interview with Bob Parsons on the latest episode of The bunkered Podcast in association with Motocaddy, click here.
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