18-05-2025
Rory McIlroy is innocent victim in driver rule row and golf chiefs must rip off cloak of secrecy to protect stars
Transparency over non-conforming clubs would be real way to protect players
Transparency. One single word that could have saved a million being written and spoken about the non-conforming Rory McIlroy driver.
Reports that the Northern Irish superstar had to change the head on the biggest weapon in his bag prior to the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow created some talk. It became such a furore in some quarters due, quite simply, to a lack of understanding amongst those outside of the inner-golf circle, who know this happens every week.
As Sky's Kira K. Dixon explained that to viewers on Saturday night when giving a detailed insight into the simplicity of the situations when she said: 'Rory's driver was deemed to be non-conforming. Now, what does non-conforming even mean? Well, week-in and week-out on the PGA Tour and at major championships, the governing bodies conduct tests on the equipment, where they might determine that, for example, a driver head no longer meets tournament standards. That could mean the face has gotten too thin or it's worn out too much and it's no longer fitting those standards, so it just needs to be switched out. It happens all of the time. About 10 players had non-conforming drivers this week and all had to make those changes.
'Now, in Rory's case, he plays the 2024 Qi10 from TaylorMade and he would have had plenty of replacement driver heads that match those exact specifications and the driver head would have just been placed on his existing shaft and he would go on to continue to play the golf tournament. There is no other implication regarding non-conforming when it comes to the driver and certainly no implications for him out on the golf course this week.'
So there you go. Simple and nothing to get concerned with. So what's the secret? Why not just come out and say so when it happens?
Kerry Haigh, Chief Championships Officer at the PGA of America, released a statement on Saturday which contained the line: 'The results are kept confidential to protect players.' To protect them from what?
Haigh's words then said: 'To publicly identify players whose club did not conform can lead to that player being questioned unnecessarily.' Questioned about what?
It's a regular thing, it's not a big deal, so why would anyone be asked about it? Haigh's sign-off line was: 'Neither the USGA nor the PGA of America have any concerns about player intent.' In that case, why keep it secret? The hush-hush doesn't feel like a job way of protecting players, does it?
It's the secrecy that causes the questions. It happens. Clubs get bashed due to overuse. They drop to non-conforming standards simply by being hit too hard, too often. Players don't know if their driver face is a squillmetre too thin.
Bryson DeChambeau' s driver head was damaged on the practice range just prior to the final round of last year's US Open. About 15 minutes before his tee time on that Sunday at Pinehurst. He just got a tool out, screwed a new one on and won the tournament over the next 18 holes.
By not saying anything and keeping things under wraps, golf chiefs let the usual crew on social-media start sniping about McIlroy and coming out with rubbish about: Oh what if he used it at the Masters, etc? Nonsense, clearly. But words that didn't need to be typed and wouldn't have been had this info had just been made readily available to the general public at the time.
Maybe club manufacturers don't want a list coming out on a Tuesday which names 15 of their clubs being the ones that failed when their rival companies didn't. Who knows, but saying nothing and news leaking out leads to talk that isn't justified and isn't needed.
The data in golf now is almost absurd. Stats can probably tell you how many drinks of water Scottie Scheffler had in a round and go back to John Daly's PGA win and tell you how many puffs he had on cigarettes during round three.
Xander Schauffele' s main gripe at the 2019 Open at Royal Portrush when his driver failed seemed to be that not every player's clubs were tested, just a percentage of the field. Again, why's that?
Just do the tests on them all, make a list of who passed and who failed, put it out on an email or a press release and move on. It's that simple. By not doing so, it allows unnecessary and pointless narratives to be built and fingers to be pointed when they shouldn't be. Just a bit of transparency.
The full statement from Chief Championships Officer Kerry Haigh read: "We can confirm that the USGA was invited to do club testing at the PGA Championship, at the PGA of America's request. That testing program is consistent with the same level of support that the USGA provides to the PGA Tour and other championships, as part of their regular programs for driver testing. The standard process is for about a third of the field to be randomly tested under the program. That was the case at Quail Hollow this week. Finding driver heads that have crept over the line of conformance is not an unusual occurrence, especially for clubs that are hit thousands of times over a long period of time. The results are kept confidential to protect players, who are unaware the club has fallen out of conformance and not responsible for it falling out of conformance other than hitting the club thousands of times. Players are simply asked to change heads if necessary, and all do without issue. To publicly identify players whose club did not conform can lead to that player being questioned unnecessarily. Neither the USGA nor the PGA of America have any concerns about player intent.'
