With top players in the men’s game having to give up their drivers because they’ve suddenly gotten too hot, the question arises, isn’t this possibly happening with the women’s game, too?
The answer came this week at the most important women’s tournament of the year, the US Women’s Open, and the answer was sort of direct from USGA CEO Mike Whan: To paraphrase, “We don’t test because it’s not a problem.”
Specifically, at a USGA press conference Tuesday Whan addressed the issue of what’s known as “CT creep,” the tendency of driver faces to transition from conforming to nonconforming due to the increased flexibility of the face brought on by repeated impacts from elite level swing speeds. “We really haven’t seen CT creep significant on the women’s game. At this point we haven’t seen a lot of it to be perfectly honest with you. … I would say if the LPGA or the LET said, ‘Would you come out and [do] more testing,’ we would certainly be up for that. I don’t know that we’d find a lot of creep, but we’d implement it.”
It’s obvious, but there is a fundamental difference between typical PGA Tour clubhead speeds and those found in women’s golf. According to PGA Tour statistics, the average clubhead speed on tour is 116.45 mph. According to Trackman data, the typical LPGA clubhead speed is 20 mph slower. When the USGA studies CT creep in its official protocol for drivers that measure close to the CT limit, it uses a clubhead speed of 125 mph at 150 hits to detect the possible change in a driver’s CT. While the science is still in development, it’s believed that there needs to be a certain speed threshold before CT creep starts to occur.
Still, the answer for why drivers aren’t field tested at women’s events, even the US Women’s Open, is a bit more nuanced. There are three main reasons.
- As noted by Whan, women’s clubhead speeds do not pose the same threat in terms of wearing a driver face into excess spring-like effect. While some LPGA players like Maria Fassi have reached clubhead speeds just above 100 mph, these pale in comparison to the highest speeds on the PGA Tour. Currently on the PGA Tour, 113 players have recorded a clubhead speed of more than 120 mph. While a driver face deflects at a whole range of speeds, that deflection only weakens the metal at a certain force. And not only at a certain force but at repeated hits at that force, as in hundreds of impacts. That kind of collision is not happening at LPGA-level speeds. That’s not to say a player couldn’t get the face of her driver super flexible via other means, or simply play a driver with a face that already was non-conforming, but that line of reasoning would suggest that it’s just as likely players would be cheating in other ways. And there’s no evidence that is happening, either. Finally, the general understanding is that even at PGA Tour-level speeds, a hotter, non-conforming face might mean a couple of yards at most. Presumably, the effect at 20 miles-per-hour less clubhead speed might be measured in inches.
2. While the USGA controls testing only at its own events like the US Women’s Open (and, again, chooses not to test), it’s not in charge at all other women’s events like those on the LPGA or Ladies European Tour. But since neither organization has asked the USGA (or the R&A) to provide its testing services at any of its events, there won’t be any testing at those events. Does that mean there isn’t a problem, or viewed alternatively, an opportunity for hot drivers on the LPGA Tour? Well, yes, but that again would suggest that cheating is common practice on the LPGA Tour and there is no evidence of that.
3. Finally, and this is not the least of the issues with driver testing, replacing a nonconforming driver on a Tuesday at a PGA Tour event is easy. Not so on the LPGA tour. Said Whan, “When we go out to a men’s event and if somebody has a driver that fails the CT, they literally generally walk across the street, down the end of the range, walk into a truck, grab a new head, exact head of what they had before, and move on. That isn’t always the case in the women’s game. I don’t know if I would want to take somebody’s driver out on a Tuesday that’s one millisecond over and they can’t really replace it.” Golf Digest contacted the LPGA about its position on driver testing, and it has not commented at this time.
