GGP In the States it’s mostly referred to as the
“British Open,” and if it ever went to Port-
marnock wouldn’t it be difficult, for political
reasons, to call it the “British Open?”

PD Well, I suppose that’s true, yes. To be honest, we do call it the Open Championship, but if you look at the old footage back in the 20s and 30s it was called the British Open even then by a lot of R&A captains.

GGP What has your research shown on the square
grooves issue and what are your expectations
for the effect the new rule on grooves will have?

PD Our research show, and this is very much a joint effort with the USGA, without any doubt that modern grooves in iron clubs were capable of spinning the ball from the rough as much as spinning the ball from the fair way. So the controllability from the rough or the lack of it was not causing a problem for players. They could spin a ball, as long as the lie was reasonable, out of the rough, to the same extent as they could out of the fair way. We also found that the correlation — and this is what started this — between driving accuracy and success on Tour had virtually disappeared. Straight hitters were not the most successful players, and if you went back 20 or more years, they were. And that put us onto this spin thing.

GGP There are some who think, by the way, that you have effectively, either intentionally or unintentionally, shortened the ball. That by changing the grooves it’s causing the players to hit a softer golf ball.

PD We have seen some balls recently that do help restore some fraction of the spin from the rough, but they’re not shorter golf balls. We haven’t yet seen the full reaction from the ball manufacturers to this so my answer to that question is premature. That wasn’t the intention. We never thought that the ball would be shorter.

“Sometimes these people think we’re
stupid. It’s an amazing thing to assume
that we had mucked up to that degree.
It’s just staggering.”

GGP How long will it take before you have enough
data to draw some conclusions on this matter
of grooves?

PD I don’t think we ever will. The reason I say that is course setups will be changed by the Tours. I don’t think putting the pins three paces from the edge to the degree that it’s been going on — as soon as they start to move them back to where they used to be — we’ll never have a control experiment to say this, that or the other. But I do think we’ll be able to see some driving accuracy correlation. But I’ll bet it’s inconclusive. I’ll be much more impressed by what I hear from the players than what I see from the statistics.

And the thick rough you often get at a U.S. Open course is something we don’t see at the Open Championship. So I think it will have more affect on U.S. courses and inland courses on the European Tour.

GGP So you wanted to make the big boys have to
pay more attention off the tee?

PD Our concern has been to try to restore the importance of driving accuracy to success in the game. We feel that the new grooves that will spin the ball from the fair way just as much as the existing ones but not from the rough will put more pressure on players to hit more fairways. Whether that has an effect on driving distance or not remains to be seen.

GGP Playing conditions are very different at Open
Championships than they are at U.S. Opens.
Do you think the new grooves restrictions will
affect one of those championships more than
another?

PD I think it’s more likely to affect a U.S. Open. I don’t think in the Open Championship we’ve seen a grooves problem, particularly because often the rough at the Open ( Championship) is very thin or it’s hack out. And neither of that is really a grooves problem.

GGP The Asian Amateur late last year, with the
Masters Invitation and status for the winner
in the Open Championship qualifying pro-
cess, was a rare experiment. Your take?

PD It was the first joint venture, if you like, between two major championship organizers (R&A and Masters) to try to develop the game and grow the game. The concept was that by creating an elite amateur event in Asia, it would raise aspirations within the amateur game both within Asia and within countries. The carrot issue — offering a place in the Masters — was an astonishing thing for Augusta to have done and shows its real commitment. We (the R&A) went so far as to offer places in the final qualifying for the winner and the runner-up.

much by Augusta, but by people in South America. The R&A has been very active down there for quite some years now. This may have raised the bar for the way amateur events are organized going forth because this was pretty special apparently and the players felt very special by being there.

GGP Can we look for a day when the Asian Ama-
teur winner will qualify all the way through
into the Open Championship field proper
without any further qualifying?

PD I wouldn’t be in the least surprised. I can’t bind future championship committees, but you know the European Amateur champion now gets into the Open Championship. And if the Asian Amateur championship goes the same way, then I’m sure future championship committees will give that strong consideration. That’s as close to a yes as I can give you.

GGP Can we expect in South America, especially with the Olympics going to Rio de Janeiro in 2016, for a similar amateur event taking place on that continent with collaboration between the R&A and the Masters?

PD I have been approached about this, not so

GGP Golf course architect Tom Doak has been very outspoken about the concept of “ sustainable golf,” and he holds up Scotland as a model for the concept. As a Scot, can you talk about the need for sustainable golf and do we need to look back in order to look to the future?