Non-Conforming Drivers Explained: What It Means For You

Sports writer Derek Clements explains why McIlroy and Scheffler’s drivers failed conformity tests due to their extreme swing speeds, any why average golfers have no reason to worry.

IT WILL not have escaped your notice that, on the eve of the US PGA Championship, both Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler were deemed to have non-conforming drivers in their bags.

There has been some pretty ill-informed nonsense written about this on social media, with some trolls accusing the pair of cheating. For heaven’s sake!

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Some of you may also now be wondering if your clubs are breaking the rules. I can assure you that you can rest easy.

The reason said drivers failed tests is because of something that need not concern 99.9% of us. Because the likes of McIlroy and Scheffler hit the ball with such force, constant use increases the trampoline effect on the face of their drivers. McIlroy’s average swing speed is around 125mph. The average club golfer, in the prime of his life, might be able to get it up to 100mph on a good day, but most mere mortals fall somewhere between 80-95mph. And at that speed there is absolutely no chance of improving the performance of your driver, whatever the model and whatever the cost.

(Image Credit: Kevin Diss Photography)

Players, selected at random, subject their driver for testing before most big tournaments. As PGA of America's chief championships officer Kerry Haigh explained, repeated use of the club wears down its face, which becomes more springy as a result. And that means the ball goes even further. Perish the thought!

This trampoline effect is known as the coefficient of restitution (COR), and there are strict rules on this to ensure drivers do not break the regulations.

"It's just an accepted thing that sometimes you might have to change driver, and within the golfing world nobody really bats an eye at it," former Ryder Cup player Oliver Wilson told BBC Sport.

Incredibly, the whole process is shrouded in unnecessary secrecy - and it is because of precisely this that the rumour mill got going.

Rumours emerged early in the PGA Championship that McIlroy, who struggled to find Quail Hollow's fairways on a course where he has won four times, had been forced to switch drivers before the year's second major.

Initially, there was speculation that the one he had used to such great effect in winning at Augusta had cracked on the eve of the tournament in North Carolina. But then PGA Tour Radio reported that the club had failed its test of legality.

Haigh confirmed testing for about a third of the players had been carried out by the United States Golf Association (USGA).

He said: "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. To publicly identify players whose club did not conform can lead to that player being questioned unnecessarily."

So, there were no names, no confirmation and no clarity. How that best serves the interests of the players is totally beyond me. It didn’t help that McIlroy failed to speak to the press when the season’s second major got under way, only further fuelling the wild speculation.

Wilson said: "The fact that it got leaked leads people that don't have all the information to draw conclusions that are not correct."

Scheffler was rather more forthcoming than McIlroy. He said: "My driver did fail me. We had a feeling that it was going to be coming because I've used that driver for over a year. I was kind of fortunate for it to last that long.

"I would argue that if we're going to test the drivers, we need to be even more robust in the way we test them," he said. That was a conversation I had with one of the rules officials - if it's something we're going to take seriously I feel like we're almost going halfway with it right now."

Scheffler added: "It's a newer rule that we haven't quite gotten right yet. We have some stuff to figure out, get more robust and get even more strict."

But, as I said, club golfers can rest easy - you will not have to replace that £500 driver anytime soon!

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