The rule change Patrick Reed once wanted made for drivers in golf he admitted a lot of people would hate
Patrick Reed previously called for the size of the driver head to be dramatically reduced for professional golfers alongside a rollback with the golf ball.
There has been so much debate over the last few years about the plans to change the regulations around the golf ball in an attempt to stop the world’s best players overpowering incredibly long golf courses.
The issue has divided the game. Nevertheless, the R&A and USGA had been planning to bring the new rules into the professional game from 2028, with amateurs having another two years to adjust.
The change to drivers Patrick Reed called for in 2025
However, there is now a large question mark hanging over those plans. Cameron Young won the Cadillac Championship in some style earlier this season with a golf ball that would reportedly be deemed to be conforming from 2028.
There is no question that the game does need to take action. Golf courses cannot continue to get longer and longer, particularly as the lengthier courses do tend to lack character.
So perhaps the governing bodies will look to revisit an idea from Patrick Reed back in 2025.
Speaking to Fried Egg Golf last year, Reed did back a golf ball rollback, but he also called for significant changes to the size of drivers.
“Some people are going to hate me for this one. Personally, I don’t know what they’re going to do because they haven’t really said how they’re going to draw these back, right? But I think you go back to the lower compression, back playing the balata for professionals where, if you mishit one of those, they would spin so much and they’d start going sideways. And then with the driver heads: make them smaller,” he said.
“Make them back to almost like they were back when metal woods first came out. Make them tiny, make them small heads. Then it puts a premium on hitting the ball in the middle. If you can swing it 130 miles an hour or however fast these guys can swing it, and have ball speeds however fast they are, more power to you. But you better hit it in the screws and have control of that face.
“We’re the top one per cent in golf – the guys out here on tour. It shouldn’t matter if we’re using the dinner plates as drivers nowadays that you can hit anywhere on the face and hit it straight. We should be able to hit the small ones. We should be able to have the control and have the finesse to be able to do things like that, to hit different shots. I can still hit my persimmon driver. I have some that I’ve practiced with for technique purposes to make sure I hit the ball solid and square. If I hit that with my normal golf ball, it still goes 275 yards. My driver, I hit 305 yards? So 30 yards.
“My swing speed with the smaller head is going to be a little slower than it is with the big one because with my normal driver, I know I can swing hard. And if I barely miss the center, it’s fine. But with that persimmon head, you have to swing within yourself, you have to hit it solid.
“I have no problem with them rolling it back. I just want to know how they’re going to do it. If you’re going to keep these drivers at 460 CCs where the sweet spot is almost the entire head, guys are just going to keep swinging harder and harder. And I’d rather shrink it, make us be the athletes that we are, make us be that top percent that we’ve put all of our grind into and let us show off. Those shots Tiger and those guys were hitting with the small heads and the stingers and what they were able to do with the balls back then, it’s almost impossible to do that stuff now. The golf ball will not allow it. Allow us to show off and do things like that. That is what’s cool to me.”
Sir Nick Faldo would probably agree with Patrick Reed’s suggestion
Someone who may well agree with Reed’s take is Sir Nick Faldo.
Faldo is not afraid to take a strong view on some of the more divisive issues in the game. And speaking last year, the six-time major champion called for a number of changes.
Faldo suggested a limit on the length of tees that players can use, while he also expressed support for the idea of tees not being permitted at all at certain events.
At the other end of the bag, the Englishman called for wedges with more loft than 56 degrees to be banned.
Given the quality of Reed’s short game, it would be no surprise if the 2018 Masters champion was a little less supportive of Faldo’s idea to ban certain wedges.
But it is certainly getting harder to make the case that reducing the maximum size of a driver head would be a bad move for the game.
