There was a time in golf when speed, and distance, was treated as a highly flammable concept among tour professionals. It was to be used carefully, and cautiously. The goal was to find just as much as you needed, and never more. Too much meant uncontrollable spin, which would send the ball away wildly. A fiery inferno you’d struggle to tame. It was only when Tiger Woods arrived that things began to change.
It’s easy to spot the new world order in the late 1990s/early 2000s when a young Tiger was hitting wedges into Augusta National’s par 5s, and winning majors by, at times, uncompetitive margins. Those who survived best—Vijay Singh, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els—were unsurprisingly the ones who also chased a distance advantage. And as courses became longer, so did future generations.