Aaron Rai believes that Sir Nick Faldo’s suggestion of limiting the height of the tee golfers could use would be too challenging to implement.
There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the game right now, with the recent announcement that the golf ball rollback has been pushed back until at least 2030.
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With Cameron Young winning the Cadillac Championship with a golf ball that would apparently be conforming under the new regulations, it does appear that there are doubts about how successful a rollback would actually be.
Someone who has offered a different solution to the problem is Sir Nick Faldo.
Aaron Rai questions whether golf would benefit from limiting tee heights
Faldo previously suggested that he would limit the height of the tees allowed, while he also argued that some tournaments should ban tees altogether.
He picked out the RBC Heritage at Harbour Town as a potential option.
That would obviously stop a lot of players being able to hit their drivers anywhere near as far. And speaking ahead of The Open Championship about the possibility, Aaron Rai admitted that it may be too complicated to bring in.
“I think, as you said, there are a lot of things that are very much up in the air at the moment, and no one quite knows which way it’s going to go. I think whatever changes are made, it’s going to be a big adjustment, whether it’s golf ball, whether it’s tee heights,” he said.
“I think in particular with tee heights, that’s probably not something that many golfers have really practised over a period of time. So I think to impose that and also to govern that might be quite challenging. I’m not sure how good that may be in the grand scheme of things.
“But obviously something will be done. We’re not sure what that looks like. I’m sure as time goes on it will be for the betterment of the game over a period of time.”
Aaron Rai reflects on how his life has changed since winning the PGA Championship
Rai’s career, of course, was elevated to another level back in May as he won the PGA Championship at Aronimink.
It was a masterclass from the Englishman over the back nine in Philadelphia.
He has been such a steady performer throughout his PGA Tour career. And Rai is not someone who craves the limelight, so it has clearly been something that he has to get used to over the past couple of months.
Rai was asked about the best and worst things to come out of his victory at the second major of the year.
“The best side effects, obviously feeling extremely proud of the achievement. It’s a huge accomplishment. I think internally seeing my relationship to the game over the past couple of months, even after achieving something as big as what that is, that I still have the same enjoyment and passion and application to the game, which is something that I think is hard to really know it’s going to be there until you experience certain things and experience certain achievements of what are you actually doing all of this for. So that’s been very satisfying as well,” he said.
“Maybe the most challenging, just time commitments really and kind of scheduling my time, still getting my practice in, doing all the things that I need to do in terms of golf, but also making space for myself and my family. That’s been a little trickier since then, but that’s also part of the learning curve and part of what comes with the next step of that. Yeah, it’s been great overall, though.”
Rai is likely to be a potential contender again this week at Royal Birkdale when you consider how important strategy and finding fairways are likely to be.
Perhaps the 31-year-old could even be about to move to within two majors of completing the Career Grand Slam over the coming days.
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