The golf ball rollback fight has pulled in almost every legend the sport has, from Gary Player calling the distance explosion a ‘tragedy’ to Jack Nicklaus backing him and President Trump publicly telling him they were wrong. Colin Montgomerie, the eight-time European Tour Order of Merit winner and 2010 Ryder Cup-winning captain, is the latest to join the chorus. On the Old Boys, New Balls podcast, the Scot warned that professional golf has turned into a ‘one-dimensional’ bombing contest.

“We used to build courses where the dogleg was set at 265 yards. That was the post we put in, and then we went left or right from there. Well, that’s now 320. Lytham was not designed for someone who hits the ball 350 yards. The bunkers are obsolete. They are out of the way. We can’t keep buying new land because land costs time anyway. St. Andrews is tight as well. You can’t make it any bigger,” Montgomerie said.

“So what do we do? The only way is to reduce the ball and reduce the club. We can’t reduce the actual human specimen. But excuse me, it just used to be the ball and the club that were the problem. Now it’s the ball, the club, and the athlete. … The game’s become more one-dimensional, meaning distance,” he added.

He calls this a dead end. The equipment can’t chase the land forever, so he makes his second argument about the players. For him, it’s no longer just the ball and the club doing the damage, but the athletes swinging it. Today’s professionals train like elite athletes in other sports, adding size and power that no course was designed to anticipate.

Speaking on the podcast, he was asked directly why the rollback has become such an urgent issue. His answer was stripped down to a single word: distance. The root of the problem lies in the courses themselves. St. Andrews and Royal Lytham, for instance, cannot be grown or renovated any further, as both venues sit tight on land with no room to push tees back or lengthen holes. As a result, the bunkers and doglegs built decades ago now sit well short of where the ball actually lands.

His points are not without precedent. John Daly topped the PGA Tour driving stats in 1996 with a 288-yard average. Today’s longest hitter averages 328, and the tour as a whole now sits at 303 yards, a number that would have led most fields a decade ago. Amateurs are moving too: the average recreational golfer now drives it 245 yards, up 32 yards from 2016.

Montgomerie’s own playing peak in 1993 predates almost all of that surge, which explains why he sees the modern distance as “bizarre.”

That said, a sport cannot dial back a player’s skills.

For now, golf’s governing bodies have already tried to act on this. The USGA and R&A announced rollback regulations in 2023, aiming to trim professional distances by cutting how far the ball flies, with a 2028 start date. The plan was shelved this summer and pushed to at least 2030 after pushback from the tour, manufacturers, and players worried about cost and complexity.

Not everyone saw the delay the same way. Trump welcomed it. Rather than rolling distance back, he suggested golf’s rulemakers just lock the ball at its current distance going forward.

For Montgomerie, the conclusion is simple. The Tour must provide its own balls, much like any other sport does. He points to rugby, cricket, and tennis as examples of sports that supply their own equipment. If the ball is standardized for professionals, he argues, it could help save old courses. The challenges built into those courses, like the bunkers, should come back into play instead of being flown over. He also acknowledges the trade-off: amateurs may end up using a different ball than the pros, but he argues the time has come to accept that split anyway.

Ultimately, Colin Montgomerie’s warning is really a question about what golf wants to reward. Until the ball changes, distance will keep deciding the answer, not the course.