When the American tour started taking the statistics in 1980, the longest driver on the tour hit the ball around 275 yards. Thirty years later, the longest is now over 315 yards and it does not take much thought to imagine how the new clubs and balls have altered the way the game is played at the highest levels.

There is no question that driving the ball is much easier than it was in the days of persimmon woods and the old, softer covered wound balls. The sweet-spot on the driver was miniscule compared with the hitting area on the frying pans everyone uses today and the new, solid ball is infinitely easier to play with in the wind.

The great advantage men like Greg Norman and Jack Nicklaus had over the rest of the field lay in their mastery of the most difficult club in the bag. Now that is gone because the combination of modern club and ball has made driving a relatively simple proposition.

''You just never see guys duck-hook the ball any more,'' said Geoff Ogilvy at The Open Championship.

There were always stringent equipment rules designed to maintain the challenge of the game but primarily they were - or should have been - aimed at ensuring that the golf courses, the game's most precious resource, played somewhere near to the way the original architects envisaged.

That 40-yard increase - and remember that is over one shot, so on a par five that is a drive and a three-wood distance, players are capable of hitting is closer to 70 extra yards - has decimated the intent of the original designers.

At the Open Championship at St Andrews the organizers - ironically the very same people with the power (and the duty) to control the equipment - were forced to continue the trend of moving tees further and further back in order to test the game's best players. That's all very well at The Old Course where they have the luxury of space behind to move but what happens at our best courses in Australia?

Most are suburban courses surrounded by housing and there is nowhere to go back to. So clubs are forced to watch young and strong players easily reaching par fives with irons and previously long par fours with short irons.

Surely the equipment rules were framed to stop exactly what has happened but the Royal & Ancient and the USGA are seemingly paralysed at the prospect of doing anything to protect the great old courses - not to mention the necessity of making new courses longer (and more expensive) to accommodate the ball.

They are paralysed because there is the constant threat of legal action from the equipment manufacturers. These companies have no right to threaten the game in such a way. They are bent one thing only and that is profit and they couldn't care less that Tiger Woods is capable of hitting the par-five second hole on the West Course at Royal Melbourne with an eight-iron second shot. Despite their assurances that the ball cannot be made to go any further - they were making the same promises to the Ball and Implement Committee of the R&A  more than a decade ago - their aim is to make a ball that Woods can use to reach par fives with a drive and wedge.

All that is fine - but they cannot be the ones who determine the future of the game.

The administrators' problem is that they refuse create a bifurcated set of rules that would mean a ball for the highest levels of play and a ball for the majority. They say they don't want to make two separate games but what, in effect, they have created is one set of rules that have conspired to make two entirely separate games. Never before has the distance a strong player hits the ball been so far ahead of the average amateur.

Despite what the average player thinks about the extra distance he has gained, the reality is that the majority of amateurs mis-hit the majority of shots, meaning they have gained very little. And despite the game never having been easier to play, the average handicap is still just a little under 20.

The most vocal and one would assume influential proponent of rolling back the ball has been Jack Nicklaus but his well-reasoned arguments have been ignored as have those of wise men like Peter Thomson, Tom Weiskopf and so many more.

There have been balls manufactured recently - at the request of the USGA, for experimental purposes - that fly between 10 and 20 percent less far. Next month, those prototype shorter golf balls will be tested by Canadian Tour players in a one-day event that will be a kind of golfing lab experiment. The pros will play with these new, 'less hot' models and give their feedback to the USGA.

And that's a great start. But will those charged with the responsibility of defending the courses have the courage to do what so many privately concede they should? Which is bite the bullet, roll back the technology and start regulating the design of the ball.