If you follow professional golf, as I do, you are without doubt aware that there is a disconnect between the historically great golf courses — think Augusta, Pebble Beach, Winged Foot — and today’s professionals. The professional of today can in most instances overpower the courses as they were originally designed in the early part of the twentieth century. This has lead in many cases to altering courses, usually by adding length, but also by changing hole direction, turning short par 5’s into brutal (but not brutal enough) par 4’s, adding rough, trees, and other — well, some would call it “tricking up” — devices to make these courses playable and (marginally) challenging for the modern professional.

There are two reasons that PGA professional of today is so different from his counterpart of 30 years ago. One: today’s professional is stronger, more fit, and more dedicated to being an athlete, and he puts in longer hours in general that pros did back in the day. The schedules are more demanding, there is no longer any “silly season” between the end of September and the tour start in January, and the golfers of today are simply much better than the pros of yesterday because the tour is much more competitive. If you doubt this, look at the growth of alternate tours though which many of today’s pros must pass before they are good enough to get their cards.

The second, and in my view equally important, is the dramatic improvement of equipment. Today’s modern clubs are so far ahead of what I played with when I started play earnestly as a teenager in the early 1960’s, that they can’t even be compared. Metal woods, titanium shafts, cavity-backed irons, 60 (and up) degree wedges give both the amateur and the professional the ability to hit quality shots with a lesser degree of skill than before. The golf ball has likewise made dramatic improvements, is nothing like the balata and three-piece ball of yore, and likewise benefits a player of any skill level.

There is also perhaps a third factor at work here: golf as a sport is played under the same rules for pros as for amateurs. The Rules of Golf as articulated by the USGA and Royal and Ancient, Golf’s Governing Body (according to themselves). While this is seen as a matter of faith and pride by many golfers (and lends additional aura to  that mystical thing some golfers call “the game”), I can think of few other sports where amateurs and professionals play under the same rules. Certainly no team sports (football and basketball, for example). Perhaps this “same rules” notion applies more often to the individual sport, like golf or bowling. Same rules” applies likewise to equipment (although I bet that the disqualification of the belly putter in the coming years may cause many golfers to abandon the rules, at least informally).

But what if we were to think of this differently? While we can do nothing to change the improvement of the player of the game, could we not introduce changes to the rules or equipment? I have already mentioned the belly putter (for those of you unaware of the club, it is a long putter than can be anchored against the golfer’s body, thus giving the putter — it is thought — more stability). This is a club that has been in use for probably 40 years (and in other, slightly different forms, perhaps even longer), and it is about to be banned.

What if we asked that pros play with different equipment? Harder equipment? Older equipment? Balls made with older technologies? What if today’s pro returned to the equipment and the balls of the 1960’s, just before the technology explosion that transformed both?

Persimmon woods, blade irons, putters like Bobby Jones’ Calamity Jane? Balata balls? Nothing more dramatic that the sand wedge of old to get the ball close to the pin from spots of trouble? We know that pros do in fact amongst themselves occasionally use old equipment for fun, to see how well they’d do with the the technologies of Palmer, most of Nicklaus’ career, and all of the Jones’s, Hogan’s and Sarazan’s.

The strength and agility of today’s professional would still stand him in good stead, but I think the end result would be an emphasis on shot-making rather than brutal strength. Would a player like Woods still dominate? I believe so because he too is a consummate shot-maker, but it would bring other skills into play and result in the need for fewer changes to courses to maintain their integrity. And frankly, it would be a lot of fun to see them play outstanding golf using equipment that the average play would find (as many did) very difficult to use.

Of course there’s too much money to be made in the ever improving golf equipment market (a 25 billion dollar market according to a 2012 Bloomsberg estimate) to make this attractive to anyone with a financial interest in the game, and the pros would probably balk as well.

How about maybe one tournament like Masters, remaining true to golf before the technology explosion? Hmm? It could happen. Yeah, right. Still, a guy can dream, and hey, it would be a lot of fun.