Tom Watson thinks so.

After his remarkable Open Championship, only to robbed in a play-off, Tom Watson added his words of wisdom to  the argument that it is equipment, more than the player,  which is achieving the remarkably scores we have come to expect from the golfer of today.   

Posed with the question; what would you do if you sat in PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem’s chair?  Tom answered   “If I were commissioner for a day or if were commissioner for 10 years, I would do three things; I would roll the golf ball back 10 percent.  I'd get rid of square grooves, and they're going to do that; and the other thing is I would reduce the size of the head of the driver, say you can't have it 460 (cc); you can have it 240 or 250, and that's it.”

“Has anybody here taken an old persimmon head driver and hit it recently?” Watson said. "I couldn't hit the sweet spot if it saved my butt. No way I could hit the sweet spot. They have that big old thing and you swing it as hard as you can, and if you miss hit it off center it still goes out there.”

"The big-headed clubs make you a little sloppy. That's what I would do. But is it going to be done? No. Square grooves, yes. But rolling back the golf ball, probably not. And the big-headed driver, probably not.”

And when you think of it, Greg Norman last year, Tom Watson this year, golfers who grew up playing persimmon head drivers, are showing that the skills of yesteryear, which made them the champions that  they are, are maybe  disappearing from the game; ousted by the technological advances of today’s equipment.