Was Tommy Fleetwood's Win A Rollback Precursor?

This past week in India, Tommy Fleetwood won for the second time in 2025 with an unusual club setup that didn’t include a modern 460cc driver. Instead, the longest club in his bag was a TaylorMade R7 13.5 mini driver.

Now I could attempt to explain why, or talk about how he wasn’t the only one in the field to make this decision, but there are lots of those kinds of articles already out there - I even wrote one here: Why Rory is Letting The Big Dog Sleep in India

Instead, I want to talk about something that has quietly moved to the back burner and that is the golf ball rollback and how, whether golfers like it or not, the DP World India Championship could, in some ways, be a preview of what's to come once it takes effect.

But before we get to that, I think I need to make one thing clear, as much as I love and appreciate technology in the modern game and with equipment, I stand strongly in the pro-rollback camp—especially for the men's professional game. Golf’s overall footprint needs to shrink (or at least stay where it is) rather than this continued path of expansion we've been seeing with professional venues creeping closer to the 8,000-yard mark. For perspective, almost every course on TOUR this season has been over 7,000 yards with Torrey Pines leading the pack at 7,765 yards.

It must also be said that for the anti-rollback folks who believe golf course architecture is the solution, I’m sure Delhi GC seemed like the idea test case that introducing highly penal trees and brush features would help to prevent the bomb-and-gouge style of play that inspires stretched distances across the globe. To be fair, they’re not wrong, since SMS On Tour reported that 42 percent of players in the DP World India Championship field elected to not use driver at all during the event, with as mention of the top notable winner Tommy Fleetwood sticking with a mini driver.

But since I’m leading this debate with myself within this article and can't help but generate my own points and counter points, let me also bring to attention that Delhi GC came in under 7000 yards from the tips, and featured four par-5s to on the par 72 layout. A course of this length with four par-5s that are reachable for most players even when using less than driver would naturally lead to less drivers off the tee, especially considering how penal a missing a fairway was.

It's no different than if the course were a 6000-yard “Mario Golf” course constructed of tiny plots of floating earth surrounded by falloff into lava or outer space - a precision golf test is just that, one that forces players to hugely favor penalty avoidance, and by design is extremely one-dimensional.

So where am I going with this, and what am I actually arguing for?

That's a great question, and one I’m not 100 percent sure one quite yet, but I’m trying to get there in my head and urge you to come along for the ride.

There is no cut-and-dry conclusion here, but what is evident is that Delhi GC proved that golf played on a smaller footprint isn’t a bad thing, and if the golf ball actually goes shorter as rules have been proposed, golf fans aren’t going to be quite as bothered as some have suggested. Especially if in combination, the best players in the world can still swing “full rip” with a driver. Now imagine if driver heads at the professional level golf are smaller too (but to be fair, that’s a whole other think piece).

The best players in the world should still be able to separate themselves with great driving, the same way great hitters in baseball can use power to hit home runs. They could in theory use lighter composite bats and hit it farther but all that does is change the scale of the game. Baseball is already pretty exciting as is even if players are still using wooden bats - like I said, this is about scale, not creating penal designs.

Is Delhi GC a blueprint for combating distance? No. But neither is Harbour Town Golf Links (7,213 yards), and I don't hear many golf fans getting upset to see players tackle that course on a year-to-year basis; in fact, it seems to be one of the more popular stops on the TOUR's schedule. So with that in mind, a golf course on a smaller footprint, that showcases modern risk reward design traits along with a golf ball designed to bring things a little more back to scale should be something golf fans should be open to embracing.