Q&A: Rob O’Loughlin, Golf Innovator, Has One Last Big Idea for Golf

The Wisconsin native changed golf with Softspikes and is hoping for one more breakthrough with bigger cups.

Has Wisconsin’s Rob O’Loughlin been around golf his whole life?

Not yet.

He’s still going strong. O’Loughlin is a golf industry innovator (after a 20-year run in the formalwear market) and, in the good sense of the word, a renegade. His short-version golf resume includes:

Softspikes, the non-metal spikes that forever changed golf and greenskeeping and led to a second revolution with spikeless golf shoes.

Laser Link Golf, an early adaptor in the sexy new world of lasers as distance-measuring devices, a technological advancement that golfers loved but golf’s stodgy old governing bodies didn’t.

Big Cup, a big idea to make golf more fun for the average player by expanding the size of the hole from 4.25 inches in diameter to 6 inches. O’Loughlin, a longtime Madison resident, is making a second run at this concept.

AdFlag, a way for golf courses to increase revenue by adding advertisements to the flagstick flags. Who doesn’t like more revenue? 

There’s plenty more but let’s just say that O’Loughlin has never stopped trying to make golf a better game for players. Sports Illustrated had questions and O’Loughlin, now 72, had no shortage of answers …

Sports Illustrated: One of the big changes in our lifetimes was Softspikes, going from traditional metal spikes to plastic. You were there in the middle of that sea change. What was it like?

Rob O’Loughlin: It’s been 30 years, believe it or not. I remember when we introduced the product at the PGA Merchandise Show and people said we had no chance at all. We set up a card table, about 6 feet long, and my business partner stood there with his hand full of these plastic spikes. Club pro after club pro came up and said, “You’re kidding!” Or, “You’re not serious!” We said, Actually, we are. We thought we were on our way.

SI: None of us players liked putting over the raised root-marks that metal spikes left on the green. Softspikes was such an improvement, especially for golf superintendents.

RO: We’re not crying about it but nobody will ever give us all the credit. There was a far-reaching result from removing metal spikes. Things like carpeting in the clubhouse, barstools, marble floors. Softspikes created significant cost savings to golf. At PGA West, you had to walk down from that beautiful clubhouse down a set of concrete stairs. Everybody stepped in the same spot. The metal spikes literally wore out a concrete set of stairs every year. That was a lucky deal for me and it got me starting on thinking of other things that would be good for golf. Not all of them have worked out as great as Softspikes.

SI: Rangefinders and GPS gizmos are standard for golfers now but that wasn’t the case earlier in this century. Why do you think resistance was so strong from the rules-makers?

RO: I told my LaserLink business partner that I thought we could get the rule on electronic measuring devices changed in a year, maybe two. It took us 10 years.

SI: And yet it seemed so obvious. Rangefinders are allowed in the PGA Championship now.

RO: The powers that be in golf are against certain things in golf. They don’t know why, they honestly don’t, they just are. Whether it was Peter Dawson or David Rickman of the R&A or any of the USGA guys, their visceral reaction to rangefinders was always, “Oh, no, we can’t do that! We’ve never done that!” Rangefinders were no different than sprinkler heads with yardages except they were faster. Those guys really just didn’t stop and think about it. They couldn’t make a good argument that measuring devices were an advantage. But they held us at bay for 10 years.

SI: Wasn’t it a similar case when they banned anchored putting? It happened at a time when golf was in serious decline, maybe even circling the drain, and that rule may have chased some amateur golfers out of the game.

RO: I met with Peter and David in 2006 in Scotland, when they were very near to changing the rule to ban measuring devices in competition. I’m sitting there with them in the R&A clubhouse like a fish out of water. We’re just chatting. I said it’s not that big a change and people enjoy it, just like they enjoy scramble tournaments. Rickman turned to Dawson and asked, “Have you ever played in a scramble?” Peter said, “No, have you?” Rickman said, “No, I haven’t but my daughter is quite a good player and she just participated in one and said it was great fun." Now here are two of the most powerful people in golf and neither one has ever played in a scramble!

SI: As I recall, there was no great movement to ban anchored putters. A USGA official then told me the push was mostly from the R&A. Later, a former PGA Tour rules official told me about the time he played golf at a prestigious British course and was putting his golf bag, which had a long putter sticking out, into his car trunk. Peter Dawson saw him and said haughtily, “Does every bad idea come from America?”

RO: I wish they would revisit the long putter anchoring ban and bring some old guys back into the game.

SI: The push for the ban didn’t start until shortly after Ernie Els, with a belly putter, edged Adam Scott, with a long putter, to win the British Open in Dawson’s backyard. Dawson clearly was unhappy.

RO: My wife laughed when she read a quote about me in one of the golf magazines during the measuring devices time. Peter Dawson was asked if he knew who Rob O’Loughlin was and Peter said, “Oh, yes, I have a difficult time avoiding him.”

SI: What’s the status of your long-running Big Cup concept?

RO: This is my hill to die on. I call it Mission Impossible. The evidence is overwhelming. If you take a typical golf hole, it’s somewhere around 8 million square inches of playing surface. Multiply that times 18 holes and you‘ve got approximately 144 million square inches of playing field. Do the math on 18 cups that are four-and-a-quarter inches and you’ve got 255 square inches of cups. That’s outrageous. There’s no logic, it’s just the way we’ve always done it in golf.

SI: So how big is your proposed Big Cup?

RO: Six inches. I tried selling above-ground plastic Big Cup inserts that were not successful. So I have switched back to in-ground aluminum cups. If you make it bigger than 6 inches, the hole starts to fall apart. You may remember when TaylorMade’s Mark King did a deal where they experimented with a 15-inch hole, which was crazy. That wasn’t successful. I think he overplayed it. To move it from 4 inches to 6, it’s not dramatically different.

SI: How difficult is it to gain acceptance for this change?

RO: Some good players like yourself might not want to play to the Big Cup. But if every four-footer was like a two-footer, everybody plays a little faster. The best Big Cup analogy is Tee It Forward, which I think is one of the most positive things in golf’s last 30 years. I’m a single-digit handicapper who’s hanging on for dear life, like you won’t believe, to stay at a 9 or 10 handicap. For 30 years we played the blue tees. Now we all moved up to shorter tees and none of us are going back. If you can’t hit a par-4 with two woods, it ain’t a par-4.

SI: I’ve seen the disconnect in golf between ego and skill. Plenty of 15-handicappers insist on playing from the tips, where they have no shot. But they still do it. How do you get over this hill?

RO: I believe golfers won’t go back to the 4-inch cup once they switch. You’ll get faster play, lower scores and have more fun. With the Big Cup, you’d never have to take the flagstick out. The ball bouncing out off the flagstick with a six-inch hole is not an issue.

SI: How ticked off are you when you still miss an 8-foot putt to a Big Cup, though? That’s got to be even worse.

RO: The bad putters are still going to be bad and the good putters are still going to be good. It will eliminate one of golf’s greatest tragedies, the three-putt. You’ve got 9 feet for birdie and you knock it past 4 feet, then you miss that. That’s the most discouraging thing in all of golf. The reason long putter and belly putters were needed was because our greens go so fast. They went from an average of 7 on a Stimpmeter to 12 or 13 in 30 years, even at country clubs. That’s an enormous difference. I don’t care if you’re Steve Stricker, nobody likes a three-and-a-half-foot downhill putt on a slick green.

SI: Who determined the hole should be four-and-a-quarter inches in the first place?

RO: It’s not a romantic story but in Scotland when they first cut holes, they used a plumber’s drain-pipe. It was four and a quarter inches. The interesting thing is that in the late 1890s, they did use a 6-inch cup for eight or 10 years. Gene Sarazen, The Squire, was an advocate of that bigger hole later. So was Ben Hogan, who was not a great putter and always felt it was an unfair part of the game.

SI: The average golfer should love the Big Cup. Maybe you need to designate a National Big Cup day, like a holiday, and promote it?

RO: There are already thousands of Big Cup days at various courses where they’re going rogue. Being against the rules has not been a problem for me in my other projects. The only golf number that hasn’t changed over the years is the hole size. Guys drive it 50 yards farther now, or more. The green speeds are much faster. Is a club sandwich still 95 cents like when you joined your club back in the ‘80s? No. Everything has changed except one thing and it’s such an important thing.

SI: What will it take to launch the Big Cup revolution?

RO: If you’re a golf course, you just say, This is what we do here. Golf courses will always do what the course down the street is doing if it’s successful. Some courses will compromise and cut two holes on a green, so you can play to the one you want. If some courses went to the Big Cup, they’d all go to it in a New York minute for regular recreational play.

SI: Have you ever heard a golfer say, after a round, “I didn’t like that course. I shot too low, I played too fast"?

RO: It’s never happened. Play is unquestionably faster. And it’s more fun. Everybody would like to make more putts.

SI: Almost everybody, Rob. Peter Dawson will probably call you shortly.