‘Not going to be very popular’: Jim Furyk called for major driver rule change ahead of TV debut

Just two weeks ago, Golf Channel announced it would have a new lead analyst in the TV booth for the 2026 Arnold Palmer Invitational and this week’s Players Championship: Jim Furyk.

With his TV debut at Bay Hill now in the rearview, Furyk seems to have made it through with largely positive reviews. At the very least, he didn’t seem to draw anyone’s ire.

You might not be able to say the same about comments Furyk made before the Arnold Palmer Invitational coverage got underway.

In an interview with Trey Wingo on the “Straight Facts Homie” podcast released last week, Furyk shared a major gear hot take. If he could change one rule in pro golf, it would be to reduce the legal size of driver heads.

Furyk calls to reduce sizes of driver heads for pro golfers

While Golf Channel’s announcement that Furyk would temporarily join their TV team this year came as a surprise, his credentials speak for themselves.

He’s a major champion, having won the 2003 U.S. Open at Olympia Fields in Illinois. While collecting 17 PGA Tour wins during his career, he also played on several U.S. Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup teams.

He went on to be a losing American Ryder Cup captain (2018) and winning Presidents Cup captain (2024). Furyk also served as one of Keegan Bradley’s vice captains at the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black, won by the Europeans.

But during his appearance on the “Straight Facts Homie” podcast, the hot topic of the day was controversial rules that Furyk would like to see abandoned.

Furyk revealed he’s not a fan of the new rule allowing players to tamp down spike marks on greens. Alternatively, he provided a tepid defense of the rule prohibiting free relief from divots.

However, the first rule Furyk said he would change if he had the power was neither of those. Instead, he argued for a major gear rule change: reducing the size of driver heads for the pros on the PGA Tour.

“I’ll tell you what I would do. I’m not going to be very popular for this, but I would reduce the size of the driver head,” Furyk said in his “Straight Facts Homie” interview.

He used the performance characteristics of his own mini driver as an example of how the rule change would impact Tour players’ games.

“I’ll tell you, I play a mini driver in my bag for my 3-wood. And when I hit that mini good, it goes darn near just as far as my driver. It’s less than 10 yards difference,” Furyk explained. “But if I mishit it, if I hit it a little thin, I hit a little on the toe, I hit a little on the heel, I lose a bunch of yardage.”

He continued by arguing that young pros playing large modern drivers are able to swing all out with every tee shot. With a smaller driver head like Furyk’s mini driver, they’d have to dial it back for accuracy’s sake. In other words, the less forgiving drivers would force pros to swing easier, thereby reducing the distance of their drives.

“I think you’ve got these young guys that are rearing back and swinging 110 per cent at it, and you can kind of cover areas on the face and get a lot of forgiveness and a lot of distance. I just think it would show an extra skill set,” Furyk said. “They’re extremely talented, don’t get me wrong, but I think it would also limit guys swinging 110 per cent at it all the time. They’d have to kind of pick and choose their spots and maybe golf courses wouldn’t have to quite be as long.”

1 key difference between Furyk’s driver rule and golf ball rollback

However, Furyk also clarified one way he would make his new driver rule different than a another gear rule change that the USGA and R&A have planned.

In 2023, golf’s governing bodies announced what is known as the “golf ball rollback.” It’s a new rule putting manufacturing limits on how far golf balls can fly. The goal is to reduce average drives by 15 yards. But this rule is not just for pros. The rule change will apply to all golfers.

Initially, the golf ball rollback was planned to be introduced to pro golfers in 2028 and then recreational golfers in 2030. Though recently the USGA and R&A reportedly told ball manufacturers they were considering changing the timeline so that all golfers, pros and Average Joes alike, would start playing the new balls in 2030.

Furyk, on the other hand, argued that his proposed driver head rule should only apply to the “golf professional,” not amateurs.

“Maybe not necessarily for the average golfer, but I would do that for the golf professional. Because you can hit it all over the face right now and it’s pretty forgiving. You don’t lose a lot of distance,” Furyk said.

Ultimately, the golf ball rollback is designed to fix one problem with modern golf. Because of equipment innovation (and an increase in fitness and athleticism), players are hitting it much longer than in the past, especially in the pro ranks. This has forced numerous historic golf courses to be lengthened (and then lengthened again).

Furyk sees his driver rule as a way to combat that problem, too.

“They’d have to kind of pick and choose their spots and maybe golf courses wouldn’t have to quite be as long,” Furyk said.

Furyk will be back in booth for Golf Channel at the 2026 Players Championship when the opening round gets underway on Thursday.

You can hear Furyk’s full comments on his proposed drive rule change on the “Straight Facts Homie” podcast here.