News came this week that one of golf’s historically iconic brands (and one that has struggled mightily to be relevant in recent years) has found a new source of energy. MacGregor, a 112-year-old brand that for decades was the choice of 59 major championship winners including most notably Jack Nicklaus, will now be part of the family of brands controlled by golf retail giant Golfsmith International.

The deal was announced Wednesday by the Austin, Texas-based retailer, which also owns and distributes exclusively familiar brands like Lynx, Snake Eyes and Killer Bee. Greg Norman had acquired a substantial stake in MacGregor in 2006, and was serving as chairman. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. As part of the deal, Norman, who earlier this year signed a product endorsement contract with TaylorMade-adidas Golf will step down, and MacGregor’s Albany, Ga.-based facility will be closed.

Meanwhile, Golfsmith officials believe the traditional respect for the MacGregor brand will provide an opportunity to attract customers to its retail stores and website. “Game improvement clubs will be where we think most of the sales will be, but we will not ignore the heritage of the MacGregor line in forgings,” said David Lowe, vice president, proprietary and consumables merchandising at Golfsmith International. “We will have some beautiful forgings, but our whole approach will be what we’d call contemporary classics with a lot of the traditional MacGregor shapes in contemporary configurations.”

Lowe said Golfsmith will bring the research and development side of the MacGregor brand under its design partner Jeff Sheets Golf Design. Industry veteran Sheets is the former head of research and development for Golfsmith.

Lowe said the plan would be for the MacGregor line to complement the premium products from major manufacturers (Callaway, Cleveland, Cobra, Nike, TaylorMade and Titleist, among others) already in Golfsmith’s retail outlets. He expected drivers would fall in the $200-plus range, while irons would be in the $400-$600 range. New products are expected to be launch by the end of the year, with a more extensive line set for 2010.

“We did not buy MacGregor to compromise the business of our premium brand partners,” he said. “We don’t want to compete with our vendor partners. We want to create supplementary offerings with MacGregor that addresses a new audience for Golfsmith that may not have been addressed as broadly as we’d like it to be.”

While MacGregor in the last 10 years had ramped up its presence on the PGA Tour with endorsement contracts with Aaron Baddeley and Jose Maria Olazabal, as well as Greg Norman’s recent presence, the plan currently will be for the familiar MacGregor logo not to be seen on the PGA Tour.

“For the foreseeable future, no,” said Lowe. “But forever is a long time.

“We have a great respect for the history and the tradition of the brand as being recognized for the majority of its life for being one of the preeminent brands in this industry,” Lowe said. “We’re going to treat it as such, and we’re going to make product that is consistent with its history.”

BOMB: Well, pardsy, here we go again.

Bless those folks who just insist on designing and manufacturing in the tolerance zone and then every so often cross the line. Gives us something to write about. Latest case in point being today’s communique from Callaway Golf regarding its Tour i ball that has a sidestamp with a single dot on each side of the words Tour i. For our purposes we’ll refer to it as Tour i single dot. According to Callaway, they found that a “very small number” of its Tour i single dot balls exceeded the USGA’s weight limit by “approximately half the weight of a U.S. dollar bill.” Callaway said the total number is less than one percent of all Tour I balls produced.

OK, fair enough. Mistakes happen. Besides, this isn’t our first rodeo with companies being caught speeding, so to speak. This makes an even half-dozen instances in the last 26 months, starting with some hot faces on some drivers from Nike, Callaway, Cleveland and Cobra in 2007 and continuing with TaylorMade having some of its TP Red golf balls exceed the initial velocity limit. Also, just as with the TaylorMade ball situation, the company is asking the ball be removed from the List of Conforming Golf Balls (which will happen June 3) and a new sidestamped ball, which we will call the Tour i double dot, will replace it. That said, Callaway is not implementing an exchange program (nor, for that matter, did TaylorMade). The reason being that unless a Condition of Competition is posted, you can play with a ball not on the conforming list.

And here’s where I have a problem with the Rules of Golf. The condition of competition is posted for tour events and high-level amateur events and pretty much every participant knows that so I don’t worry about one of these balls being put in play accidentally and causing a DQ. But at club events, such as a club championship, the condition of competition is almost never in effect, meaning the Tour i single dot can be used. Why? Because according to USGA Rules Decision 5-1/101, such balls are “presumed to conform and the onus of proof is on the person alleging the ball does not.”

Now look, I’m all for innocent until proven guilty. But how am I going to be able to tell when Mr. Hack ‘n Chop is hitting it a few yards farther than I’m used to seeing and he’s using a Tour i single dot whether or not it’s one of the ball’s that is over the limit? I’m not. I know it doesn’t matter from a performance standpoint. But it is irksome that it is possible for a ball whose physical properties exceed the limits set forth by the USGA to be used to post a score for a USGA handicap or play in an event, even if it is at the club level. Worse, I don't seem to be able to get a satisfactory answer on why that is so. In the meantime buddy, I’m putting a scale in my bag right now so don’t even think of putting one of those balls on the peg when you’re playing me.

GOUGE: I think the difference between the rules of golf and the rules of almost any other sport lies in the fact that in golf we assume everybody is extremely committed to playing the game by the rules. We assume nobody is trying to pull a fast one. The problem for golf now is the rules governing equipment have become so necessarily precise that the potential exists for unintentionally pulling a fast one.

Like the true nature of the game, Callaway is calling a penalty on itself. Which is fine, perhaps noble. But when it gets right down to it, what we have is the potential for unintentional disqualification. For instance, how many of those playing in local or sectional qualifying for the U.S. Open, the U.S. Women's Open and the U.S. Senior Open might on occasion buy their own golf balls. I would conservatively say more than half of the thousands of entrants in those events buy their own golf balls. Is there a chance someone playing in those qualifiers might use a ball that is not on the conforming list? Yes. If someone notices on the fourth hole that she's playing a single dot Callaway instead of a double dot Callaway, then she's done, see-ya, goodbye, thanks for playing. Since Callaway only started shipping the double-dot Tour i golf balls today, there's a chance someone might have a sleeve of the old balls in his bag at U.S. Open Sectional qualifying on June 8. It's a real problem, so if you're one of the 9,000 entrants for the U.S. Open, one of the 1,278 entrants in the U.S. Women's Open or one of the estimated 3,000 entrants for the U.S. Senior Open, consider yourself forewarned.

But who's checking? Well, no one really. Does it matter? Not in real terms, but spiritually, it's everything. In the end, of course, it's the player's responsibility. That's the nature of the rules of golf, of course. The assumption that everybody plays by the rules certainly is valid, assuming that everybody knows specifically what the rules are. That's not always obvious, especially in cases like this. The fact that it's happening so frequently to big companies clearly means we're in a stage where every manufacturer is pursuing every element of innovation to the nth micron. Indeed, we could suggest that the level of intricasy in innovation is in danger of exceeding the ability to manufacture such intricasy in the vast numbers required in today's marketplace. Or it could just be growing pains.

But on the cusp of the new groove rule, which features what many would call a staggeringly more complex set of parameters than any current equipment regulation, it is not a great leap to suggest that the uncertainty is only just beginning. If you think manufacturers are trying to innovate in the tolerance zone when it comes to spring-like effect and golf ball conformance, you have to believe it will be more of the same when it comes to grooves. Those in the know say that deciphering conforming vs. non-conforming grooves within this microscopic gray zone requires a microscope that costs more than my first house. If you think six problems in the last two years is a big deal, buckle up, brother. If manufacturers keep dancing in the danger zone, it could get really nasty.

BOMB: I remember a line from an old Abbott & Costello movie, “Ride ‘Em Cowboy,” where Costello is riding a bucking bronco and one of the ranch hands says, “The little guy is plenty good.”

That line comes to mind because over the last couple of weeks, the little guy has been plenty good when it comes to putter companies. Two weeks ago at the Italian Open, John Daly finished second using Boccieri Golf’s Heavy Putter Mid-Weight K-4 model—a bit of success that had 10 players using a putter from the Ridgefield, Conn.-based company at this past week’s Irish Open. This past week on the PGA Tour also saw Zach Johnson ring up his fifth PGA Tour win in the last 25 months (Only Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson have more during that span) using a SeeMore FGP Stainless putter. Although a SeeMore user for many years, Johnson just put this model in the bag at the Players championship. In a time when it is damn near impossible for the little guy to compete with the behemoths, exposure such as this is critical.

And there is no shortage of cases to illustrate the point. SeeMore received some 50,000 orders after Payne Stewart won the 1999 U.S. Open with one of its putters. And at the time of Nick Price's 1994 PGA Championship win with Bobby Grace's odd-looking Fat Lady Swings mallet, Grace was making putterheads in his St. Petersburg, Fla., garage, producing a handful at a time. And after Price's victory? "I had 25,000 orders the next day," said Grace. "I went from a Toyota to a Lexus overnight."

Still, like a person who enjoys a few cocktails, the buzz lasts only so long. But last week, once again the little guys were plenty good.

GOUGE: It is worth remembering that all of the really cool golf companies of the last three decades started small. Whether it’s TaylorMade, Callaway, Odyssey, Adams or a handful of others, small stands tall. Even a behemoth like Nike got its golf equipment start from Tom Stites and Impact Golf Technologies, which looked more like a converted body shop back in the day than the center of the golf innovation universe.

But true innovation doesn’t require an army. It only takes one bright guy to think of something nobody else has thought of before. Of course, sometimes getting that idea to reality often requires an army. That’s what makes the individual success stories of Boccieri and SeeMore appealing. Good ideas from small operators usually are nothing more than a secret shared by a few friends. Getting John Daly to use your putter and to have him finish second with it seems a less likely scenario than winning Powerball. (And that should be a warning to those of you messing around with a blowtorch in your garage.)

Moreover, the rewards of that unusual confluence of events are less certain. Your good idea, once endorsed, inspires those with more ammunition to engineer around your good idea, leaving you in their wake. Success today does not mean you’ve arrived. Just look at where our friend Bobby Grace is these days, lost in the wake of the dismantling of MacGregor Golf. His ideas are no less intriguing. Business sometimes gets in the way.

The beautiful thing is both SeeMore and Boccieri Golf, along with the previous success of Yes! Golf and Rife Putters, shows the putter is the one frontier in golf equipment that seems more open to possibility than any other. But then it’s always been that way, hasn’t it? How else can you explain the Ping Anser coming along in a field of Cash-Ins and Ironmasters? In 20 years will a SeeMore FGP Stainless be the standard shape? Will putters with 200-gram weights inserted in the grip end a la Boccieri’s Mid-Weight be commonplace? Never say never.

GOUGE: You know how it is, partner, when you're going along and think you have everything figured out and then something smashes you right in the face? Sometimes you never recover from it. Sometimes you're Ricky Hatton and everything ends right there with you sprawled on the ground wondering how you got into this in the first place and, oh by the way, where exactly are my legs. Well, it appears it's time for the golf industry, particularly the ball industry, to get smashed in the face.

While golf's manufacturers have had their collective knickers in a twist the last few years over the groove rule, and while most R&D types have been feverishly working on new groove patterns for irons and wedges, all along they have held a hole card in their long-running pursuit of mitigating the difficulty of the challenge of the game. That hole card, of course, is the golf ball.

Here's how the line of reasoning for the manufacturers goes: "We'll try to get back some of the performance we lost with our best interpretation of the new groove rule stipulations (conceding, of course, that our best ain't going to be as effective as the old groove). But we'll push the new limit as much as we can with new patterns and tighter manufacturing of edge radii and even rougher flat surfaces on the new wedges. But what we can't do with our best efforts of club design and manufacturing, we'll make up for with tweaks to the golf ball. In other words, surely one of the smart guys over in our ball department can come up with some super new flubber material that restores spin on the short game shots without any loss of distance.

"Yes, that's exactly what we'll do."

 I can tell you I've heard just as much from more than one manufacturer. Well, guess what, boys and girls. You can't do that. The rules will not allow that kind of a golf ball, should it ever exist, to be permitted to conform to the rules. It's little known, but pound for pound it might be the most powerful sentence in the entire 192 pages of my copy of the Rules of Golf. It's Appendix III-1 or what I like to call the Manny Pacquiao of golf ball rules.

Only a sentence long, it basically shuts out future golf ball innovation aimed at overcoming the new groove rule: "The ball must not be substantially different from the traditional and customary form and make. The material and construction of the ball must not be contrary to the purpose and intent of the Rules."

I'm no wizard, but the purpose and intent of the new groove rule is to reduce spin generation. Presumably (and I could be wrong, but I don't see exactly how unless somebody discovers a new meaning for words in the English language), you can't have a ball designed to increase spin in some new way for iron and wedge shots and have that ball be considered conforming to the rules of golf.

That, my friend, is what it's like to be smashed in the face.

BOMB: Chopper boy, often I get frustrated by your affinity for minutiae, but this time I have to say I’m intrigued. Any discussion with tour players on this topic inevitably ends with something along these lines: “Well, we’ll figure it out. Besides, our ball guys tell us they’re working on something.”

Well, from what you just pointed out, the big boys might just have to figure it out on their own.

Still, somewhat disturbing is the vague nature of the language—although that’s what makes it so powerful. Manufacturers seeking to mitigate spin loss through the ball might come up with something only to be told, “Good try, but not gonna fly.” Of course, I’m guessing if they don’t want to get “smashed in the face” as you so eloquently put it, they should run these ideas by the folks in the Far Hills before getting too far along in the process.

GOUGE: Confused by my focusing on the minutiae? Here's a solution: Let's have two sets of rules. One set full of minutiae for the guys who are playing for millions of dollars each week; and one set that can be written on a match book for those of us playing $5 nassaus.

BOMB: That sound you hear is a can of worms being opened. Regardless, this little bit of legalese in the Rule Book could be just the thing that makes the upcoming condition of competition on grooves for elite players have the effect the USGA wants after all.