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.
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