BOMB: About a week ago we blogged on the topic of a possible reversal on the groove implementation date and I wrote that I simply couldn’t see the PGA Tour leaving the USGA out to dry. Now I’m not so sure.

Mark your calendars boys and girls. This coming Tuesday is a big day for equipment regulation in that we may finally learn who is driving the bus here—the USGA, the PGA Tour or perhaps the equipment companies. And personally I’m dismayed it has even come to this.

Speaking with Stewart Cink, one of four Player Directors on the PGA Policy Board, yesterday at the Travelers Championship, he said a vote would take place next Tuesday and we likely would hear something then. It is not yet clear whether the recommendation will be to implement in 2010 or not (David Toms, another Player Director, said the sentiment was that of “a house divided”). But that’s not the point, here. The point is exactly who is running the show when it comes to making the rules governing equipment.

Sure, the USGA will say it’s not a rule, it’s a condition of competition and anyone can elect to either implement it or not. Hogwash. That is hedging of the highest order. Fact is the USGA didn’t spend three years and who knows how much money researching grooves, then deciding to implement a condition of competition if it wasn’t going to be implemented at the highest level of the game. Does anyone think for one second they would have announced an implementation date if the PGA Tour hadn’t given assurances they were going to go along with it? No way. And in the USGA’s August 5, 2008 release, all major tours and Augusta National were on board. The stated mission was to return driving accuracy as an integral part of the game at the elite level. Has that changed? Do they not have confidence in their data? Of course not. This is about bowing to pressure.

Jim Vernon, USGA President, said in the organization’s annual pre-Open press conference: “The PGA Tour will make its decision at some point as to whether they will implement that condition of competition for 2010. It is likely that if they were not to adopt it for 2010, we certainly would not adopt it for the U.S. Open either.” When those words came out of his mouth I was shocked and disappointed. Sure, the USGA will say, “how could we make players change for one event?” I say, how can you not? You made this condition of competition. You said you were going to implement it in 2010. For goodness sake, man, stand by it. If the PGA Tour wants to do otherwise, let them. But at least have the courage of your convictions. So to the USGA I say, you led this charge and it’s time to start acting like a leader, not a follower.

Pardsy, this is potentially a bigger mess than the spectator areas at Bethpage

GOUGE: The word botched came up yesterday in my conversation with the clearly anti-USGA Joe Ogilvie. His tone, as has been the case repeatedly over the last few months, was very much along the lines that the PGA Tour is the real driving force in golf and the USGA is clueless.

Maybe something was clearly botched in this process. But I for the life of me can't figure it out. Nobody really thinks the rule is impossible to follow. Most manufacturers have told us they will be or already are introducing irons and/or wedges that conform to the rule as written. What seems most unclear is how the rule might be implemented.

The true issue seems to be the staggered implementation of the rule. It was set to apply to the elite professional tours in 2010, USGA and R&A amateur events in 2014, while allowing all pre-2010 groove clubs to be conforming for everybody else through at least 2024. Complicating this scenario slightly are the deadlines for manufacturers, which run through the end of 2010 for the assembly of pre-2010 rule clubs, but starts at the beginning of 2010 for all clubs manufactured after January 1, 2010. (In other words, you can manufacture a bunch of wedges and irons with the pre-2010 groove through the end of this year and then take all of 2010 to assemble and distribute them.)

The staggered implementation seemed to make sense until you realize that the elite professional tours are not "a closed shop," as Ogilvie put it to me. Since you have a qualifying event every week and for the PGA Tour you have a pre-qualifying event every week, Ogilvie estimated that there are 2,500 to 3,000 unique competitors on the PGA Tour. Throw in the LPGA Tour, the European Tour, the Japan Tour and all of their secondary tours and qualifying events, the numbers begin to multiply. You can begin to see a compelling argument that implementation of the rule could be a challenge.

But is it really such a compelling argument? No, it's not. The Rules of Golf are the Rules of Golf, and it is assumed that you are playing by the rules of golf. Nobody checks your bag on the first tee to make sure all your clubs conform. And I'll bet there wasn't an official on the first tee of today's U.S. Senior Open Sectional Qualifier at Fox Chapel Golf Club making sure the 52 competitors all were using conforming golf balls (a potentially difficult issue in light of recent announcements about balls from TaylorMade and Callaway that feature slightly different markings from previous versions that were taken off the conforming golf ball list). No, there wasn't because in golf it is presumed that you already are playing by the rules. It's fundamental to the game itself.

So if the USGA and R&A decided that the groove rule should be imposed for elite professional events starting in 2010, then wouldn't it rightly be assumed that any golfer playing in those events would be using conforming equipment? You bet it woud be. It's no different than assuming that a player who hits his ball against the base of a tree doesn't casually kick it back into the fairway. If he or she couldn't get that equipment, then he or she simply wouldn't play. So if only 12 players could manage to cobble together a full set of conforming equipment to play in the 2010 U.S. Open, then so be it. Because, the fact is, if you made the rule and stuck to the rule, players would demand the right equipment. If you go soft on it, well, then anything is possible, including never implementing the rule at all.

But golf's ruling bodies don't seem willing to exercise that kind of power because, as best I can tell, they don't believe they have that kind of power anymore. Moreover, the leadership of the PGA Tour (starting at the top) seems overly willing to go back on its word, and presumably content to be buffeted along by the statements of tour players whose actual knowledge and experience and understanding of the rule change's implications is cloudy at best and manipulated by the will of certain manufacturers at worst.

I still have very little clarity on whether the rule will produce the desired effect, or even whether that desired effect has changed now, given that no one in a position of power seems nearly as motivated by this rule change as previous statements would indicate.

I can tell you this, though: The rule as currently written will not be a hardship for the playing of the game by average golfers in any meaningful way, shape or form. Not now, not in 2014, not in 2024, not ever. The rule as currently written does present the possibility for uncertainty in the minds of the best players in the game, however. Uncertainty (or as most of us know it, outright fear), I think, makes for a better game at the elite level.

Unfortunately, the only uncertainty in the game right now lies with who's in charge of it.