BOMB: Well, buddy, Dick Rugge and the boys at the USGA lab certainly know how to make my head spin like Linda Blair. A 104-page report on spin and grooves? That’s killing a little too many trees for my taste when it basically comes down to this: Is regulation on grooves the path of least resistance when it comes to regulating distance at the elite level?
And when I say elite level, I’m talking tour pros. Sure, I play the chopper version of Bomb & Gouge, hitting my 260-yard drives into the rough with more regularity than I’d like, but all those aggressive U-grooves do for me is help chew up the cover on my ball faster than a NASCAR track wears down a tire. All the “Mac Daddy” grooves in the world are not going to have me spinning it back from even the lightest of rough.
But for the big boys it is different. Aggressive grooves have played right into the strategy employed by several tour players of bashing the ball as far off the tee as possible and rough be damned. Take them away, and perhaps they start sacrificing a tad of distance for a few more fairways. Or maybe not. Old habits, after all, die very hard. But there’s little doubt distance is at the heart of the USGA’s research. As Rugge has said repeatedly, “The correlation between accuracy off the tee and success on the PGA Tour is almost non-existent.”
I don’t dispute that contention, but I’m still a big believer that distance is not ruining the game of golf as it currently stands. And I certainly don’t want to be writing for the next few years about motions filed on behalf of the manufacturers by noted legal eagle Leonard Decof, as was the case back in the 1980s and ’90s. But when ShotLink stats reveal that more than 40 percent of all approach shots on the PGA Tour are hit with some kind of wedge, I can at least see why the collective brains at golf’s governing bodies are whirling faster than a ball coming off one of these clubs.
GOUGE: I do not want to agree with you. But there is a reason for the fairway. If the rough is not a hazard, then something must be done to make it one. Grooves might be one way, it might also be the most impractical solution to a problem in recorded history. If we all want to play by the same rules as the USGA wishes (humor me), then a groove change rule would force us all to buy new irons and wedges. That in a nutshell is a definition of a class-action lawsuit.
The USGA’s Executive Committee clearly is ticked off at how elite players are changing the game. Read the report Jim Vernon, chairman of the Equipment Standards committee, gave to the Executive Committee and it's obvious there is a real fear on their part that the game is out of control. But the truth is all they have to do is look at their own championship to realize they’ve solved the difficulty/skill algorithm quite simply. Layered rough makes crying babies out of all the great pretenders out there. And it’s the only thing that’s beaten Tiger Woods in the last three months.
I’m not so sure that the one set of rules thing is necessary anymore, but if it is, would the design of your grooves really matter all that much? Not unless your ability level mandates that your approach shot target be the size of a tablecloth. Last month back in Ohio when they played that one-ball tournament, many players complained that the ball didn’t behave on approach shots. But one player shot 67 twice. He figured it out. The best players would figure out how to play with V-grooves. Let us grandfather our square grooves for a decade, and by the time we had to get a new set of irons, we wouldn’t care. Be the ball, Danny.
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