BOMB: Read Jerry Potter’s piece in today’s USA Today and had a couple of “What??” moments. Although for the most part Potter’s piece was fine, I have to question some of it. Specifically, what’s up with the point about the design of new grooves lowering durability? I mean, even if it is true, so what? I’ve been playing golf for 35 years—since I was 10 years old. I’ve worked in a golf shop. Not once have I heard an everyday player say they had to buy a new set of irons because the grooves were worn out. I also would like to know, since the manufacturers are seemingly putting this forth as fact, just how many rounds of golf does it take to wear out these grooves? Is it 50 or is 500? If it’s closer to the latter than the former, I’m content with the amortization of the price of my clubs over that time frame. Potter also adds “grooves might have to be milled into the face and then buffed to meet the USGA’s guidelines.” So? Most wedge grooves today are already milled into the face. Will company’s have to redesign every groove? Sure. But haven’t they been doing that every few years anyway? Or have all these new “Mack Daddy,” “Spin Milled” and “Y-Cutter” grooves not been new designs?
GOUGE: Truthfully, partner, the piece is tripe. The problem with the USA Today story is it’s one-sided and incendiary. I cannot see how the rule change will cost golfers any more than if there had been no rule change. That’s not to say the cost of clubs will increase or decrease over the next decade. The market is the market. If you can’t sell me conforming clubs at the price I want to pay for those conforming clubs, you either adjust your price (and all that that implies) or you go out of business. If you were a manufacturer, why would you make less durable clubs? You wouldn’t. You’d find a way to deliver the same level of quality you always have. I’m not attacking the manufacturers because clearly they have an agenda and an opinion. They think there’s a better way to solve the problem of the declining deleterious effect of the rough. (Largely by saying it isn’t a problem, but mostly by suggesting that growing the rough for elite events might be enough of a solution.) The USGA has a different idea, and it has presented its findings to the manufacturers throughout the two-year period without cataclysmic and universal objection from the industry until this point in time. But to say the USGA proposal is flawed because it might increase cost to consumers and result in a decline in quality is the worst kind of obfuscation. Now, we can argue all day if this sort of proposed adjustment is too harsh a penalty for too small an issue. It is a small issue, but it can have far-reaching effects. As for it being too harsh a penalty, I’m not seeing it as a meaningful penalty for anyone other than those who deserve to be penalized the most: tour players. Cry me a bleepin’ river. And, oh by the way, it is not too much of a stretch to suggest the manufacturers ought to be dancing in the streets at the thought of all golfers having to buy new clubs if they want to play by the Rules of Golf. Every manufacturer ought to buy champagne, two wedges at a time.
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