BOMB: Well pardsy, as we are fond of saying, here we freaking go! NO, I'm not talking about the body blows we will be taking over the next few weeks from manufacturers, uninformed bloggers (I'd love to know how many of those guys blasting us on the equipment websites use clubs that have never appeared on the Hot List) and the like. No, I'm talking about the inevitable questions that were sure to arise from the court granting Callaway's injunction in its lawsuit against Acushnet. In addition to stopping the sales of infringing products, it also apparently deemed tour pros had to use non-infringing balls starting in 2009. Seeing how several pros had played the 2005 and 2007 versions (and, indeed, some even the 2003 versions), some players have some choices to make. Such as Geoff Ogilvy, a Pro V1x player, who was asked which ball he would play and gave this response out in Hawaii:
"The new-new one, I'm not going to use this week," said Ogilvy at a press conference at Kapalua leading in to this week's Mercedes Championship. "And the new one, of the old one, if that makes sense, that one is fine. I don't notice a difference. I'm going to play these two weeks, with the new version of the old one, and then do a bit more testing, and I'll probably -- the new one, there's good reports about the new-new one. So I've got a whole month in Phoenix to test them all out."
Confused? Well, Acushnet reconfigured its Pro V1 and Pro V1x in September so those balls would be outside the patents in question. That's the old one of the new one. The new one of the new one is a yet-to-be released version of the two balls that Acushnet will launch this year. Tour pros can expect similar questions to be asked right through the first few weeks of the year. Is it a big deal? Not really to me. As long as the players can't tell the difference this seems more nuisance than anything. But you may have a different take. In fact, I'm pretty much sure of it.
GOUGE: If ever there was a compelling reason to roll back the ball and make all tour players use the same unmarked model, Ogilvy's linguistic gymnastics might be it. He also said, "There's a new-old one, and there's a new-new one, which is the new one -- (laughter) -- which is the model in front of the old one. The other one is a 2007 ball and this is a 2009 ball. There's a version of the 2007 ball, but doesn't breach the patent, so I'm using the non-patent-breaching version of the 2007 ball, these two weeks." The sad thing is we understand this perfectly. What I'm curious about, though, is if the balls were unmarked, could Ogilvy tell the difference? Moreover, if we had some of our Hot List technical panel cut them open and spend a few weeks in the labs dissecting the rubber compounds, the polymers and the urethanes, could they tell the difference? Or is that something for the courts to decide?
The thing is I'll bet you can still find plenty of "breaching" Pro V1s out there. If you look on ebay you can find 1,695 sales ongoing under a search for "Pro V1," and not one of them is for a non-converted Pro V1 model, I'll bet. Who knows where it's going to lead to but I'm reminded of a story Greg Hopkins, the cordial and enlightened gentleman running Cleveland Golf once told me about patent issues. He was troubled where it was headed because he saw how completely incompetent the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office was. But he said the best way to solve a problem was to sit down and talk about it. He said he once had some issues with the folks at Ping, so he called John Solheim and the two hashed out their differences like, well, adults. I don't see that happening here. Callaway doesn't believe it needs to have a bouncer stand on the first tee and police whether players are using converted Pro V1s or older models. It would be nice if that faith was confirmed by reality. Perhaps it will be. But right now, it doesn't look like Callaway's folks and Titleist's folks are going to share a drink and a handshake any time soon. Probably because patent lawsuits are in the end a lot about making mountains out of molehills. Unfortunately, golf innovation itself has gone from mountains to molehills. That's a sure way to make everyone from innovators to lawyers scared. And no one looks his best when he's afraid of losing the nest egg.
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