I agree with Tim that they should just roll the ball back...phase it in....the ball manufacturers will make a ton of money in a short time frame and then golf ball sales will settle down to 'normal' levels.
'They' are already changing almost every ball line, every year, introducing new lines and constantly changing the cover materials, core materials, number of layers, dimple patterns, dimple depths, etc., etc. They can keep changing everything like they do now for ball manufacturing but can just take the ball back a little.
The USGA and manufacturers should work together...somehow...someway.
Oh well ....anyway ....back in bandcamp, I was reading about US Opens and came across this from Robert Sommers book, "THE U.S. OPEN Golf's Ultimate Challenge, 1987, page 135 regarding the 1947 US Open :
" Along with a number of others, Locke was lucky to be in the Open, because some of the qualifying rounds were chaotic. In St. Louis the whole round was canceled and played again because some players had been permitted to improve their lies and others hadn't. Locke qualified in the Metropolitan (New York) section, but he should have been disqualified because he cleaned his ball on the greens, which was permitted in PGA tournaments but not in USGA events. It violated the Rules of Golf. Since some 70 percent of the field did the same thing, however, everyone was excused.
They were not excused from another violation. The PGA also permitted players to carry sixteen clubs: some who forgot the USGA's fourteen-club limit were thrown out.
Controversies over the rules continued into the championship itself. Club manufacturers had agreed seven years earlier to limit the depth and width of the grooves that line the faces of iron clubs. The control became effective in 1942, but five years later some manufacturers still made clubs with wide and deeper grooves than the rules allowed. Players had to buff them down at the site of the Open. "
Wow ! Talk about different times !
So.... they should be able to work through this golf ball thing IMHO.
I will try to look at other sources regarding rules and the 47 US Open.