It would have been nice to ask Jim Vernon (a very nice man, by all accounts, and a good man for the USGA as far as I know) some questions:
1. "Jim, are we to understand that the USGA has mixed motives in enacting the groove regulations; that one goal is to reward the player that hits more fairways, but also to encourage players to 'throttle back' off the tee, in order to hit those fairways?"
2. "Does the USGA anticipate that tour players will demand, from their ball sponsors, balls that spin more, to make up for lost spin due to groove re-formations?"
3. "Is it the hope of the USGA that with tour players feeling that they need more spin, and putting higher-spin balls into play, that the USGA will have effectively encouraged a kind of voluntary rollback among the players affected by the groove rules?"
4. "Does the USGA fear that tour players will not respond to the groove rules as anticipated (per the above questions and answers), but will instead elect to put higher-lofted wedges, of 62-64 degrees or more, and thereby generate spin [or at least, ball-stopping loft], while using low-spin balls that they can bomb off the tee?" This leads to other questions: "Will the USGA ban high-lofted clubs of more than 60 degrees, and how would you expect average tournament committees to police lofts, since a 60-degree wedge can quite easily be bent to 63 or more"?
5. "The USGA has always maintained the position (laudable, in my own view) that any 'bifurcation' of the rules was a big negative. Why should anyone consider the groove rules as antything other than a 'bifurcation'?"
6. "Under the Joint Statement of Principles, the USGA pronounced in 2002 that any further gains in golf ball distance due to technology would be undesirable. Then, there were more gains, and now, with technology itself apparently somewhat 'flat', distance gains themselves have flattened. Doesn't the USGA and PGA Tour data pretty conclusively prove that in the last 20 years, golf ball distances have jumped markedly in association with technology, and flattened when technology is static? Doesn't it all prove that player size, player fitness, player training and coaching, etc., are all red-herrings in the debate of golf ball distance?"
7. "Will the USGA publish its golf ball study data?"
[Edit., to add one more question for Mr. Vernon...]
8. "Are you able to tell us, has the USGA been threatened by any equipment manufacturer with litigation if the USGA were to roll back the fail-point in the Overall Distance Standard, as many of golf's most prominent players, course architects and writers have suggested should be done?"