Jim,
Apparently you are under the misapprehension that golf is supposed to be an easy game, where the player should be able to lean on his equipment to overcome his shortcomings as a player. I for one think that golf is supposed to be challenging and should be about one's skills (or lack of skills) and choosing different equipment (other than getting properly fit with the correct length clubs etc.) should not affect the results of one's shots in any material way. If you can't stop the ball on the green when you hit into the rough then you should either not hit into the rough, learn to hit it really high so you don't need spin to stop it, or figure out a good bailout place where you can get it up and down from and play there.
BTW I probably hit fewer fairways than about any 5 handicap you've ever seen so it isn't because I'm always playing from the center of the fairway that I say this. Far from it! (pun intended) BTW, my irons are actually so old they have V grooves because that's all there was back then
Not because I refused to buy U grooves on moral grounds or anything crazy like that, just because I'm too lazy to go through the work of testing out new irons and finding ones I like the feel of.
I'm so sick of the way technology is slowly by steadily taking the skill out of the game. Before metal woods, it used to be that the ability to hit a driver well at all was the mark of a reasonably accomplished player, but its a complete joke now with the 460cc clubheads, that's by far the easiest club in the bag to hit for both good players and 30 handicappers. If you don't believe the latter, watch some hackers sometime they can at least make solid contact with that huge clubhead off the tee (even if it may go some crazy direction because they their swing won't allow them to square the face) Once off the tee when they start trying to hit reasonable clubhead sized woods or irons they are topping and chunking their way to the green! With the modern ball there's much less skill required for driving into the wind, you can hit a mile into the air and still get quite reasonable distance - I know, I've never been able to hit my driver low as used to be required and the new ball completely covered up that flaw in my golfing skill set!
Now the pampered pros are whining because golfers with actual shotmaking skills like Tiger are going to have a greater advantage over the huddled masses who just let technology do the work for them when they are hitting out of the rough. Cry me a river!