Patrick:
As far as the manufacturers filing suit if the USGA rewrote the USGA I&B and ODS rules and regs and changed the standards, I believe I covered all that in detail in the posts above. Do you understand what their "notice and comment" period is and what it means and what giving the manufacturers the time to conform to new rules and regs means?
So why doesn't the USGA go ahead and rewrite the I&B rules and regs and the ODS standards and roll back the distance the ball goes to some former time--maybe 1975, or 1950 or even 1925?
That's a good question, isn't it? One reason just may be becasue if they did that they'd effectively render everything out there in the hands and in the bags of golfers "non-conforming".
Another reason is obviously that would make them look like they made mistakes along the way and they probably can't take that perception.
And another reason just may be, that despite what you say about them ruining the game and being ineffectual pussies and such just maybe they feel the golfing public really doesn't want them to do it! Did you ever try looking at it that way? Did you ever stop to think that just maybe the things you think, the golfing public doesn't agree with?
Voluntary compliance is what its all about though, and hopefully the golfing public will tell us all what they want.
I've said for years now I think the USGA still has the power and the respect in I&B to just go super public, and do it by bringing all the entities together and saying to the world (hopefully with the R&A if they'd ever wake up) something like:
"We've brought golf in rules and rules and regs this far and its worked pretty well, and now we believe that for various reasons, partly of our own doing, that distance in golf has gone too far, that now it's basically obsoleted too many of our playing fields that are the essence of the game, so here's what we recommend be done. Please go along with us as you always have in the past."
That's redefining their basic mission, something I believe they desperately need to do right now, and I think it would work if they do that now and do it right and do it massively publicly. If the manufacturers just say no, I think that'll make them look like "black hats" like greedy business exploiters who don't have the long term survival of the game at heart.
The regulatory bodies and the manufacturers are basically vying for the golfers out there and which way they want to go. Who's gonna persuade and convince them, who's gonna get them to choose the way it will be? If they stick with the USGA's rewritten I&B and ODS standards it will be the USGA/R&A but if they go with the manufacturers, amateur golf and golf as we've known it will really change, the USGA/R&A in I&B will be irrelevant, just like tennis's old USLTA is basically now irrelevent in tennis and as far as distance goes in the future the sky will be the limit---who will be there to even try to stop it? The manufacturers? Of course not, that would be dreaming and a total joke!