[JohnV]

Actually it is 2010 for the pros, 2014 for the top amateurs and 2024 or beyond for the rest of us hackers.  Of course, by 2024, we will either have bought new clubs or the grooves will be gone.

So a collegiate player who attempts to qualify for the US Open in 2010 will have to play clubs with the new groove definition, while he can play his old square grooved clubs for the NCAA season ...

Mike, that is correct unless the NCAA chooses to adopt the new rule.  Any organization can adopt the new rule.  The USGA has said it won't adopt it for their amateur events until 2014.  So, a player could play in the US Amateur with old clubs, but would need new ones for the US Open.

I don't think of this as bifurcation.  To me bifurcation would be if they allowed the continued manufacture of older grooved clubs after 2010 for sale to the general public.  Since that isn't the case, all they are saying is that your old clubs can still be used, you just won't be able to buy new ones.  It is just grandfathering the clubs for those of us who don't get them for free.

It might be a good idea to get a new set of irons next year.

[Carl Rogers]

Right.  There is much to dislike about this, although I am a self-professed agnostic on the subject of grooves.

1.  This is bifurcation.  Bifurcation sucks.  Period.

2.  This just encourages the notion of penal rough as a serious element of golf course architecture.  That sucks, too.

3.  This might be a backhanded method of getting elite players to demand that the ball manufacturers give them ammunition that spins more.  A lot more.  And supposedly, that will be a self-governor on distance.  Are you still with me?  I mean, it would have been way too easy to just craft a sensible restriction on golf ball distance, wouldn't it?

4.  Will this help, or hurt, the cause of reform of golf ball testing specs by the USGA?  It won't help, I don't think.  It is a distraction, mostly, and gives an illusion of doing something.  It will make scoring harder, but will not protect what is best about classic golf course architecture.

One this will be great for; heated arguments on golf discussion boards.

[Carl Rogers]

Bifurication is indeed undesirable .... but probably unstoppable.  Can the governing bodies really control the golf ball of the casual golfer?  Can golf club 'X' really ever be in a position to know if a club or ball conforms in their club championship event.  Irrelevant to all except those of club 'X'.  If people are going to cheat, they will cheat.

Why not ban the use of titanium in a golf club? That by itself might limit the driver size to 380 cc and might force everyone to use a maximum length driver of 43 1/2 inches?

I do not agree with banning certain club lofts.

[John Burzynski]

Actually it is 2010 for the pros, 2014 for the top amateurs and 2024 or beyond for the rest of us hackers.  Of course, by 2024, we will either have bought new clubs or the grooves will be gone.

So a collegiate player who attempts to qualify for the US Open in 2010 will have to play clubs with the new groove definition, while he can play his old square grooved clubs for the NCAA season ...

Mike, that is correct unless the NCAA chooses to adopt the new rule.  Any organization can adopt the new rule.  The USGA has said it won't adopt it for their amateur events until 2014.  So, a player could play in the US Amateur with old clubs, but would need new ones for the US Open.

I don't think of this as bifurcation.  To me bifurcation would be if they allowed the continued manufacture of older grooved clubs after 2010 for sale to the general public.  Since that isn't the case, all they are saying is that your old clubs can still be used, you just won't be able to buy new ones.  It is just grandfathering the clubs for those of us who don't get them for free.

It might be a good idea to get a new set of irons next year.

One advantage that I can already see the manufacturers touting;

Pre 2010 advertisements:  "Hurry and buy your wedges with the old style USGA grooves now, before the 2010 USGA manufacturing cut off date".

Post 2010 advertisements: "Hurry and buy your brand new USGA groove conforming wedges now".

I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but the club manufacturers stand to sell more clubs both ways.  The general public will have little in depth understanding of the new rulings.

[Chuck Brown]

There have been some pretty good thoughts posted above.  As far as all of the ones that have indicated that this might just be a back-door attmept at a ball rollback by forcing tour players to demand of their sponsors that they give them spinnier balls, I say, "Maybe."  But I am really not sure that spinnier balls will equate to shorter driver distances.

I think the bad in this outweighs the good.

"THE BAD" LIST
1.  This business with grooves distracts from the serious debate over golf balls.
2.  Any rollback on clubs has the potential to hurt the business of recreational golf and recreational golfers more than elite players, who pay nothing for clubs and who have no recreational golf budget.  A ball rollback would have been painless to consumers.  Nobody has bought their 2010 golf balls yet.
3.  The way to make things palatable to recreational players is with long grandfathering periods.  That's what we'll get in this case.  Which is just a longer period of confusion, uncertainty, and bifurcation.
4.  The question as to how does anyone measure grooves is a good one.  What will clubs do in ten years, with players in a club championship with various old wedges?  Rules on grooves, rules on lofts, rules on CoR or CT, rules on MoI; these are all incomprehensible and virtually unenforcable if we were to rely on local associations and local club professionals to enforce them.  Balls are infinitely more fungible, and harder to alter than clubs.
5.  Emphasis on grooves, and the imposition of penal rough as the main line of golfing strategy is just really, really bad for the game.  Deeper rough is antithetic to much of golf course architecture.  Heavy rough slows down play.  Heavy rough presumably requires more water.

So what would "THE GOOD" List look like?  A lot shorter, I'd think...

[JohnV]

Chuck,

Counters to your BAD list

1) Most players on the PGA Tour who have been interviewed feel that the grooves have a major impact and this will have an effect on them.  Given that, the ball rollback might not be needed.  If that is wrong, then the need for a ball rollback becomes obvious and likely.

2-3) There is no hurt for the recreational golfer as this doesn't take effect for them until AT LEAST 2024 by which time most clubs will be worn out or replaced.  Additionally, most recreational golfers don't get much spin from the rough anyway so they aren't affected.  There is no confusion unless you are playing in a major championship in which case you don't meet my definition of a recreational golfer.  Also, as I said in a previous post, I don't consider this bifurcation as all clubs manufactured after 1/1/2010 will meet the standard or be illegal which will make them as popular as the ERC II driver was with most golfers.

4) Either the manufacturers will identify the clubs differently (see the "+" on the Ping Eye 2) or a list will be maintained as there is online for drivers right now.  Cheaters will find ways around the rules regardless of what you do.  Local associations have no problem identifying legal vs. illegal drivers when asked.  If you can't figure it out, call 908-234-2300 and they'll tell you.  Clubs and associations rely on the player to not play illegal equipment.  If they cheat and they get caught, they will regret it.  It is always possible to take a conforming set of irons and re-grind the grooves, regardless of the specifications.

5) With grooves that make it harder to spin the ball from rough, less rough is needed.  If anything, the length of rough should get shorter, not longer.

[JSlonis]

Actually it is 2010 for the pros, 2014 for the top amateurs and 2024 or beyond for the rest of us hackers.  Of course, by 2024, we will either have bought new clubs or the grooves will be gone.

So a collegiate player who attempts to qualify for the US Open in 2010 will have to play clubs with the new groove definition, while he can play his old square grooved clubs for the NCAA season ...

Mike, that is correct unless the NCAA chooses to adopt the new rule.  Any organization can adopt the new rule.  The USGA has said it won't adopt it for their amateur events until 2014.  So, a player could play in the US Amateur with old clubs, but would need new ones for the US Open.

I don't think of this as bifurcation.  To me bifurcation would be if they allowed the continued manufacture of older grooved clubs after 2010 for sale to the general public.  Since that isn't the case, all they are saying is that your old clubs can still be used, you just won't be able to buy new ones.  It is just grandfathering the clubs for those of us who don't get them for free.

It might be a good idea to get a new set of irons next year.

This rule will affect a lot of guys.  Just looking at it from my own perspective, I'm going to need a new USGA conforming set of irons/wedges if I want to try and qualify for the US Open while my regular sticks will be fine to play with in every other event for another 4 years.  Seems silly to spend the $$ for another set of clubs that I won't use hardly at all for 4 years.

If the ultimate goal is for the better player to use a ball that spins more, which will in turn travel less distance, why the heck not do that in the first place.  Then all this groove regulation would have never surfaced and there would be less problems all around.   

When this issue first came up I wrote these same thoughts to Mr. Rugge at the USGA at that time.  This new proposal seems like a very roundabout way to fix something that could have been easily addressed some time ago.  A simple golf ball regulation would have solved so many issues and at the same time, saved a lot of time and money for the USGA, for golfers, for golf courses, etc.

[john_stiles]

If  'spinnier' golf balls are in fact needed and produced,  guess it could result in less distance.

And if it does,  the ball manufacturers will continue in the lab, devloping new materials, new layers & shells,  to find a spinnier ball that has the old distance.  This isn't going to stop unless B&I manufacturers' R&D monies dry up.

The people making the B&I rules will always lag behind the B&I manufacturers.

It will be interesting to see what develops.

Maybe Tiger's drop in distance, for a spinnier ball, means it will be difficult to have a spinnier ball that goes as far.    But now,   everyone might be chasing this goal,   if they are not already.

[john_stiles]

JSlonis,

Now JS, why in the world would you want to address the situation using the least expensive, most expendable commodity which must cost less than $1 to produce ?    ie> You can buy a pretty good multilayer ball for about $1 per ball.

This was a very deft way to see if you can get around the situation.   You only impact a very few for a while,  see if your idea works, etc.

I agree with you Jamie.

[Phil Benedict]

Maybe this is stating the obvious but isn't going after distance via the grooves safer from a litigation standpoint than going after the ball itself?  Particularly when the initial effect is on a tiny subset of players.

There is a certain irony to this given given Ping's square grooves litigation.

[JSlonis]

Maybe this is stating the obvious but isn't going after distance via the grooves safer from a litigation standpoint than going after the ball itself?  Particularly when the initial effect is on a tiny subset of players.

There is a certain irony to this given given Ping's square grooves litigation.

What's ironic is that all the "square grooved" Ping clubs that were manufactured back in that time will be FINE when the new rules take effect.

[Brent Hutto]

5) With grooves that make it harder to spin the ball from rough, less rough is needed.  If anything, the length of rough should get shorter, not longer.

Well, there may indeed be some slight effect like that initially. But once they notice that the elite players don't play the game a bit differently with their new, improved de-grooved clubs (although perhaps scores might go up a tiny fraction) the people setting up tournaments will just redouble their efforts to grow enough rough to get the job done.

The USGA Handicap System, with its ESC and rules for imputing scores on holes not completed and allowance for posting expected scores in conceded holes, does not in fact tell golfers that Every Stroke is Sacred and that match-play games ought to be played under half-assed Medal conditions because the score is going in the computer at the end of the round. It says nothing of the kind. Yet the result of posting a stroke play (or stroke-play-looking) score for every hole of every round is that golfers insist on playing some weird match/medal hybrid and on finishing every hole (except for picking up short putts and taking mulligans, of course) because they think it's important for the computer.

So I don't expect logic to apply here. This silly process is going to deliver two messages to every golfer in the USA. One is that The Rough Is The Thing and that heavy rough is the way to protect precious par from those evil long hitting monsters. The second is that there are now officially two games, notwithstanding some pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by future merging of the rules decades from now. There is the equipment used and the game played by Tour players, there is the cheating equipment that hackers are supposed to use and there is some vaguely defined middle ground of "serious" amateur tournament golf which presumably is where the transition between the two set of rules happens.

A sad day all around.

[Jim Sweeney]

Jamie:

The particular situation with the Ping Eye 2s could not, of course, be avoided since part of that setttlement included a lifetime (in the US, anyway) grandfathering of those clubs. As mentioned previously, the clubs were grandfathered because, under the testing regimens of the time, there was no decernable difference between  pre- Eye 2 and Eye 2 performance.

[JohnV]

Maybe this is stating the obvious but isn't going after distance via the grooves safer from a litigation standpoint than going after the ball itself?  Particularly when the initial effect is on a tiny subset of players.

There is a certain irony to this given given Ping's square grooves litigation.

What's ironic is that all the "square grooved" Ping clubs that were manufactured back in that time will be FINE when the new rules take effect.

Just don't take them to the Open Championship.

[Chuck Brown]

The litigation over the Ping Eye2 wasn't about "square grooves" per se.  It was about the USGA's exceedingly complicated regulaiton dealing with the width between the shoulder areas at the edges of the grooves.  If you think you've been bad and deserve punsihment, try to figure out that rule.

I am convinced that the only way that Ping was going to prevail at trial was the attractiveness of its argument that the USGA had created an incomprehensible, and very poorly-enforced rule that was applied to the already-successful Eye2 as an almost ex post facto law.

It was a shame the way it turned out.  With (Ping lawyer) Leonard Decof's disgraceful personal summons served on Michael Bonallack at the Walker Cup dinner.  The USGA folded, to its long-lasting disrepute.  The only silver lining in the cloud was the PGA Tour's agreement, forced on it by Ping, that it would abide by USGA rules on equipment.  (A stark reminder that the equipment manufacturers never wanted, and probably still do not want, any bifurcation of the rules.)

It might indeed be the case that someone has strategized that this is a back-door way to get a "voluntary" ball rollback from players who demand a spinnier ball.  I just don't know.  And I wish I knew whether or not, and to what extent, the USGA's failure to regulate balls is motivated by fear of litigation.  The subject gets talked about a lot, but I just don't know.  It seems to me to be a real disgrace if the governing body of the game can't do its job because of the fear of a lawsuit from just one equipment manufacturer.  If there is that fear, I wish the USGA would just take it on and, for once, "go to the mattresses" and win.

[Ari Techner]

This new rule is going to make it much harder and more expensive to manufacture and produce forged golf clubs.  Most forged clubs today are made with machine pressed grooves and then finished by hand.  This will be impossible with the new groove regulation as any hand grinding or finishing of the face will remove the edge radius that will be mandatory according to new rule.  Forged clubs will pretty much require a milled or machine ground flat face and milled or machined grooves.  This will greatly increase the production costs of making a forged club even more and will push even more companies towards cast clubs and increase the prices of forged clubs by any company that decides to continue to forge their clubs.  With a cast club you will not have this problem as you can cast the new groove into the head.   

I agree with everyone who talks about the ball being the obvious problem and the obvious thing to change. 

[Sean Leary]

This new rule is going to make it much harder and more expensive to manufacture and produce forged golf clubs.  Most forged clubs today are made with machine pressed grooves and then finished by hand.  This will be impossible with the new groove regulation as any hand grinding or finishing of the face will remove the edge radius that will be mandatory according to new rule.  Forged clubs will pretty much require a milled or machine ground flat face and milled or machined grooves.  This will greatly increase the production costs of making a forged club even more and will push even more companies towards cast clubs and increase the prices of forged clubs by any company that decides to continue to forge their clubs.  With a cast club you will not have this problem as you can cast the new groove into the head.   

I agree with everyone who talks about the ball being the obvious problem and the obvious thing to change. 

Ari,

How much will this affect your business? I hear great things about your wedges...

[Paul_Turner]

There is no way that this rule change leads to a ball that goes less far!

[JSlonis]

Sean,

Ari's company produces a first class product.  They'll do a custom job to match pretty much anything you require.

Ari,

As Sean mentioned above, how much does this ruling effect you current shop and machines?  I know the heads are forged in Japan, but assuming they'll have to change so much in the production process, how long will it take before you know what the increased cost and increased work will be for you?

[Ari Techner]

We actually had a representative from our foundry who was in CA fly up to our shop today to talk in person about this and a few other things.  I do not know exact numbers just yet but it is looking like this could increase the cost of our raw forged heads by as much as 50%. 

[Wayne_Kozun]

It appears that you can continue to use the old wedges for at least four more years according to a release from the USGA in January of this year:  Update on 2010 Equipment Changes Related to Grooves (usga.org)

While we have continued to review whether these updated Rules will apply to all golfers, it will remain effective only through use of the Model Local Rule (G-2). Any decision to apply the January 1, 2010, specifications to all golfers, which would impact the conformance of many clubs available and conforming in 2009, will not become effective until at least four years from the date of that decision. As a result, the earliest that a change would occur is January 2028

[jeffwarne]

It appears that you can continue to use the old wedges for at least four more years according to a release from the USGA in January of this year:  Update on 2010 Equipment Changes Related to Grooves (usga.org)

While we have continued to review whether these updated Rules will apply to all golfers, it will remain effective only through use of the Model Local Rule (G-2). Any decision to apply the January 1, 2010, specifications to all golfers, which would impact the conformance of many clubs available and conforming in 2009, will not become effective until at least four years from the date of that decision. As a result, the earliest that a change would occur is January 2028

Any wonder why drivers and balls can't be reduced?
LOL.


Given that the groove rule was changed 16 years ago, and the clubs that were targeted are still technically legal unless local rule applied.
It was supposed to be until 2024, so that was news to me-Thanks Wayne.


And all of the spin that was allegedly taken away was restored within a couple of years via innovation.

[Carl Johnson]

Regardless of what the USGA has to say about it, you'll have to pry my old (grooves) 64 degree wedge out of my cold dead hands.  The grooves don't do me any good, but I can't see forking out money for a new wedge.

[Wayne_Kozun]

I bought up a bunch of the old wedges before they were outlawed.  I think I still have a Vokey 54* in cellophane.

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