One problem is that forged clubs bend through play, and the loft of a 56 could bend to a 57 without the player's knowledge. Tough way to get DQ'ed.
The better players will adjust most easily. Decent players who are skilled with the lob wedge will be most punished.
I would be tempted to take an extra 56 and grind the bounce down to about three degrees so I could open the face up.
Will that's exactly what they'll do.
The USGA can't figure out that drivers and balls are the problem.
God these guys are asleep at the wheel.
So if I survive with a great short game and creativity and use multiple wedges I'm going to punished but the wind tunnel geeks and bombers are going to continue to buy length (and make your driver obsolete every other year)
But what else can they regulate on the driver? The limit Coefficient of Restitution, they limit Moment of Intertia, the limit length. How much else can be limited? I have read that they are considering limiting COR over the whole face (currently it is only the center of the face, IIRC). But there is only so much they can limit. And they limit head dimensions side to side and front to back and of course total head displacement. The more you regulate, the more money Callaway, Taylor Made, and the rest will pump into R&D to max them out over and over again.
I think they need to just stop worrying about everything. You ever hear how they came up with the .830 COR? The Ping TiSi was the 'hottest' face driver at the time, the USGA didn't want to make any existing driver illegal, the Ping had COR of .830, so guess what the final number was?
I think making the COR be .830 over the whole face will do a lot. Because right now, the real sweet spot on the driver is above the centerline of the face. That location maximizes launch angle and minimizes spin. So, make the COR .830 there (there is a reason for these Inverted Cone and Hyperbolic faces) and you'll change the whole driver.
John, my view is that the USGA missed the boat on drivers. Thanks (or no thanks, as the case may be) to Frank Thomas, the former Technical Director who proclaimed, back when the newest drivers were less than 360cc, that head size was rapidly reaching a point of diminishing returns. He was wrong, and he did not foresee what additional technologies (springlike faces and Higher MoI) would accompany very high-volume drivers.
A reasonable restriction on drivers (remember when we all thought that the Biggest Big Bertha looked like a toaster on a stick?) back then might have made much of the later, incomprehensible regulatory efforts (CoR, then CT, and MoI) unneccessary.
In my view, clubs with heads bigger than about 360cc start to not look like golf clubs anymore.
Still, golf balls are the truly perverse element in the golfer/shaft/clubhead/ball equation. The ball is the cheapest thing, the least interesting thing, the most replaceable, fungible thing in the entire equation. And, in my view, it is the one thing that has most contributed to startling distance gains among elites, with no equivalent benefit to recreational players.
(Looking at tour players' stats, the simplest executive summary of distance gains are that there have been great big bursts of increasing distance gains when the Pro V was introduced, and improved. With no significant new ball developments in the last three years or so, distance gains have flattened. Some people interpret those numbers to mean, "There is no problem. The distance explosion seems to have stopped." I interpret those numbers to mean, "The problem is nicely defined; it's the ball, stupid.")