TERRE HAUTE — The USGA and the Royal and Ancient, through their distinctions of being the ruling bodies for the game of golf, have also been saddled with the burden or responsibility to protect the integrity of the game. In recent history this has meant keeping up to speed on golf balls, equipment being produced and setting guidelines for conformity. The latest equipment rules change is in regards to the grooves on clubs and their depth and shape.
Over the last couple of years the USGA and the R&A; have studied how groove design has an affect on the performance and spin of a golf shot. The data compared spin rates for “v” and “u” shaped grooves in wedges. V-shaped grooves played from the fairway have about 11,000 rpm of spin, while 10,000 rpm of spin came from u-shaped grooves. The bigger difference comes from shots hit out of the rough. There, u-shaped grooves create almost 2,000 rpm more spin than v-shaped grooves.
The catalyst for this study goes back to 1989 in the British Open that year, when Mark Calcavecchia, using a set of Ping Eye2 irons, hit a 5-iron on the 18th hole from a flyer-lie in the rough, that spun and bit just as if it had been hit from the fairway. The USGA and PGA tour were already in a legal battle over square grooves, that shot just did a great job of illustrating their point. Eventually a compromise was reached; the square grooves were modified slightly, and they were deemed legal.
The PGA Tour and USGA didn’t have much in the way of statistics to give their legal suit any girth at the time, but now they do. Since then, the USGA has been paying attention and compiling statistics. Their statistics show that scoring in PGA tournaments has changed drastically over the years, due to players’ abilities to throw balls at pins from farther distances and with worse lies.
Players are no longer penalized from missing the fairway because they can still spin the ball out of the rough. Today’s tour player spins the ball better from the rough with an 8-iron than what a player from 25 years ago could do from the fairway with a wedge. The correlation between winning money on the PGA tour and driving accuracy has diminished. In implementing new groove regulations, the USGA is trying to shift the balance of success coming from power or precision more toward the precision side again. After all, not all courses can be rebuilt to accommodate long hitters.
The proposal that the USGA made in February of this year was to make a change in the Rules of Golf that would regulate grooves on golf clubs, “to limit the performance on shots from the rough to that of the traditional v-groove design.” They would like to impose limits on the sharpness of the groove edge on clubs, other than driving clubs and putters, to a minimum radius of .010 inches, and to regulate the cross sectional area of the groove itself. The actual proposal includes a complicated formula which they sent in a letter to club manufacturers: the area of the entire groove, divided by the width of the groove plus its pitch (the distance between grooves) should not be greater than 0.0025 inches squared per inch, according to www.usga.org.
The USGA proposes that these new groove rules only affect clubs manufactured after January 1, 2010. The USGA Rules of Golf would add “A Condition of Competition,” effective Jan. 1, 2009, that would allow a Committee to require the use of clubs that conform to the new groove rules for competitive events. They recommend though, that the Condition only apply to competitions involving expert players. So the rule is trying to affect only the professionals, but if manufacturers stop creating u-groove clubs for the general public, the average player will be affected. What they will probably do is continue to make the non-conforming wedges, but label them as such. I’m wondering though, if the LPGA will implement this Condition of Competition. Women are not likely to get the loft and spin on the ball that men get, so diminished spin on their shots could really hurt them.
Will PGA tour players, with all their skill and strength notice the difference? Sure they will. Some of them PGA players, like Padraig Harrington and Vijay Singh, are so concerned with the spin they get with their wedges that they use new wedges every week! It will be interesting to see if the correlation between precision and scoring grows stronger again, and thereby forcing manufacturers to make drivers geared more toward accuracy than distance. Then again, wouldn’t all this be solved if they just backed off on the distance a golf ball will go?
Quote of the Week — “… don’t just assume it will happen, and certainly don’t put money on it. In the meantime, we can all rejoice in the fact that we now have an official excuse to go out and buy a new set of clubs. Can’t wait to go tell the wife.” — JP Bouffard (on the SandTrap.com, 6/28/07) on the USGA’s proposed rule on grooves.
On & Off the Course
Groovy wedges: Possible rule changes keep spinning
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Death Notice: Feb. 7, 2013
• Gary R. Wright
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Donna Lynn Strahla Bown
Donna Lynn Strahla Bown passed away early Friday morning, Jan. 25, 2013, with her children by her side.
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‘The Match’ pitting amateurs vs. pros recalled 62 years later
Quote of the Day: “I play golf with friends sometimes, but there are never friendly games.” — Ben Hogan.
Bubba Watson has had a busy fall. Not only did he play all the way to the final round of the FedEx Championships, and in the Ryder Cup, he also played in an event commemorating a very famous match played at Cypress Point in 1956, pitting two of the greatest golf pros at the time against two of the best amateurs.
Come to think of it, all four were some of the best golfers of all time. This year’s event was celebrating The First Tee’s exceeding $100 million in pledges to reach 10 million new young people. It wasn’t televised and kept very quiet; only 225 people were in the gallery.
One of the people in the gallery was Mark Frost, the author of a book titled “The Match,” which is about that match played 62 years ago that was re-enacted in modern terms last week. The pros in 1956 were Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson and the amateurs were Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward. It was supposed to have been a private affair, built around a wager by two millionaires, George Coleman and Eddie Lowery. -
ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Golf from the wrong side of the brain
Imagine this scenario: a woman, small in stature (possibly freckled), walks into a hospital emergency room and says, “I have an emergency, I need a doctor quickly!” The admitting nurse, ever trying to be helpful, asks what the emergency is.
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Farmers looking at widely varying yields
Combines will roll through fields this weekend, bringing in the harvest from a summer with nearly no rain.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Golf debut in London would have been nice
As the Olympics get underway in London this weekend, I was thinking it’s too bad that the Olympic committee decided too late to add golf as one of the sports for this event; instead it will be added to the 2016 Olympics in Rio De Janeiro.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Getting to Hoosier country’s best golfing venue part of the fun
If you are looking for Indiana’s premier golfing destination, then you should look no further than French Lick.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Indiana's Pete Dye courses worth the drive
You’ve probably heard of the Robert Trent Jones Golf trail throughout Alabama, but you might not be aware that Indiana has its own “Pete Dye Golf Trail” comprised of seven courses.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Fathers typically a big influence on golfing sons
Some events fall naturally into place around holidays. The Fourth of July always falls somewhere during Wimbledon, giving all of the Yanks in attendance something to be boisterous about, to the chagrin of their hosts; The Masters often, but not always, ends on Easter Sunday, which is fitting since golfers find it such a reverent occasion.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Memorial just one of many visions of Jack Nicklaus
When Jack Nicklaus was a young man, the golfer he most admired was Bob Jones.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: With some tricky rules, golf is not a walk in the park
Golf is not a casual sport, even though it has a term called “casual water.”
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On and off the course: Sycamores seeded sixth heading into MVC golf tourney
It wasn’t too long ago that Indiana State University didn’t even have a women’s golf team.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: A hard ticket to come by
This is the weekend of the Masters Tournament, the first of the four major tournaments.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Some things on golf course are worse than steep putts
It’s not often that anything gets more scary on a golf course than a steep downhill putt, but on some courses around the world, things a little more on the supernatural side might give you a bigger fright!
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: The shot heard round the world
I don’t know if the Golf Channel will show a “Best Shots of 2011” highlight reel, much like ESPN does for baseball or football.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: The Red, White and Blue visits the Isle of Green
In 2006, the Ryder Cup was held in Ireland at The K Club in County Kildare.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Fall may be coming but golf season is far from over
Once the major tournaments are over with, what’s there to look forward to in the world of golf?
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Golf… simplified!
Golf is not a simple game. A golf course is made up of 18 holes, all different. There are par-3s, par-4s and par-5s; they all vary in length and elevation, and each has its own challenges. There can be water hazards, trees, sand bunkers, tall grass, hills, valleys — and then, if that’s not enough, there’s probably wind too.
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On and Off the Course: Northern Ireland builds on golf history
Northern Ireland is only about 5,452 square miles in area and has a population about the same as West Virginia, which is about 1,880,344.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Women’s Open at the Broadmoor
This is the weekend of the U.S. Women’s Open, and this year it’s being played at The Broadmoor, East Course, in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: The Fort Golf Course: A Walk in the Park…
Indiana has some pretty spectacular state parks, but one of them gives you the ability to “spoil a good walk” by chasing a little white ball.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Father’s Day is a good day for golfers
Most people consider the time around Christmas to be the gift-buying season.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Playing with lead a difficult task
As exciting as last week’s Masters was, with six players being tied for the lead at one point on Sunday, it was very difficult watching Rory McIlroy fall apart to shoot an 80.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Masters a rite of spring
This is Masters weekend, the grand kickoff to the golf season for a lot of golfers. Sure, there have been tournaments on TV, because the professionals have been playing in Hawaii, California, Texas, Dubai, and other areas not so affected by winter as we are here in the Midwest, but to me, watching The Masters is a rite of spring.
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ON THE OFF THE COURSE: Some history on the Ryder Cup
I fell asleep in way too many history classes to ever qualify as a history buff. However, since I have grown up a bit (not much), I enjoy learning about all kinds of history. I often have questions about how something began, or how something came to be.
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On and Off the Course: Purdue's Kampen Course a gem in Indiana's rough
About a month ago, Indiana was still heavily mired in heat and humidity, making outdoor activities such as golf less appealing than usual. At that time it felt like the repressive heat would never go away, it would never rain again, and all of the grass was just going to continue to wither and die. And the month prior to that we kept getting rained out of golf events!
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On and Off the Course: Successful golfers know ... focus is the key
I have a good friend who coached his daughter’s basketball team for a number of years, and told me that his theme with the girls was always “focus”, until it was ingrained in their brains. Now when they play high school ball, if they hear “focus” yelled from the stands, they know the source.
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On and Off the Course: Technology adds even more fun to the course
You’ve hit a drive into some brush in an area marked as a hazard, but you can’t find the ball to prove it is there. And no one actually witnessed it go in the hazard. You just think that’s where it probably is. What is the rule for this situation?
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On and Off the Course: Anthony Gonzalez First Tee Classic a worthwhile charity event
On Monday, I worked as a volunteer for the Anthony Gonzalez First Tee Classic, Golf Tournament and Auction at Eagle Creek Golf Course in Indianapolis. It was an absolutely beautiful day, with clear blue skies, just a few wispy clouds here and there and a high temperature of about 76 degrees.
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On and Off the Course: Trends show golf in decline
You don’t have to watch the news or read the paper to understand that America is struggling on the economic front. The evidence can be witnessed at the local golf course.
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