Thursday
Jul292010
"The governing body did not adequately prepare the world of golf for the changeover from old grooves to new grooves."
Jim Achenbach isn't exonerating the Duramed rules officials, but he says blame for the Sarah Brown DQ should start with the USGA.
What the USGA needed was, for lack of a better name, a School of Grooves. It should have been open to one and all. Golf associations, organizations and players should have been invited to attend.
Frankly, the situation has become terribly confusing. Many rules officials are not prepared to deal with the ramifications of the changeover in grooves. Most pros are blindly taking the word of someone else (usually a manufacturer or tour rep) that their wedges are permissible for competition. Most amateurs don’t understand whether their wedges are conforming or not.
Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 08:29 PM
Reader Comments (4)
Every golf club is identified by a specific set of markings in the database. Before making any ruling, all the markings should be completely checked. If there is anyone to blame in making it hard to check, it would be with Ping for not making the markings more obvious. Hiding the major difference on the hosel is a way to make sure that it might be missed. They could have put "CONFORMING" in big letters on the club, but they didn't. Instead it seems like they wanted to hide it on the hosel with a couple of letters that have some special meaning to them.
I've checked dozens of clubs for players on the database. It isn't hard as long as you take your time and make sure that every marking is examined. The problem does come when the table says "ATR" or "Additional Testing Required" which means that without putting it through the test we can't rule. But if it says "Yes" or "No" anyone should be able to get it right. The wedge in question definitely says "Yes", while the one the officials thought she had said "No". When a club comes up as "ATR", I tell the player that he shouldn't use it unless he can get it to someone who has the equipment to test it.
Let's see what the two Futures Tour officials DIDN'T do. They didn't wait until the round was over. They didn't use the USGA website correctly. They didn't smiply use the time, duirng which the player in question was playing the back nine, to make a careful review of the club in question after they looked at it on the course. They didn't call the USGA or Ping. They didn't use their own on-site testing gear as a check. They didn't double and triple check on their sources before making a ruling.
Honestly, if there is anything that is surprising to me in this story it is that any officials are ever being told that they can use the USGA Conforming List database as a "one and only" source for making such rulings. Achenbach seems to think that that's how the USGA has left it. I may be mistaken, but I think that is flatly incorrect. I think that the USGA's officials would say that there were about two or three additional fail-safes that the Futures Tour folks blew off in this case.
There is a Conformnig Driver Head List, too. And that hasn't cuased any problems like this one. This was two dumb, officious (has there ever been a better place to use that term?), officials doing their worst.
One is the possibility that the USGA might ban 60+ degree wedges. "How would that be enforced?" Achenbach asks. Good question. The notion of loft-lie machines being set up on first tees or in scorer tents is ridiculous. So guess what, Mr. Achenbach; the USGA didn't do it. They asked themselves the question before you did.
The other thing that Achenbach asks is why it wouldn't have been simpler to just switch over the whole world of golf to a new conforming groove pattern, all at once. And the answer there of course is that the larger wide world of recreational golf doesn't have to worry about these rules at all. And so these rules really are easier to enforce, for the few players who matter in the technology debates.
Of course, Achenbach might have asked the question, "Why not just re-craft the specifications on golf ball performance and forget about grooves?" But he didn't. I shall be looking forward to his future column entitled, "Why we all need to give the USGA our full support in the battle over golf ball regulations."
"Many rules officials are not prepared to deal with the ramifications of the changeover in grooves."
Apparantly, these officials cant even operate a telephone--call USGA; Ask USGA. The prob here wasnt the rule, it was the official.
Most pros are blindly taking the word of someone else (usually a manufacturer or tour rep) that their wedges are permissible for competition.
Well, in this case, fire up the test equipment YOU HAVE ON SITE.
"Most amateurs don’t understand whether their wedges are conforming or not."
Amateurs dont NEED to know because ALL their stuff is conforming until 2014. Only amateur who needs to know is one who is playing in a pro event--and there are about 14 notices provided at those events.