In the Groove

| February 8, 2010 8:00 PM

Owen McClain, PGA Teaching Professional

Recently, the Coeur d'Alene Resort and Nike Golf sponsored a two-day PGA conference, held at the CdA Resort. Approximately sixty of us attended and enjoyed presentations by PNWPGA executive director Jeff Ellison; Nike Golf's chief club designer Tom Stites; golf and fitness instructor Kendal Yonemoto; and teaching professional Brian Mogg, instructor to a number of tour players including Y.E. Yang, 2009 PGA Champion.

For the next few weeks this column will share highlights from the sessions. We will begin with recent changes to the rules of golf, such as the new groove specifications you may have heard about. And because grooves aren’t the only sources of confusion on the rules of golf, we'll discuss a few other recent changes.

Grooves: Unless you play in the The Masters, US Open, on the PGA, LPGA, Nationwide, or Champions tours, or a specific event lists conformance to the policy of these tours as a condition of competition, you’re fine. The new grooves rules will not even apply to elite amateur events, such as the U.S. or British Amateurs until 2014. The change will not become an actual rule covering all players until at least 2024.

The only real impact for most of us will be that the next set of clubs you buy may have a slightly different groove design. All clubs submitted for approval to the USGA and manufactured after 12/31/09 must conform to the new groove specifications, but earlier clubs are still okay, and pre-2010 models may be manufactured and sold to retailers through the end of this year. So, a club designed and approved last year, and bought by you will continue to be legal for a long time to come. And that creates a great value for most of us, as manufacturers liquidate their pre-2010 inventories. (Warning: don’t rush out to buy just to save a buck if you haven’t been properly fit.)

What is the change we are talking about? Playing from rough with the modern ball to a firm, fast green used to present a bigger challenge for touring professionals, thus driving accuracy became increasingly less relevant to scoring. Grooves designs, over the years, had improved to where a top player could spin the ball just about as well from the rough as from the fairway. The rule change basically says the volume of grooves on the face of most clubs will be reduced, so that water and other micro debris (grass oil, for example) can’t find as much room to “get out of the way” when the club strikes the ball. Much like when tire tread is worn, the wheel can hydroplane on a wet road far more readily than when the tire was new. It also addresses the sharpness on the edge of the grooves. The goal is to restore the importance of accuracy off the tee for elite players.

Many older clubs actually do conform to the new requirements, and most of us don’t generate touring professional clubhead speed and won’t notice any difference. Also, U shaped grooves will not vanish; they merely have to meet the required specifications.

With the Ping Eye 2 wedges that Phil Michelson and others have been using, an agreement 20 years ago was made between Ping and the USGA to settle a lawsuit. That agreement dictated that all pre-1990 Ping Eye 2 clubs are deemed to conform to the rules of golf, but only those manufactured before March 31^st of that year. At that time, they simply could not foresee that it would become the center of discussion today. Actually, the grooves on those wedges do not fall far enough outside the new specification to make any real difference, according to Frank Thomas, an equipment expert who formerly worked for the USGA.

The Flagstick: Imagine this: you pull a flagstick and lay it down on the green. Someone else putts, and you see that it is rolling toward the flag and likely to hit it. You quickly pick that flagstick up so that the putt won’t hit it, and presto….you’ve just incurred a penalty by taking action influencing the outcome of a shot while the ball was in motion. That’s the way it used to be, but now rule 24, obstructions, has been re-written to correct the problem. The new verbiage reads:

“When a ball is in motion, an obstruction that might influence the movement of the ball, other than equipment of any player or the flagstick when attended, removed or held up, must not be moved.”

You may not move a bench, a garbage can, a cigarette butt, etc., but you won’t get penalized for lifting that flagstick out of the way.

Wrong ball: Formerly, you were not allowed to touch your ball in a hazard, so it wasn’t always possible to identify it before playing it. Thus, hitting a wrong ball from a hazard was exempt from penalty, but no longer. The penalty for hitting a wrong ball is now universal and you may identify your ball by marking and lifting it, even if in a hazard, if that’s what it takes (unless the ball is moving, such as bouncing down a creek). See USGA rules 12 and 15.

Electronic measuring devices: These are allowed only if local rule permits them. This refers to distance measuring devices that some of you have. But the problem is this: If that device is also capable of measuring slope, wind, or other data which may assist in determining how to play a shot, it may not be used. So, can your I-phone or blackberry be used with some of the new GPS applications? Sorry, no way. Only devices whose primary purpose is to measure distance may be used if a local rule allows it.