Golf's 'Groovy' New Rules Look to Put Finesse Back Into Game

There's nothing sexy about grooves. No mistresses, call girls, pancake waitresses, bloody lips or broken fire hydrants in sight.

Nothing to see here. Please move along.

Except the physics of professional golf is about to change. It's technical and pretty boring by recent PGA Tour standards, but it is part of the game and, in one way or another, will eventually be felt by all who play.

The United States Golf Association has placed new regulations on the grooves for all irons, going into effect for professional tour events on Jan. 1. The requirements call for smaller, more rounded grooves on clubs with a loft of 25 degrees or more to impart less spin on a ball hit out of the rough. The aim is to make it tougher for players to recover from lies in the rough, which in turn is supposed to increase rewards for accuracy off the tee.

Whether it will produced the desired result is up for debate.

"My opinion is it's not going to change much overall," said Bret Wahl, TaylorMade Golf's director of irons development. "From our research and testing, from fairways and good conditions, there's not much of an effect at all.

"The biggest change is the loss of spin in deep rough. We've seen 20- to 40-percent loss of RPMs a player can generate on a full shot in those conditions. That is significant. So there may be an advantage for some of the pros who are a little bit more creative in their shot making from those conditions."

Will fans be able to see and appreciate the new challenge?

Probably not.

"It'll be a change, but it's not like you're going to watch something different next year," tour player Davis Love III said. "It's like watching (NASCAR's) Talladega with a tiny bit smaller restrictor plate. To us fans it looked like the same race. It was just a little bit slower, but it looked like the same race.

"It's going to look like the same race next year. You just might see one ball roll a little bit farther on a chip and it'll just be because a guy played a different shot."

"I think it's going to bring a little more skill back. I don't think you can throw the ball up next to the hole and have it stop every time. You gotta account for the run of the ball and things like that."
- David Duval The change basically is a result of golf's governing bodies attempt to counteract what has become known as "bomb-and-gouge" golf. That's players pounded tee balls as far as possible, caring little about finding fairways because the U-grooves of the past produced enough spin on the ball, even from out of the rough, to hold greens.

"I think it's going to bring a little more skill back," David Duval said. "I don't think you can throw the ball up next to the hole and have it stop every time. You gotta account for the run of the ball and things like that."

The USGA says the change was needed because tons of statistics prove there is little correlation between hitting fairways off the tee and winning golf tournaments. It says the game at the professional level has become all about power and little about finesse.

That's why the pros go first. The world's professional tours -- men and women -- open their new season with the new rules. In 2014, non-professional championship events like the U.S. Amateur, Women's Amateur and Mid-Am will be played with conforming grooves.

Amateurs who simply want to post an official handicap or play in their club championship can continue playing with their current irons until 2024.

So, with that all said, why should golf fans care?

Because eventually everything runs downhill.

"It's going to trickle down to the amateurs eventually and it's going to be harder for them to play, which I think we need to make it easier, speed it up and make it more fun," Love said.

It also is going to be more expensive.

"One thing not to be lost in this is the amount of work for us and other manufacturers to understand the regulations and bring it into production," TaylorMade's Wahl said. "This was a process change. I would guess, considering man power and research, the cost was high six figures or maybe a seven-figure number."

That cost will show up in the next set of irons you buy.

That, Love says, it not the change the USGA should have been most interested in making.

"Let's start with less expensive and then faster and then easier," he said. "You know if you said, all right, we're going to go back to wooden drivers and we're going to go back to no-graphite shaft and we're going to go back to the old pro trajectory wound ball, it's going to make it less fun, and with the length of the golf courses, it's going to be tough.

"It affects the average guy because that length and toughness of golf course makes it harder for the average guy than it does for us."

That's the one thing golf never bothers to change.