Thanks to Sarah Brown, Maybe Now We Can Regulate the Golf Ball?

This whole Sarah Brown wedge DQ situation has led to a blamestorming summit of sorts.  

In the moment, the Duramed Futures Tour officials that pulled Brown off of the course and mistakenly disqualified her were to blame for an arrogant attitude toward a player and the obvious error in judgment.  The Futures Tour and Brown's dad are thinking about laywering up because Keith Brown is demanding a Showcase Showdown's worth of money and DFT CEO Zayra Calderon wants a Press Your Luck $2000 (but not an extra spin).

But what about the USGA in all of this?  James Achenbach poses the question in his post today about the situation, effectively saying that the USGA bungled both the implementation of the new groove rules (staggered at three major intervals of '10, '14, and '24 with an intermediate manufacturing step in '11) as well as the education component for players, officials, and the like.

Perhaps, but there were plenty of players that simply were not engaged enough to care about the changes.  For every Stewart Cink - who shared great info about the changes - there was a Lucas Glover, who when asked by me about the grooves demo Dick Rugge was about to do at the USGA tech lab said, "I'm not interested in that."

If competitors aren't interested, then they're left to trust club manufacturers' reps.  The guys at Ping really seem to know their stuff (as do the others, but Ping gets this more often).  

Then it's left on the officials to know how to test, what to look for, and have the forethought of determining a process to handle these things.

Maybe the lack of Boy Scout preparedness - after all, assuredly the Brown family has a one, not three finger salute ready - is the issue.  For a minute, though, can we revisit regulating the golf ball?

Time and time again, I've been told by the good folks at the USGA that is probably not in the cards.  They have no intention to do it.  They might be gathering info, might not be.  Who knows.  Manufacturers will point to the curtailing of PGA Tour driving distances to say that the ball doesn't need to be rolled back at all.  Yeah, yeah.

Rolling back the ball is practical - much more so than a three-tiered implementation that has apparently befuddled way too many people in the pro ranks.  I'm not saying that the golf world isn't smart enough to handle this, but it sure seems like there is a lot of confusion.  If the ball rolls back into a tighter spec box - and not just on distance, but cover firmness, spin, and compression at impact - that seems a whole lot easier to test than grooves.

Amateurs don't even have to consider playing them.  They could be implemented for specific tournaments.  It sounds kind of crazy to go back to an era that essentially parallels the "small ball era", but is that such a bad idea?  

Boo Weekley said this week that the PGA Tour is taking is easier on the guys this season because of grooves.  Perhaps that has led to some greater scoring (though the 59, 60s, et al, are a condition of sitting-duck courses in wet conditions).  In other words, with better and more strongly boxed in equipment standards, the tours can be more creative in how it approaches setups.  That's great news for everyone.  And it's clear that the scoring has not suffered.  These guys and gals are pros.  Beating the course is inevitable for them.

The recent run of Titleist ads suggests the importance of the golf ball because it is used on every shot.  Keeping that in mind, is it worthwhile to reconsider regulating the one constant in every golf discipline?