grooves Stories - Waggle Room
Phil Mickelson: Rules Czar?
Phil doesn't make the rules, and maybe that's why he has found gripes with several of them. Mickelson exploited the USGA and PGA Tour settlements with Karsten Manufacturing to play wedges with non-compliant-but-approved-for-play grooves earlier in the year. His mockery/protest of the grooves...
When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong: Player Mistakenly DQ'd for Grooves
One of the major challenges that the USGA said they would have in implementing the new groove regulations was enforcement. The organization was struggling with a consistent measuring technique that could be taken on the road and used by the staff of the major tours. Aside from the...
USGA Meets With Ping, Doesn't Get Anywhere
Yesterday at an undisclosed location in Dallas, USGA met with Karsten Manufacturing to talk about a potential solution to the Ping Eye 2 wedge loophole debacle. (This is why people just use "-gate" as a suffix.) From the sounds of things, the meeting was cordial, but did not produce a lot of...
Augusta to Allow Grandfathered Ping Eye 2s at the Masters
In what struck me as a surprising revelation, Steve Elling reports that Augusta National will contest the Masters by USGA rules - including the loophole that allows for players to have Ping Eye 2 wedges in the bag. Given that Augusta National had publicly toyed with the idea of instituting a...
Stats Show Minimal Impact of Grooves on 2010 PGA Tour
With all of the talk about grooves, wedges, grandfathering, and lawsuits, there has not been much conversation about the tangible impact of the new grooves regulations on the PGA Tour in 2010. The stats don't lie, though, and the PGA Tour does an excellent job of tracking every imaginable golf...
Tom Watson & Phil Mickelson: Did Running Their Mouths Affect Them?
In the last several weeks, pro golf has had seemingly a record volume of off-course trash talk. From grooves to Tiger, the topics have been in stark contrast. The players doing the trash talking have also been near opposites. Two of the major instigators have been 60 year old legend Tom Watson...
USGA Finally Speaks on Groove Controversy, Phil's Crusade
Though I've been doing some communication with the USGA in light of this grooves controversy, I had not broached the subject at much depth with the USGA's Senior Technical Director - and the man in Phil's crosshairs - Dick Rugge. Gary Smits did, though, and got a few comments from Rugge about the...
Follow-Up Questions For Phil After His Presser Yesterday
After phoning into Commissioner Finchem's press conference yesterday, I was fortunate enough to get a twofer and listen to Phil Mickelson's presser. It was a passionate and, at times, testy conference between Phil and the media. Phil himself invoked a lot of strong emotion about how he feels...
Why the Tour, USGA, and Ping Need to Work Together
In Tim Finchem's presser this afternoon, he outlined three options that he feels the Tour has in terms of addressing the Ping Eye 2 loophole created by the Tour and USGA settlements with Karsten concerning U grooves. He seems hopeful that John Solheim will be willing to negotiate with him and the...
Tracking Which PGA Tour Players Are Using Ping Eye 2s
Moments ago in his press conference, PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem mentioned that five players out of 218 so far have put the Ping Eye 2s into play in 2010. In light of who may be putting the club into play next, we may have a new way to track it. There's a new site called Blippy that allows...
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