Affect of the "New" (Old) V Grooves

[iacas]

I made at another site and wanted to post it here since it'll probably get more discussion.

Original: http://tinyurl.com/5ukmqm

(Note: I generally disagree with Geoff on many things, not the least of which is that he tends to - or at least used to very heavily - blame the golf ball alone for distance increases seen on the PGA Tour. He and I agree, though, on the groove rule, and that's what this post is about. Let's stick to grooves, not "distance" in general or the golf ball, fitness, big-headed driers, etc.)

When struck well from a clean lie in the fairway, the ball traveled on about the same trajectory and and the same distance as I would expect. So no, they weren't very much different from the fairway. Obviously companies would probably have a hard time selling them if the clubs somehow performed significantly differently from the standard "club testing" - a nice fairway lie on the range or (gasp) a mat somewhere.

In the rough, one of three things could happen.

1) You could somehow hit the ball nearly identically to the way you'd hit it from the fairway. Rare. Maybe 5-10%, and usually was a result of either mis-hitting a flier lie slightly or somehow catching it really, really clean. Also, fire-hazard-dry, thin grass.

2) The combination of the rough slowing the clubhead down a little and the ball lacking enough spin to help it climb into the air would lead to a sort of "wounded duck" flight that would fall about 5-6% short of the normal distance. Not quite as rare as #1, but roughly 10-25% depending on the type of rough. Obviously increases the longer and/or thicker the rough gets. This could happen with square grooves too, but you might have only lost a little distance.

3) The ball would come out hot. Again, 210-yard 7-irons (my normal distance is 165). The ball would slide a bit more up the clubface, launch higher, and spin noticeably less. Towards the end of the summer I re-learned to judge the flight and I was regularly hitting 7-irons from 185 with a normal, smooth swing from flier lies.

In the third case, the ball again would come out higher with less roll. The added height was nowhere near enough to make up for the stopping power lost to decreased spin, so you had to play for a bit more run-out, particularly with the longer and mid-irons and especially on firmer greens. I tend to hit my short irons quite high to begin with, so they would still sit down reasonably quickly for me, but they never came backwards and they always ran out at least a little. It was obvious they had very little spin.

I quickly learned to play towards the fat sides of the greens when in the rough. Working the ball left or right from the rough became more difficult (whether to get at a tucked flag or to curve it around a tree or the like).

I found that the V grooves made the game more fun. It re-introduced chance to the game - but not necessarily the bad, uncontrollable kind of chance. The chance was not in how the ball would come out, but in the kind of lie you got in the rough. With a little bit of study and knowledge, you could pretty accurately predict what kind of lie you got and what kind of shot you might have to hit.

So golf became more fun for me, not because I could go brag about hitting a 210-yard 7-iron (which put me 30 yards past the pin and off the back of a green you don't want to go beyond), but because it added another layer of thought to the game. Golf from the rough used to be "what's my yardage? where's the pin?" and you'd hit the same shot you hit from anywhere else. The flier lie re-introduces educated guesswork to the game, and re-introduces a little bit of feel. Sure, it's 165 to the pin, but given the lie is it a 9-iron or a 6-iron?

Those who won't care to take a little time and effort to study will undoubtedly find that the game has more chance, but they'll believe it to be the bad kind: "sometimes my ball comes out hot, sometimes it doesn't." Those people are just lazy.

Unfortunately, my experimentation with these grooves stopped at the pitching wedge. My sand and lob wedges are still square grooved, so they had all the bite and check - from all sorts of lies - that you'd come to expect.

I personally don't think that I'll miss square grooves on the wedges very much. I play a very "run-out" oriented type of short game and prefer to stop the ball, when necessary, with loft, both from the bunkers and around the greens. From the fairway - the only place I tend to try to hit a spinning shot - I should be able to do so with V-grooved wedges as well.

I also think that for the 9-handicapper, square grooves cost him as much as they help, or more so, around the greens. Once in awhile he catches one clean, his ball checks up, and he's 25 feet short of the hole. With V grooves I believe he can play a more consistent "run out" type of game.

I still maintain my belief that the new rule will force Tour pros to do one or two of three things: a) value accuracy more off the tee (i.e. gear back), b) play a spinnier ball, c) stop aiming at tucked flags when they're in the rough.

[jmoc]

I do think the better players will be more challenged than the average 10 to 20 Hcpr will be. I use harder balls as distance is more friendly to me than spin around the greens. Although, I've noticed recently that the "hard" balls are lots softer than they used to be. I've had my TF Freak and even the D2 check on the green and even hit and pop back a foot or two on approaches. The bogey golfers tend to roll everything up more than the par guys and so will probably not see a huge difference. Who is making "V" wedges currently, I'd like to try one and see if it causes me to play different.... jmoc