Andy Kikidas
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It’s rumoured that Tiger Woods; clubs have been fitted with conforming grooves all year and it hasn't held him back! But other manufacturers have had a lot of work to do and two of our main competitors with cast irons, have had to replace their whole range!
We need only produce a Mizuno ‘Tour’ version of the new Mizuno T-10 wedges for our players after finding the most effective groove design earlier in the year with robot testing. However, our players gave us feedback for the shots a robot struggles to play. As for R&A and USGA, i understand they did their testing by hitting shots from wet strips of newspaper – a method they believed best matched the conditions of playing from semi rough.
As I said earlier, an effect of the new grooves is that they don’t grip the ball as much and it tends to roll up the face for a higher launch. With less spin it tends to run out a little more.
R&A test centres
The R&A set up test centres at several tournaments this year to check players clubs ahead of the new ruling - by pouring a rubber compound into the grooves and checking the profiles through a microscope when it dried. One player was told his 3-wood would fail because the cross section area was too large so he went to several Tour trucks in search of a replacement and discovered all the new models spun the ball more than his old one, because the grooves are not the only factor in producing spin on the ball.
Another player's lob wedge was tested and it not only failed to comply with the new rule - it didn’t comply with the existing rule, either. Last seen he was running around seeking an alternative on Wednesday night, hours before his opening tee shot.
It is going to be left to the manufacturers to police the rule (as it is with all of the equipment rules) and there won’t be enforced testing on Tour come January. Different manufacturers have different tolerances when producing their club heads so there could be a situation where a head from a model that has previously been approved by the R&A isn’t manufactured to the same specification and is therefore non conforming.
It’s happened before with the spring effect on a couple of drivers and I’m sure it will happen with the groove rule, though players would never purposely use a club they had any doubts about and can request a club tested, if they're unsure.
Incidentally, I heard of one player who got more spin from conforming grooves on a set compared with 'identical' originals because the previous set had the grooves cast into the heads as opposed to the new set having milled grooves. Apparently the tumbling and sand blasting processes used, actually rounds the shoulders of the grooves. So, although they were cast with sharp grooves any slight over-use of the sand blaster blunts them fairly quickly. The player in question was happy with his new set but I bet he wondered why he’d been using not-so-sharp grooves in the past.
On another occasion we put in a couple of heads for testing, that we had designed to conform to the new rule and had a huge shock when we were told one of them had failed. Our Japanese engineers insisted it should have passed, so we kept the head and two weeks later we had it tested again. It passed!
So if the R&A and USGA have got it right and the game is harder to play, is that good for the game? If it’s harder to hit greens and there are fewer birdies is that what a paying and watching public want to see on Tour? If the spectator numbers drop and gate takings go down, will the Tours be tempted to 'trick down' the courses by reducing the length of rough? And should clubs previously approved by the R&A stay approved? I'm convinced manufacturers will find other ways of increasing the spin, while still conforming, whether it be through shaft or head design.
All this rule-changing and the costs involved could yet be for nothing.
Reproduced Courtesy of Mizuno Europe, for whom Andy Kikidas is Tour Operations Manager.
