I do not want to get embroiled in the new groove rule and risk a lawsuit from Phil Mickelson, but I am interested in the legal twist. Ping (or Karsten Manufacturing Corporation as it is legally known) is an icon in Arizona. According to legend, Karsten Solheim started Ping out of his garage and first invented the Anser putter and then the cavity-backed, perimeter weighted golf club, which was a great boon to the amateur golfer. Unlike the "blade" golf club used by professional golfers at the time, the cavity-backed, perimeter-weighted club was much more forgiving of "off center" shots and "thin" shots because more weight was at the base and perimeter of the club. Ping irons also used square grooves, rather than the standard v-shaped grooves (or more precisely, wider grooves and less distance between grooves), which was meaningless for the weekend golfer, but made a huge difference for the PGA Tour players because the width and location of the square grooves allowed the player to impart significantly more spin on the golf ball, especially from the rough areas. In my humble opinion, the Ping Eye 2 golf club is the greatest golf club ever made. I still have my original pre-1990 Ping Eye 2 golf clubs, which I gave to SO and she somehow lost my 7-iron!
In the late 1980s Mark Calcavecchia, a Phoenix resident, was one of the first PGA professionals to endorse and use Ping irons. Calcavecchia finished in the top 10 money winners for four consecutive years from 1987 through 1990. But even more impressive, Calcavecchia could spin his ball like no one's business, whether from the fairway or the rough. Calcavecchia was not the straightest driver on the Tour, but it did not matter in most PGA Tour events because he was still able to spin the ball from the rough. In 1987, Mark Calcavecchia won the Honda Classic hitting an 8-iron shot from the rough that miraculously stopped on the green. The USGA and PGA Tour were apoplectic and tried to outlaw the Ping Eye 2 clubs.
In August 1987 Ping filed a lawsuit against the USGA and Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews in Phoenix. Ping later filed a $100 million antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour. Ping was a relatively small Arizona company represented by a local Arizona law firm, O'Connor Cavanagh, against the giant USGA and PGA. The USGA suit was settled 1n 1990 about a week before the trial was set to start. As part of the settlement, the USGA agreed to drop its ban on the use of Ping Eye 2 irons and Ping agreed to stop producing the Ping Eye 2 iron with the "non-conforming" grooves and begin producing a club with conforming grooves and (this is where the "aw shucks" small-town lawyer snookered the big city lawyer) any Ping Eye 2 iron produced before April 1, 1990 was grandfathered and would forever be deemed legal under the Rules of Golf.
Fast-forward to 2010 and the "New Groove Rule". Phil Mickelson creates an uproar on the PGA Tour when he decides to pull out his old Ping Eye 2 wedges from his Arizona State University days and the "forever be deemed legal under the Rules of Golf" settlement language comes back to bite the USGA and PGA Tour on the butt. In the original lawsuit Ping claimed that it was trying to protect all of the golfers that purchased Ping Eye 2 golf clubs believing that they were conforming. I am hopeful that John Solheim, the President of Ping and the son of Karsten Solheim, will magnanimously agree to waive the "forever legal" provisions of the settlement agreement for professional tournaments, but that the original settlement agreement will still apply to those amateurs that continue to use their beloved Ping Eye 2 clubs.
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I am hopeful that John Solheim, the President of Ping and the son of Karsten Solheim, will magnanimously agree to waive the "forever legal" provisions of the settlement agreement for professional tournaments ...
Why? In the 1980s, the USGA (along with the PGA) was simply cow-towing to the wishes of Jack Nicholas and Greg Norman (and a few others), who no doubt didn't like the new clubs because the square grooves took away the advantage they had over other players who couldn't spin the ball as much as they could with the old V grooves. So the result was that everyone ganged up on one upstart company (Ping), whose only fault was its consistently brilliant innovation (plus the fact that it didn't have the enormous clout of the other, "respectable" golf-club manufacturers). Why should John Solheim respond to that kind of bullying by giving the bullies what they want —especially after he won fair and square (pun intended)?
Perhaps eliminating square grooves would make sense if they were the only significant advantage that modern technology has brought to the links. But they're not. Metal "woods", graphite shafts, titanium alloys, high-impact golf ball polymers, computerized dimple designs, hybrid grasses—even computerized swing analysis—have all improved the play of the average professional. For the USGA to claim that square grooves are uniquely advantageous is silly. So why ask Solheim (and those who prefer his products) to pretend that the USGA is acting rationally in this matter by capitulating to their wishes? Why should he not, instead, continue to draw attention to the USGA's inconsistency by hanging on to the only chip he has in this matter: the 1990 settlement?
As a side note, if the USGA really cared about the integrity of the tour, it would stop with all the "conforming grooves" nonsense—a policy that inevitably boosts golf club sales for USGA sponsors—and implement a serious steroid/HGH policy. But don't expect to see that happen anytime soon. There's no real money to be made in it for the golfing industry.
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