Hot topic: U-groove ban by 2012?

Sergio Garcia: Trivialising the rough?

Not content with making some of our conforming drivers obsolete in ten months time, golf's rule-makers could be asking us to replace our irons because the grooves are illegal.

U-grooves in your wedges may be outlawed

The good news is that the R&A and the USGA, the bodies which decide the specifications of the equipment 60 million golfers use around the world, are unlikely to change their laws within the next five years.

The word, according to our contacts in golf's corridors of power, is that the combination of U-grooves in irons and balls with only thin elastoma covers, is making the game too easy for the pros and the top-class amateurs. They're not only clouting the ball 350 yards in the general direction of the green but then spinning it out of the rough! And by reducing the importance of accuracy off the tee with a driver they're 'de-skilling' the game.

Detailed paperwork is current flying around the world in which the game's custodians of the Rules of Golf are asking the manufacturers for their comments about the shape of grooves in irons and wedges which are threatening to trivialise inaccuracy when a ball is driven into the rough.

David Rickman, the R&A's director of rules and equipment standards, told The Scotsman newspaper this week: "Any situation which can be interpreted as a de-skilling of the game

R & A's Peter Dawson

is of concern to us. So we're trying to find a way in which we can, at least, partially redress that balance.

"We are in the throes of various meetings and wouldn't want to pre-empt their outcome. But all the signs are that we're very close to going out with 'notice and comment'. That's the way new proposals are aired to the golf industry as well as other interested parties. It's a process which is likely to last anything from three to six months."

Peter Dawson, the R&A's chief executive, is equally concerned about long hitters concentrating on power off the tee at the expense of accuracy, when it hardly matters where drives finish if a player can escape with spin and control.

"We now see balls spinning more from two or three inches of rough than they do when hit from the fairway. That cannot go on. We're not talking about people struggling to get the ball out of the rough - only that they should be struggling to control it from the longer grass,"he says.

But before we all start getting edgy about the likelihood of having to invest in traditionally-shaped V-shaped grooves again in our local competitions, surely any changes will have little effect on the performance of most club players.

Perhaps we should press the law-makers to introduce equipment standards for THEM (the Tour pros who make their living from the game) and elite amateurs

Rough justice

(searching eventually for a career in golf) and another set of rules for US (the handicap golfers who just want to have fun and play competitively at local level).

That would mean a ball with restricted distance and spin specifications (suggested by the US Masters some years ago) and clubs with standardised grooves for the THEM and de-restricted equipment for US.

It makes the game tougher for THEM and easier for US, instead of the other way round.

All those in favour, say 'Aye!'