“It’s just moving the goal line just as someone is about to score a touchdown"

Probing around the vastly improved looking and functioning Golfweek.com today, I finally tracked down the Phil Mickelson remarks about the USGA and grooves that have been reported in bits and pieces.

Seems it was a blog item buried on their old and quite dreadful blogging platform (hallelujah, it's gone!). Then Jeff Rude put it all in a column, where the most extensive quotes appeared.

The short version: Phil had new clubs to play at Firestone but they were considered too groovy by the USGA under its revised groove rule language.

The company offered this according to Rude:

“It’s just moving the goal line just as someone is about to score a touchdown,’’ company spokeswoman Michele Szynal said Thursday.

And after going to Commissioner Finchem and being met with a blank squint, Mickelson said.

“It seems like they (USGA) withhold the right to change the rules any time they want,” Mickelson said. “It’s very frustrating.”

It would seem that when you combine this with the item I posted last week from Mike Clayton and the other anecdotal stories beginning to roll in, it's possible to envision this rule change implementation becoming uncomfortably complicated at best, downright ugly at worst.