"You can be as mad as you want at them, [but] they always win"

There's so much to consider in E. Michael Johnson and Mike Stachura's latest Golf World story on grooves. The tone clearly is negative toward the USGA, which speaks volumes considering that the duo has been sympathetic to the groove rule change in their blog posts. But in the new piece they explain how grooves could technically appear to be conforming and still turn out to be non-conforming based on the USGA's unintentional intent.

"We are trying to make it crystal clear that the rule was intended to return the grooves' effectiveness on shots from the rough to that of traditional V-grooves," says Dick Rugge, senior technical director of the USGA. "That's an important factor. It was our clear intent. We developed a number of helpful provisions in the rule for manufacturers. These provisions are not meant to be ways to get around the intent of the rule. If we chose to look the other way in these areas, we wouldn't be upholding our responsibility."

As you can imagine, the manufacturers are not pleased and there are some pretty juicy quotes:

"It is not a rule, it is a process to control the future," says Benoit Vincent, chief technical officer for TaylorMade. "It's like the adjustability rule. The USGA said submit your adjustability and we will tell you if it's OK. I said 'That's not a rule. That's submit your stuff and if we see something we don't like we will rule even further.' If it's outside what they have studied and what they know, then they will rule against it. So what they are doing here with grooves is typical of what they do."

And there was this story ending quote from Taylor Made's Benoit Vincent:

But despite manufacturers concerns, Vincent sounded perhaps the most important sound of all -- one bordering on resignation of the reality.

"You can be as mad as you want at them, [but] they always win," he says.

So if they always win, wouldn't it have been easier to do something with the ball first before tinkering with more complicated issues?

Also, does anyone else think it's odd that there is no mention of the R&A in all of this latest groove talk?