"The new standard golf ball has eliminated from the top-notch ranks the mechanical golfer of the past and the skilled shotmaker will now reap his deserved reward"

I know many of you are tired of hearing about grooves already and you've got nerfs lined up to toss at the television for every announcer declaring a non-spinning shot to be a product of the rule change.

But (A) it beats talking about Tiger and (B) it will be fun to see if the as-advertised impact on skill and power will really happen. It's also fascinating because this is a fairly unprecedented rollback. Oh, and (C) have you seen the field list for Kapalua? Grooves look darn interesting in that context!

Bill Fields takes a look back at the many rule changes and where the current groove rule change falls, giving some much needed context to just how significant this change is in the scheme of golf rule tweaks.

I'd like this bit inserted into the USGA's ball study, entering year seven and hopefully expedited when we see only a tiny groove-rule-change impact on distance:

Golf ball innovation went unchecked until 1921, when a maximum weight of 1.62 ounces and minimum diameter of 1.62 inches was established. The rubber-core models, called "Bounding Billies" because of their zip, alarmed many who feared -- in a prelude to more recent concerns about how far the ball traveled -- the challenge was being removed from the game because the new designs soared as many as 60 yards farther than the guttie.

As of Jan. 1, 1931, the USGA veered away from the R&A and mandated that a ball had to be a minimum of 1.68 inches and could weigh no more than 1.55 ounces -- slowing it down and making it more susceptible to the wind. Traditionalists such as architect Donald Ross loved the rollback. "The new standard golf ball has eliminated from the top-notch ranks the mechanical golfer of the past and the skilled shotmaker will now reap his deserved reward," Ross noted in the Boston Herald. "The game was becoming too stereotyped with the old ball. [It] did not place enough of a premium on a well-hit shot. The sluggers were getting such distances off the tee that they had nothing but easy pitches for the second shots."