"Were the ball to be "fixed" so that, say, 50 yards came off Mickelson et al's future drives, then nothing else need be done in the realm of equipment."

After a week of listening to depressingly out-of-touch tour players and manufacturer reps whine about the big, bad USGA stripping away the opportunity for the companies to innovate and therefore line player pockets to endorse the latest stuff, it was heart-warming to read the following two columns. While both are wondering why the grooves were selected for regulation, both make it clear that had areas of greater priority been selected the manufacturers probably could have carried on innovating with clubs. But instead, the desire to protect the ball led to the groove rule change that they hate.

Larry Bohannan writes in the Desert Sun:

Clearly someone has to have some control and exercise some limits on golf equipment. Otherwise we could be on the golf course with laser-guided shoulder-mounted rocket launchers that belch fire as they stick golf balls near pins 400 yards away. And manufacturers are hardly the best judge of what should be the limits of technology, since they are mostly interested in making an extra buck and helping the price of their stock. So the USGA probably is the best organization to help keep golf from total equipment chaos.

But more than a few critics are wondering why the USGA decided grooves should be where it draws the line in the sand rather than some other controversial advances of the last few decades.

John Huggan is more direct. Changing the ball would have allowed everything else to be left alone.

For this whole affair – all of it – has little or nothing to do with whether or not "square" grooves impart more spin on the ball from rough than do "V" grooves. That folks, is but a peripheral issue, one that, for 99.9999999 per cent of the golfing population, is all but irrelevant 99.9999999 per cent of the time.

Oh no, this is ultimately about the ball, the little white sphere Woods and his mates routinely launch unprecedented distances; the small, 1.68" diameter globe that has rendered so many of the planet's truly great course designs obsolete for championship play; the petite pellet that has caused club committees the world over to spend unnecessary millions in whatever currency you care to mention on "improving" and lengthening those same courses.

In other words, this whole grooves thing is but a smokescreen erected by the USGA and the R&A to disguise their collective incompetence and inactivity in dealing with a ball that goes way too far when struck by a leading professional. And that, of course, is what the world of golf should currently be talking about, not the tedious subject of grooves on the faces of clubs. Were the ball to be "fixed" so that, say, 50 yards came off Mickelson et al's future drives, then nothing else need be done in the realm of equipment. Nothing else would matter. Not even a little bit.