Promotion Takes Priority Over Equipment Rules

The controversy about Phil Mickelson using the Eye 2 wedge is a PGA Tour issue, but it may cause unnecessary concern among golfers across the country.

There is still not a lot of education out there about new groove regulations brought in by the United States Golf Association this year. People might start asking and we’ll have to address if when and if that happens.

As a club manager, I look at it this way. Who does it affect? About five per cent of my members? I think even that number is high. A lot of people don’t even know what kind of grooves they have.

I guess the one concern I have is, from a promotional standpoint, we’re trying to get more people playing the game and, all of a sudden, we’ve got another set of rules that golfers really don’t understand in most cases.

That five per cent of our members that it does affect, we will educate them and they’ll have conforming equipment and we’ll move on.

The other 95 per cent, I want to encourage them to play golf, but we keep changing the rules all the time and it’s confusing, especially when they hear the controversy on tour,

We also had to have rules when rangefinders came out. It’s an evolution of the game and it’s not going to stop because technology’s going to change and manufacturers need to find ways to sell more equipment. It’s a circle of life, so to speak.

I get out of bed every morning because I love what I do and I love telling people what a great sport that golf is and for the ones who grind it out in their shops every day, it’s just one more thing that, for my club anyway, is mostly irrelevant.

These rules are for certain people and that’s fine, but at the end of the day, if I take a list of my priorities when I go to work, such rules are not high on that list.

We need to educate on it because the consumer is going to come in and ask questions due to the confusion. You’re going to have a 15 handicapper walk into your office and ask if he or she is going to have to change grooves.

We’re trying to promote the game, not confuse people. We want more people playing. You want kids grabbing their dad’s old clubs and taking the game up.

It’s time to quit confusing them by always changing the rules about equipment.

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