Impact of new grooves rule on TOUR still to be determined

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Is the bomb-and-gouge era dead?

We're one tournament into the 2010 PGA TOUR season and here's what we know about the impact of the USGA's new grooves rule: Not much.

Some players have seen a noticeable difference. Others not as much. While still others think it'll only be a matter of time before everyone has it figured out.

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Now, it should be noted that the Plantation Course at Kapalua isn't exactly known for its rough. The next three months, however, will be more telling with stops in California, Arizona and Florida. We did, however, see some examples of the effect of the new grooves in play at the SBS Championship.

"There is definitely a difference, especially out of the Bermuda rough" SBS Championship winner Geoff Ogilvy said. "I had a shot into 10 from the left rough ... it was a pretty good lie. The old stuff, I would have been confident with a lob wedge ... [now] I can't be as aggressive on that shot."

On the flip side, there's also a difference from the short grass, according to Ogilvy and others. Ogilvy's 52-yard approach shot on the par-5 18th Sunday at the SBS Championship, for example, was easier with the new grooves because "it doesn't want to spin as much."

"The biggest adjustment is obviously from the rough. From the fairway, I can spin the ball almost as much as I used to," said Jim Furyk at last month's Chevron World Challenge. "What I'm finding is that my good shots are really good, but my average shots aren't nearly as good as they used to be. It's going to make us be really crisp from the fairway."

One way to do that for Stewart Cink was to put duct tape over his wedges. He played a round of golf and practiced with them like that for a week just to see what it was like to have zero spin. "It was really not fun to play golf that way," he said.

"The idea was that when I got the new grooves, I would think, 'well, these spin the you-know-what out of it.' I quickly adjusted back to realizing the new grooves don't spin it that great."

One other effect it will have on the game, Cink and others have said, is making you learn how to read lies better, especially when there's moisture on the ground. "There's the kind of shots we've always hit that come out low with a lot of spin, and then there's the kind that slide up the club face and go real high with no spin, and you're going to have to learn to predict which one's coming," he said.

All this may change the way some players play the game -- switching to a softer ball is one example -- but a lot of them don't think it will change the look of the sport.

"You're not going to see guys say 'I'm going to hit 3-wood here instead of driver, or 2-iron instead of 3-wood,'" Charles Howell said last month.

"It'll be a change, but it's not like you're going to watch something different next year," Davis Love III added. "It's like watching (NASCAR's) Talladega with a tiny bit smaller restrictor plate. To us fans it looked like the same race. It was just a little bit slower, but it looked like the same race.

"You just might see one ball roll a little bit farther on a chip and it'll just be because a guy played a different shot."

Nick Price, on the other hand, said you'll no longer see guys ranked 180th in driving accuracy winning as much, which should be good news for players like Tim Clark and Brian Gay, two guys who make up for lack of length off the tee by regularly ranking at or near the top of the TOUR in driving accuracy.

Chris DiMarco? He doesn't think they'll end up being much of a difference. Then there's Ian Poulter, who added this: "We can adjust to pretty much anything in six months."

We're about to find out.