Those who follow this Blog will know that I was in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina last week and golfing in less than ideal weather conditions.What I did not tell many people was that I had a new set of irons in the bag last week, the 2010 Titleist CB irons (left). I will have a full review of them posted in the near future but on another note, this was my first round with a set of irons made to conform to the new USGA imposed Groove Rules.
It was a homecoming of sort as I played a lot of golf with irons that had the old-style V-grooves. It did, however, have some effect on my game. Most of the greens we played were drenched from many inches of rain so stopping the ball on them was not a problem. Where I did notice a difference a few times was on shots out of the rough and from wet fairway lies. I experienced a few flier lies where the ball shot over the green, much further than I anticipated.
After some adjustment to playing these lies like I used too I had a bit more success in predicting the distances of my shots. I also found that I became more conscious of the need to have the ball properly positioned off the tee.
What I did like about the new grooves was the ease at which I was able to play lower spinning half shots that took off through the wind. This was a shot that became much harder to play with the higher groove volume, higher-spinning irons of the last few years.
This amounted to to no more than a 47-hole experiment so I will be interested to see what the effect will be on my game over an entire season. At this point I think players who have been playing the game for some time will adjust quickly - reverting back to the shots of old. For younger players who have grown up on U and Square Grooves there will likely be a longer adjustment period.
