Peter Dawson’s presser yesterday reveals some information on a pending announcement on grooves. Let’s go to the transcript:

Q. Unrelated to this week, how are you guys doing on the U grooves, V grooves thing? There’s a perception in the States that it’s the R & A that’s dragging its feet on that implementation. Fairly or not, maybe you can address that and tell us when you see that coming on-line, if at all, and what the hold-ups and hurdles might be.

PETER DAWSON: Well, the current status of that is that there’s been some additional testing conducted just in the last few weeks in the women’s game, at LPGA Tour events, and the results of that are just coming through now, which I don’t think has changed anything. And I think you can expect to see something about this in the next three to four weeks.

Q. A firm date for implementation?

PETER DAWSON: No, that was an announcement in three to four weeks. I’m not going to preempt what that says.

Well, this could mean a whole lot of things. No action, lots of action, more delays. But since they’re testing the golf ball this week at the Open, I’d bet on the latter.

This is just ridiculous. The USGA has sunk a lot of money and time into understanding how great players perform off of the tee, in the fairway, from the rough, to the green, and everywhere else in an attempt to understand the golf ball and how to regulate technology. Has the R&A not been CC’d on every report issued publicly or privately by the USGA? Apparently, because they’re conducting their own testing this week.

From the Open Golf homepage:

The R&A is carrying out field tests on four holes of this week’s Open Championship to accurately measure the distance the ball carries, trajectory, spin rate and roll as part of an ongoing programme to monitor the performance of top players.

WHAT? Are they worried that the USGA had tainted balls or players? Or the British wind does a better job of testing?

Get off of your butts and get on board the regulation express.

So, Turnberry is the host of the Open Championship in 2010. But, it hosted the British Amateur – they call it the Amateur Championship – this year. It served as a live test of the massive lengthening, revamping, and tightening of the course in time for the Open. The results? High scores. Geoff Shackelford found the story in the Herald by Doug Lowe.

The revamped Ailsa course at Turnberry passed its big test last week in staging the Amateur Championship a year in advance of hosting the Open for the first time in 14 years although the toughened finish may have been made too hard.

The 17th hole particularly, where Nick Price had an eagle 3 on his way to Open triumph in 1994, was considered too soft for a modern championship, but having lengthened the hole and added three new bunkers there were lost balls galore in the qualifying rounds.

Scores in excess of 10 were recorded as players, into winds in excess of 30mph, failed to make the 230-yard carry to the fairway and so tough was the course altogether that the competition scratch score on day two was up at a mind-boggling nine-over-par 79.

But, Peter Dawson – head of the Royal and Ancient – declares success because, as we all know, high scores mean that we’re are on the right track.

“We have been lucky this week to see the course play in a number of wind directions and we are very pleased,” said Peter Dawson, chief executive of the R&A. “The bunkers seem to be in the right places and the holes have been playing tough into the wind and tricky downwind.

“I think it will be a good test next year. We didn’t use as tough pin positions as we probably would at the Open but they were tough enough.”

10 on a par 5 seems like it is tough enough, right? How about the length increase on 17 that played into a 30 mph wind?

Asked about the severity of the 17th, Dawson, who has been under fire in recent years for allowing distances the ball is hit to increase, quipped: “The players will just have to learn to hit the ball further.”

This is why I love British journalism sometimes. They are not afraid to hit the nail on the head. If Dawson had the guts to regulate the golf ball, he wouldn’t have to butcher Turnberry or any other Open rota course.

Still, there were lessons to be learned:

However, he did concede that the carnage there had caused concern. “One of the great things about this week is that it has made me think about that,” he said. “When we were laying out the tee markers on Monday morning it didn’t occur to me that the wind would get to that point.”

Really? Seaside links golf courses with no wind? REALLY?!!!!

Just in case you want to read about all of the changes, check here.

Steve Elling has the story and correctly hinges on the timing of this announcement – after the R&A said they would not be testing at the Open.

[O]fficials at the PGA of America said Monday that drug testing will nonetheless remain part of the picture when the final major of the year is played in August.

Two weeks ago, the Royal & Ancient Golf Club announced that it would not begin testing players at the British Open in July, even though the PGA Tour and European Tour plan to jointly launch drug screening for the first time earlier that month.

The decision caused a minor stir, since the R&A had been vocally advocating testing for years. Instead, the R&A elected to wait until 2009, after the process is debugged and players from other worldwide tours become more familiar with the plan particulars and the nuances of the banned-substances list.

“The PGA of America is informing all competitors in the PGA Championship that the joint substance/methods list is in effect and that the potential for random testing does exist at the PGA Championship,” the statement read [on the PGA website].

Also, read the comments at the bottom of Elling’s piece. Some people’s opinions are hilarious.

Jerry Potter has a piece in USA Today about golf ball technology and what it is able to do – at least in theory – for players, particularly professionals. This probably comes on the heels of the blatant shout out to TaylorMade by Sergio Garcia in the trophy presentation ceremony following the Players Championship. Interesting, though, that the piece also comes after the R&A has basically indicated that it will be taking a pass on grooves for the time being for a variety of unnamed factors. Speculation includes difficulty enforcing the rules, threat of a lawsuit, insatiable appetite for lengthening golf courses, and a general unwillingness to change the rules.

As you may or may not know, the European Tour recently solicited responses from their players about proposed grooves regulation via questionnaire. In effect, the Tour wanted to know if players would modify their playing habits if grooves were regulated.

Then, as it turns out, the R&A really does not appear interested in grooves regulation after all. (Or drug testing, or much of anything else except blowing up almost every hole in the Open rota.)

So, with grooves regulation in doubt and in limbo, it might be worth it to ask Tour players how they feel about rolling back the golf ball. I don’t care how they feel about the move so much as how it would impact their games.

Here’s my survey:

• Would it cause them to try to hit more fairways?
• Would they hit driver more often off of the tee to gain distance lost by the roll back?
• Would they do just the opposite to put the ball in the fairway more often?
• Is it a deterrent to be lax about hitting the fairway if you have to hit a mid iron instead of a short iron into a PGA Tour green?
• Do you subscribe to the philosophy of “hit it as hard as you can, find it, and hit it again?”

Let’s get some answers!