The Truth About Golf Club Grooves

by Robert Cotter
Professional Golf Ball Engineer
Director of Swing Instruction, Instant Golf®

Jordan Spieth will be competing in the World Golf Championships - Bridgestone Invitational this week against only the best players in the world.

The event is at the famous Firestone CC in Akron Ohio which requires straight driving and puts a premium on wedge play into tricky greens.

All great golfers know their own game. Jordan Spieth is not a long hitter compared to his fellow young guns. He drives the ball 291 yards on average which is 82nd on Tour.

Yet Jordan is the best wedge player on Tour. He is ranked #1 on approach shots from less than 100 yards. And he is ranked #1 in Rough Proximity. That means that when he hits a shot from the rough (typcially a wedge), it lands closer to the pin than any other player in the game!

With his brilliant wedge play from both the fairway and the longer grass, Spieth combines his vast ability with a little known fact about Wedges, Club Face Grooves, and Performance (namely stopping power).

If you have been following pro golf regularly you may have heard about the "Great Grooves Controversy".

After great debate, golf's governing bodies, the USGA (United States Golf Association) and R&A (Royal and Ancient Golf Club), designated that square or "U" grooves are illegal in PGA tournament play.

So recently, the square grooves the players have enjoyed for the last 20 years were replaced with less aggressive, V shaped grooves (below):This means iron faces now have approximately 40% less grooved surface, depending on the manufacturer.

This change is essentially designed to return golf to more of a tradition of shot making and precision.

Without the benefit of the larger, more aggressive grooves, there will be more of an emphasis on accuracy (hitting fairways, greens, etc...) going forward.

In other words, the best golfers in the world won't be able to rely on wedges with souped-up grooves to help them hack out of the rough and have their shots skid to a stop on the greens as easily as before. Ben Hogan would be pleased.

So what has been the Net Effect without the "aggressive" grooves...

Well, since the change over:

Jim Furyk, Paul Goydos and Stuart Appleby have shot 59's
on Tour (the first 59's since 1999)!

10 PGA Tour players have shot 60 since the groove change.

Rory McIIroy destroyed Congressional CC shooting -16 at the U.S. Open.

Bubba Watson's 40 yd hooking "wonder wedge shot" out of the woods
helped him to a green jacket in 2012 (and another in 2014).

Louis Oosthuizen walloped St. Andrews and the field winning
the 2010 Open Championship by 7 shots.

Jordan Spieth shot 61 en-route to his win at the 2015 John Deere Classic.

& course scoring records are being tied or broken virtually every week on Tour!

Now, if I may, let me put another spin on this subject.

If you have been wondering how all this groove performance stuff affects your game, let me shock you a bit.

In the Golf Ball Design business, one of the most important tests a new ball design goes through is called a Shear Test.

In this test, balls made with different cover formulations are hit repeatedly with wedges using a mechanical golfer (aka, an Iron Byron).

We then grade the covers according to how much damage the covers received (to what extent did the cover material shear off). The most shear resistant, durable covers, along with other factors, are then incorporated into the final ball design.

Often in these tests, and a few other ball performance tests, a special club is used as a control or baseline club.

This control club is a wedge without grooves!

Here's one of my wedges on the left and what a groove-less wedge looks like (artist's image, not an actual test club). In other words, simply imagine what your wedge looked like before the grooves were cut:

The control test wedge with no grooves has a straight, milled face. No tricks or gimmicks. It is simply the same club, before the grooves are cut.

Now here's the shocker...

The Groove-Less Club Face Can Spin the Ball like Crazy!

From a good lie in the fairway, the wedge grooves do little or nothing to improve spin or stopping power.

Club face grooves are essentially not needed from a clean, fairway lie. Depending on what you can do with your regular wedge, the smooth faced wedge can make the ball bite, back up, skid to a stop, etc...

I wouldn't have believed it unless I saw it. It was counterintuitive and fascinating!

The grooves only help when there is interference between the ball and the club face (grass, water, etc...). That's when the grooves kick in and do their thing. And different groove shapes do it better than others, hence the controversy. But they all work great.

The overall scoring stats also show there has been little impact on PGA Tour scoring from 2011-2015 with the new grooves. As noted, there were even a few 59's on Tour, and a handful of 60's since the groove change. Incredible!

So the next time you are rewarded by a great drive in the fairway, or are greenside looking at a chip from a good lie, you can take comfort knowing you have all the technology you need to stick it close.

It doesn't matter whether you have U (square) grooves, V grooves, or no grooves on your wedge. Relax, execute your shot, and then go tap it in (or pull it out of the hole).

Fairways lies are rewarded, as they should be.

What's more, Rory, Jordan, Phil, Jason, Bubba, and their fellow Tour members are taking advantage of new golf balls with relvolutionary cores and covers.

This is exciting as golf will increasingly become a game with an emphasis on the "100 yards and in" shots (the scoring shots).

When you combine precision wedge shots with more driver distance and increased accuracy off the tee, you will see a positive offsetting of any perceived performance setback from the grooves ruling.

Players will shoot very low scores (maybe 58 or 57), break more scoring records, etc... Every challenge will be overcome.

You can also benefit from the new ball designs that are available in 2015 (and beyond this season) whether you are a 36, 16 or 2 handicap . The right ball design affects every club in your bag.

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