Player A: Your grooves on your wedges look a bit wide....I think they are non conforming
Player B: No...I'm sure they are OK
Player A: I'm not convinced
Player B: Well I've just holed out from 40 yards so I'm happy with them
...where do you go from there?
Does player B have to sit in front of the committee and carry out the process for measuring his wedge grooves (or maybe demonstrating his driver COR is fine)? Or does he hand over the club to the committee for them to investigate and demonstrate non-conformity? Is he proving conformity...or is the committee proving non-conformity?
If someone comes up to me and says on the first tee that...your driver is not conforming...am I expected to extract a list of the conforming clubs from a pocket in my bag and show where it is listed? No. I expect the challenger to raise the issue with officialdom and would wait to be summonsed to the committee room for a severe caning across the backside with the offending club if it was found to be non conforming. I'll co-operate with said committee but I'm not going to go out of my way to prove anything, other than to had the club over for their examination.
There is a difference between a player doing everything that he can to ensure he is in adherence of Rule 4, and what actually should happen in practice should he be challenged by someone who thinks his club is non conforming, and who is responsible for doing what in order to settle such a challenge. Perhaps I should have asked a direct question back in post 8, rather than simply stating my understanding/belief of what should happen.
