Flap over Mickelson's 20 year old wedge 

It's right there in the U.S. Golf Association manual, just before the rule that regulates thread count in argyle sweater vests, and the one specifying approved colors for oversized tees.

The rule itself reads like the warranty for your new TV, so we'll paraphrase: "Square grooves are not allowed. Well, OK — sometimes."

In answer to your unspoken question, no, a square groove does not describe a middle-aged man with a comb-over and trick knee trying to bust a move upon hearing "YMCA" at the father-daughter dance. Rather, it describes a nontraditional wedge design, in which U-shaped (or "square") grooves are used instead of V-shaped grooves.   

Turns out square grooves are a very useful tool in the hands of skilled professionals. It allows them to make a golf ball do all manner of tricks — spin, sit, shake hands, whistle the theme from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" — even when hit from the rough.

It has become too useful in the eyes of the USGA, which instituted a new regulation this year reducing the size and contour of the grooves. Only it wasn't that easy. Because of a lawsuit settled 20 years ago, any Ping-Eye 2 square-groove wedge is exempted from the new regulation, as long as it was made before April 1, 1990 .

Apparently Phil Mickelson never throws anything away. He found one of the old Ping-Eye 2s in his garage (it was partially hidden by a box of 8-track tapes) and put

it in his bag for this weekend's Farmers Insurance Open in San Diego .

Whereupon all hell broke loose. You'd have thought he showed up at the first tee wearing a Tag Heuer knockoff.

"It's cheating. I'm appalled Phil has put it in play," Scott McCarron said, referring to the club and not the watch.

"I think cheating is not the right word," Robert Allenby said. "But it's definitely an advantage. There's only a certain amount of people that can find them, and I just think it's not right if you're using them."

Mickelson isn't the only golfer using the exempted wedge, but he's taking most of the heat. Even golfers who support his right to use it have done so grudgingly. For its part, the PGA Tour released an important-sounding statement (using the world "promulgated" and everything) that seemed to support Mickelson.

CBS devoted part of its coverage Saturday to the controversy, with analyst Nick Faldo providing the final word:

"It's a gentlemen's sport," he said. "We're dealing with the integrity of the game which has been handed down to us."

Translation: "If Phil were standing here right now, I'd slap him across the face with my Taylor Made glove."

And here we reach the crux of the debate. Golfers like to think of themselves as keepers of integrity's flame. They consider honor something the Marines only play at. If Abe Lincoln was magically reincarnated and wanted to join the PGA Tour, it would insist on a background check.

It's not uncommon for pro golfers to call penalties on themselves, citing rules that haven't been referenced since Ben Hogan was in diapers, even if no one saw the infraction. You wonder sometimes if they do it just to show how honorable they are.

"I'd like to report a penalty. Remember when I threw grass in the air to gauge the wind? I was three blades over the limit."

Two reasons, then, to love pro golfers — for their platinum-plated virtue, and the unintentional humor it generates.

In this case they're directing their puritanical ire in the wrong direction. This is an unusual situation, with an oddball loophole in a debatable rule. Technology produced advances in drivers to the point where they had to take bulldozers to courses like Augusta National to adjust for the proliferation of 325-yard drives. And suddenly there's a witch hunt on square grooves?

The larger point, no matter how you feel about Mickelson and his time-capsule club, is that you can't portray yourself as a card-carrying moralist while being a stickler for some rules and not others. If you don't like the rule, take it up with the USGA. Or better yet, get together as a group and make your own decision — something that could happen as early as next week, when the PGA Tour's Players Advisory Council is expected to discuss the situation.

For now, though, a rule's a rule. Or as they say on Tour, "If I were you, I'd change into regulation argyle before the marshal shows up."