Grid with grouping yields indistinguishable rows

In a grid that uses a grouping field, the template file [views-view-grid.tpl.php] is NOT invoked once with a $rows array containing all of the rows in the grid, but is, instead, called once for every row in the grid. This means that, from a CSS perspective, the template file treats each row as though it were both the first and the last row in the grid.

As a practical matter, this makes it difficult to treat the first row of a grid any differently than the rest of the rows in the grid, and pretty much eliminates any possibility of using zebra striping.

NOTE: I have invented a kluge around this problem, but it involves inserting logic in the views-view-grid.tpl.php file, and using an inserted CSS row class that [see the issue entitled "In grid with grouping, row class is rendered in column"] actually shows up in each column in the row.