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When do you let golfers play through? How much do you let it escalate? And check out the ESPN comments (sort by MOST LIKED), as there are tremendously funny comments in there. ESPN readers really outdid themselves on that one (too early though?).
If I, as a marginal fan of golf, and pre-daddy weekend golfer, were to say that it’s a ridiculous rule that if you address a ball, and after that (but before I hit it) the ball moves for whatever reason (say the wind moves it), that you get a penalty for that, I’d be blasted by the Golfinistas. The Rules Of Golf is like scripture handed down to Moses or Charlton Heston. Don’t question the Rules of Golf any more than you’d question Oprah.
But… wait for it… The Rules of Golf have changed!
But change is not unheard of. And it came this week with a whiff of the revolutionary. The R&A, along with the United States Golf Association, which administers the game in this country, amended nine principal regulations from the Rules of Golf, the bible of the game. No longer will a player be penalized a stroke if the wind moves his ball while his club is near it. And if he or she smoothes the sand before playing a shot from a bunker, and in doing so does not gain an advantage, well, that’s O.K., too.
Now, if I were to say that it’s a silly rule that the wind does NOT count, that is, if I take the OPPOSITE view that I had last week, I would AGAIN be blasted by the Golfinistas. The Rules of Golf can do no wrong. It’s like 1984.
***
Imagine if you will that the Rules of Baseball had ALWAYS required that at the end of the game, the two managers sign a scorecard attesting to how many runs each team scored. And if either manager did not sign such a scorecard by the time he enters the clubhouse, the game would be forfeited by that manager.
And imagine the Cubs manager, being so excited by finally winning the World Series on a Game 7, is carried by his team into the clubhouse. He’s screaming and pleading with them to stop so he can sign the scorecard. But no, like Moonlight Graham taking that one fateful step, as soon as the Cubs manager enters that clubhouse, he forfeits that Game 7, the win is reversed to his opponent, and so ends the World Series.
And, every baseball fan would accept that as simply bad luck for the Cubs, because The Rules Of Baseball were so ingrained in the fans and players, that the rules could do no wrong. They would accept the result, just as surely as a golfer will accept his fate and lose a tournament in overtime because the wind moved (shifted?) the ball.
Welcome to the golfer’s pysche, where adherence to the Rules of Golf is predicated on the belief that those Rules are grounded in perfect logic… even when the rules change.
Note: No actual golfers were hurt in the writing of this blog post. Any actual golfers believing they were hurt, should golf on a windy day, address a ball, and thank the Lords of Golf that sanity has been restored.
Just as a pitcher can get an automatic called ball by the umpire, so too can a golfer get an automatic one stroke penalty for slow play. And so, if the marshall gives you that penalty, you have to add it into one of those 18 holes you are playing. No problem there. Repeat: no problem with the transgression, nor the cost.
However, instead of giving you the option to which of the 18 holes you add that penalty to, it seems to automatically must be added to the hole you are about to play. And so, the kid loses his “official” hole in one. As if which hole you add the stroke to matters at all.
I wonder if whoever wrote the Rules of Golf also wrote the Rules of Earned Runs…
SI’s guys says it’s these:
I think it’s as good an idea as aluminum bats in rec leagues in baseball and softball, as it is with plastic blades that you screw onto a hockey stick, and plastic balls instead of pucks. Basically: who cares? Apparently, the USGA technical director wants everything to conform to his standards, or he’s going to mock the idea:
You know the easiest way to get the ball in the middle of the fairway? Walk down there and place it with your hand. Who are you kidding?
Everybody is the gate keeper of all that is holy of whatever little world they are involved in.
I love that someone is doing it:
What he really wanted to do was test the 10,000-hour theory he read about in the Malcolm Gladwell bestseller Outliers. That, Gladwell wrote, is the amount of time it takes to get really good at anything — “the magic number of greatness.”
...
Dan spent last month in St. Petersburg because winters are winters in the Pacific Northwest. “If I could become a professional golfer,” he said one afternoon, “the world is literally open to any options for anybody.”
...
The 10,000-hour concept, though, is based on academic research into the idea that success is a choice — made, not born. At first glance, it feels like a very American idea — you can be anything you want to be — but it is an unsentimental view of the world. It helps to be tall in basketball, and it helps to start violin lessons at a young age, but what separates the few truly great from the many merely good is not talent or magic or luck. It’s dedication and discipline. The secret to success isn’t a secret. It’s work.
...
Here’s how they have Dan trying to learn golf: He couldn’t putt from 3 feet until he was good enough at putting from 1 foot. He couldn’t putt from 5 feet until he was good enough putting from 3 feet. He’s working away from the hole. He didn’t get off the green for five months. A putter was the only club in his bag. Everybody asks him what he shoots for a round. He has no idea. His next drive will be his first. In his month in Florida, he worked as far as 50 yards away from the hole. He might — might — have a full set of clubs a year from now.
...
“Basically,” he told the people at the conference, “what I’m trying to do with this project is demonstrate how far you’re able to go if you’re willing to put in the time. “I’m testing human potential.” Everybody in the classroom clapped for Dan and his plan.
...
But never, not in anything, according to Ericsson, has anyone done it like this: to start at this age, with no experience, and to keep statistics from the beginning, and to be so self-reflective about it, and to last even this long.
***
Unrelated story:
I picked up my first golf club when I was in my 20s, the kind of thing you pick up for company shindigs. I have a good baseball swing (can go opposite field well), but that is terrible for golf (huge slices). I think my first golf score was 132. I remember when I broke 100 the first time, I was in Calgary (and my first game there.. shot a 96, which was about 10 strokes better than I shot in Montreal as of that time). I have to believe a good golf course must help substantially, because I only broke 100 once in Montreal.
I also insisted to use a crappy driver. I saw my buddies who play scratch golf use these fantastic 400$ drivers, light, with enormous heads. It was impossible to make a bad shot with those. But me, I reasoned that it was more important to handicap myself with a crappy driver that was unforgiving if you miss your shot. My whole golf set cost under 100$, and for a weekend golfer like me (10-15 times a year for 5-6 years), I figured that was just fine.
Anyway, my buddy picked up the sport at the exact same time as I did. But what he did was ONLY use the 5-iron and the putter. That’s it. Off the tee, out of the sand. In any situation, it was the 5-iron. He reasoned that it was too hard for us too learn to use each of the clubs in the bag, and so, why not get really good using just two clubs.
It was an interesting and unintended experiment. And we pretty much shot the same. But he had more fun that I did. To him, he was learning, and to me, I was surviving. It would be the equivalent of him always driving in the middle lane come hell or high water, while I switch lanes continuously. But when all is said and done, both of us arrive at the destination at the same time.
***
His website is at The Dan Plan.
Glove-slap: NaOH
Poz has something interesting to say about Tiger:
I never think people realize just how unlikely it is for Tiger Woods to win five more major championships. Think about Phil Mickelson for a moment. He has been on tour for 16 years, since he was 25. He has won 38 times on the PGA Tour. That’s a Hall of Fame career—Phil Mickelson is almost certainly one of the 25 greatest golfers who ever lived. He has won FOUR majors in 63 starts. Does Tiger Woods have an entire Phil Mickelson career (plus one major) left in him over the rest of his career?
It really is ridiculous that the observers become part of the game. Is the PGA hurting for money that they can’t have an official for each group of three golfers?
A friend of mine used to work at a PGA tournament in Montreal. He told me EVERYONE was a volunteer, and there was a waiting list for all kinds of jobs.
So, that’s why the PGA is not going to start paying for officials. They have waiting lists for volunteer work, and they have crowdsourcing of referees. It works wonderfully for them.
I’m not talking about the divet rule. I’m only talking about the observers-becoming-referees scenario.
Rule:
Poulter, in keeping with golf tradition, informed rules officials immediately of the infraction, and boom, that was that. He had violated Rule 20-1/15, which chief referee Andy McFee indicated read as follows: “Any accidental movement of the ball marker which occurs before or after the specific act of marking, including as a result of dropping the ball, regardless of the height from which it was dropped … results in the player incurring a one stroke penalty.”
Certainly, Poulter did the right thing in reporting the violation. The fact that the players police themselves is what makes golf a unique sport. But the rule isn’t the problem; the severity of the punishment is. As with so many other infractions in golf, the penalty is totally out of proportion to the degree of the “crime.”
It looks like the marker was at 40 feet. I understand the rule for disturbing the marker, because it might move the ball from 3 feet to 2 feet 11.5 inches, and so, get an unfair half-inch advantage on a putt. This would be like blowing the whistle for an offside if the ref sees the skate of a player cross the blue line before the puck by a split second, however inconsequential.
I’m usually pretty anti silly-golf rule, but I think I have to live with this one. Basically, when you mark and unmark your ball, you are very careful in how you mark it, practically being a surgeon. To be in a position to accidentally unmark it is sloppy.
I dunno… I’d love to find a reason to justify that it’s a silly rule. I’m all ears…
Really, in this day and age, someone at Forbes was paid to write this:
Are we really going to succumb to our Orwellian compulsions and let computers decide who the best players and teams are? I should hope not.
That was in response to the seemingly ridiculous result of some non-winner being ranked the #1 golfer in the world. This is not a computer problem. This is a user requirements problem. It’s not the dumb computer that decided anything. It’s a committee of human beings that decided on the point system. The only thing the computer did is process the data, just as sure as the computer processed the writer’s words so he could type the text I quoted above. Are we going to blame computers for everything? If the writer can take responsibility for writing the quoted part above, then the PGA committee will take responsibility for devising the scoring system it has in place.
This is 2010 already. Really? I have to be reading this stuff and countering it? Really?
Even the young are not spared:
Zach Nash is a 14-year-old Wisconsin kid who happens to be a fine golfer. So good, in fact, that he won a junior Wisconsin PGA tournament. Problem was, he won it by violating—albeit unintentionally—one of golf’s most straightforward rules. He had too many clubs in his bag. And the worst part? It was a total accident, discovered long after the fact.
The penalty is two strokes… PER HOLE! I can just see all those hockey players coming forward that they used a stick with too much curve to it, all those pitchers who doctored balls, all those linemen coming forward that they were holding their opponents.
Imagine a rule in baseball, and you were brought up on this rule since you were a kid, that the manager must sign a scorecard to show how many runs were scored before he leaves the stadium. And one day, Lou Piniella forgot to do that because the Cubs just won the World Series. But, baseball being golf, and everyone knew the rules and everyone was brought up on the rules, the Cubs fans accept it as nothing more than a fact of life, and concede the World Series to their opponents.
Yup, that’s golf’s zero-tolerance policy, one that all those who’ve been nurtured by its rules are content to live by it.
I’ll accept that I’m the fool here. Sometimes, even fools are right.
Not signing a 61 card. A one-stroke penalty? Yellow-carded like in soccer? One-tournament suspension? Three lashes at dawn? No, all those would be more proportionate than what happened: disqualification.
Article that parrots my view:
Make no mistake: Inkster’s disqualification was ridiculous; Rodriguez’s, even more so. The absurdly harsh punishment in no way fits the relatively minor crime. Even so, though, if you’re going to play on someone’s course, you play by their rules—nitpicky, counterintuitive and asinine though they may be.
...
Or they can take a page from every other sport in existence and bend just the tiniest bit. Let a little bit of light in. Understand that swinging a club weight or forgetting a half-second scribble is not, in tournament terms, a capital offense.
...
(Side note: a close parallel to the absurd scorecard rule would be a baseball manager filling out an incorrect lineup card. And guess what happened earlier this year when that took place? Did the offending manager have to forfeit the game? Of course not. The game was played “under protest,” and since the other team won anyway it was a moot point. But even baseball—the standard-bearer for head-in-the-sand officialdom—is able to distinguish between an “honest mistake” and game-altering cheating.)
Excellent analogy. Presenting a line-up card that has, say, the same name twice, doesn’t give the opposing team a win. They work they way through it with a proportionate penalty.
In the end: enforce the rules as written, while protesting (not defending) any penalty that is disproportionate.
Sports-tangent post.
Elin speaks to People (first and last interview apparently)
Westfall said Nordegren wanted people to know three things: she’s not violent and never hit Woods; she had no idea this was going on; and it was a real marriage for her.
Another weekend, another tournament where a fan emails in for a rule violation to disqualify a player:
LPGA spokesperson Sue Witters said they disqualified Inkster Saturday after receiving an e-mail from a fan watching the event on television.
I saw Jorge Posada apply a phantom tag on Franklin Gutierrez. My email went unreturned. Let’s give the last word to the ultimate in rules enforcement:
Remember when the “toe in the crease” rule was introduced to the NHL ... when referees disallowed goals on the mere suspicion the shooter had his toenail in the area? Only days after its adoption, Gary Bettman visited the press box at the Bell Centre. Even before he said hello, it was suggested to him that the new rule made no sense at all. I can even recall the word “sucked” appeared early in our discussion.
His reply: “Well, don’t you think the game should be played by the rules?”
I’ve spoken with my golf friends, and they all agree with the majority of you guys: rules are rules. Them being Canadians, I had also asked them about the toe-in-the-crease rule, and they agreed with the majority of hockey fans: the rule sucked.
Clearly, people are biased by their environment. If it’s a learned behaviour that you apply the Gary Bettman credo in golf, then what Bettman says makes perfect sense. But, since we don’t think like that in hockey and baseball, we’re happy to say a similar-type rule sucked and should be changed immediately.
I’m really in the minority when I say that I’d question every single rule out there for every sport for reasonableness and proportionality. Start with blank slate, add in the core principles of the sport, and build from there.
I may be wrong, but I feel I’m right.
It’s all about proportionate response. And that was not proportionate.
No, I don’t mean his ridiculous ”hiatus” (hey, I go on golf hiatus from Dec - Mar as well), but South Park:
...a story on scientists who investigate the phenomenon of “rich, successful men who suddenly want to have sex with many, many women,” and learns some fourth-grade boys have the same problems.
Golf:
I don’t normally talk about personal achievements on this website. I prefer to focus on the news (or what I perceive to be interesting). But I wanted to take a few seconds to let everyone know that I got into the Golf Writers Association of America. This is a very exciting achievement for me, as a guy who runs a blog, to be admitted into this organization. I don’t know how many guys and gals that write a blog are in the GWAA, but I am very excited to be one of them. I’m very thankful to the good folks at the GWAA.
Glove-slap: Eric Simon.
Hat tip: King
Using data the tour regularly records on every ball’s green location accurate to the nearest inch, the professors found that birdie putts were made about 3 percent less often than otherwise identical putts for par. (In effect, players tell themselves before birdie attempts, “Let’s just get close,” rather than, “I have to make this.”)
Feb 11 04:03
MGL: Today on Clubhouse Confidential
Feb 11 04:02
Reader Mail of the Day: Why do we need X years of fielding data? And what about outliers?
Feb 11 02:12
Performance through the ages
Feb 11 02:10
Dwight Evans
Feb 10 23:01
For Your Soul
Feb 10 21:07
Hero of the month: Brittney Baxter
Feb 10 18:32
Moneyball at Villanova
Feb 10 17:00
Psst… wanna intern in Canada?
Feb 10 15:01
New PECOTA
Feb 10 14:28
Win expectancy charts used in football… in 1983!
THREADS
February 10, 2012
Jose Molina
February 10, 2012
Reader Mail of the Day: Why do we need X years of fielding data? And what about outliers?
February 10, 2012
Performance through the ages
February 10, 2012
Hero of the month: Brittney Baxter
February 10, 2012
Win expectancy charts used in football… in 1983!
February 10, 2012
Dwight Evans
February 09, 2012
Psst… wanna intern in Canada?
February 08, 2012
Moneyball at Villanova
February 08, 2012
MGL: Today on Clubhouse Confidential
February 08, 2012
New PECOTA
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