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Friday, October 28, 2011
Last week in crazy golf rules
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.
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