Welcome back! I thought about the year we had off, which also happened to be the year directly after a major rules rewrite for the USGA. I’m sure no one took our hiatus as an opportunity to crack open The Rules of Golf, so this year’s blog entries (unless I have a specific story to relate) are going to be devoted to a complete run through the rule book from Rule 1 through 24. I’ll probably spend a couple of weeks on each rule. It’s my hope that I can refocus some efforts on learning what’s in the book and provide some stories from my 4 decades of play.
Rules 1 through 4 in the book are grouped together in a section called “Fundamentals of the Game”. A lot of this stuff is pretty boring, but nonetheless very important. Take Rule 1.1, the focus of today’s blog entry:
“Golf is played by striking your ball with a club, and each hole starts from the teeing area and ends when your ball is holed on the putting green.
You should normally play the course as you find it and play your ball as it lies.”
What’s the deal with the italics, you may ask? The words “teeing area”, “holed”, “putting green” and “course” have specific meanings in the rule book. Everything in italics has a definition in the back of the rule book, and if you’re using the online version, clicking on the italics will bring up the definition for you. For instance, “teeing area” is (and I’ll paraphrase here) a two-club deep rectangle defined by the line between the two tee markers. You have to tee off from this region or you’ve played from the wrong place. I was playing at Geneva Farms last week and one of my fellow competitors felt like the tees were pretty chewed up near the tee markers so he deliberately teed up about 2 feet in front of the markers. I didn’t know the guy – just met him that day, so I didn’t point out his violation. However, when I played the same holes, I could just as easily find some nice grass in the rear of the 2-club depth from the tee markers, so that’s where I played.
Rule 1.1 sounds obvious, but it sets the stage for all of the rules that follow – it sets expectations. You have to use a club, it’s a series of holes, and a hole starts at the teeing area and ends on the putting green when you hole the ball. You’re also expected to play out the hole playing the ball as it lies unless there’s a rule out there that lets you move it.
I host a Veteran’s Day “Man in the Bucket” tournament every year at Pilgrim’s Oak – some of you have played in it, and it’s a different way to play team golf, but the team score for every hole is the score for one of your four players. That score is the sum total of his strokes from the teeing area into the hole – no gimmies, no winter rules, no preferred lies. There’s pressure involved, and inevitably there’s a lot of whining about bad lies and about the course “not being fair”.
I go back to the formation of this game in Scotland. There were no giant course-mowing machines, no staff to go out every day and groom the course, no raking of bunkers. Golf was played in the wild and you had to accept what was presented to you. If you’ve ever played on a PGA tour venue, you know how spoiled the pros are. Playing off of the fairway throws divots the size of a beaver pelt, and the club slides cleanly through the grass. Greens are unblemished by ball marks and are similar in speed from hole 1 through 18. Bunkers are consistent, raked daily and are well drained. Penalty areas are well marked. And for the players, these conditions are the expected standard. We see it every week on television and think that’s the way every course should be. That’s certainly not the case for the vast majority of golf course owners – they have limited staff, limited fertilizer and chemical budgets, and limited water. Giant galleries (well, ok, not right now) ring the course and can pretty much ensure that golf balls that are struck will never be lost.
While I appreciate a well groomed course, I can also appreciate the challenges of finding my ball has come to rest on a bare patch of grass, or right on top of someone’s old divot. I hear it all of the time – “let’s play winter rules!” or “you shouldn’t have to play from there” or “why don’t you hit another one?”. Inside I’m saying “what’s wrong with a challenge?”.
In truth, I think the game of golf is an excellent training ground for getting through life. Some challenges in life are forced on you and you have no option other than playing the hand you’ve been dealt. “Playing the ball as it lies” means accepting where you’ve come to rest and figuring out how to improve your situation. The old terminology that summed these situations used to be “rub of the green”, or just plain luck. I’ve lived long enough to know that accepting a situation and figuring out how to make the best of it makes me a better person despite the scars I may end up with as a result. Whining and moaning about a bad break may gain you some sympathy, but never an ounce of respect. Sucking it up, taking your lumps and trying to make the best of a bad situation will always gain you respect and will help you the next time (and there WILL be a next time).
Patrick Reed’s in trouble again. There’s no blow-by-blow video this time, but what is out there doesn’t reflect well on Mr. Reed, who didn’t need any more negative vibes. I won’t go into the details out there in Torrey Pines, but Patrick’s conduct is in direct conflict with Rule 1.1. From time to time, it appears that he’s absolutely unwilling to accept having to play the ball as it lies, and will intentionally change his situation. This week he went on to par the hole in question and shoot 68 on the last day to win the tournament. Good thing there aren’t fans out there – I don’t think he’d have received a hero’s welcome coming down 18 on Sunday. He won money and a trophy. His reputation? Shot. Please don’t feel you have to be Patrick Reed – it’s a bad example to follow.
I’m a Rush fan who got into rock when Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures were still new. I miss Neil Peart, but he’s left us plenty of nuggets in his lyrics. The idea of the importance of a reputation was the subject of Neil’s very last lyric on their last album, Clockwork Angels in the track “The Garden”. And I quote…
“The measure of a life is a measure of love and respect. So hard to earn, so easily burned. In the fullness of time, a garden to nurture and protect.” Patrick Reed’s garden is full of weeds.
In the Ruggles Evening Golf League we’re able to roll the ball in your own fairway for purposes of finding a preferred lie. I don’t like the rule and I wish we didn’t have it, but you will see me rolling the ball in a league match because the option is available to me. For any other round I play the ball as it lies and accept the challenge. If I can’t play a shot the unplayable ball options are out there for the penalty of one stroke.
Arnold Palmer penned a good book I own called “Playing By the Rules”. Even though the rules have changed, it’s still a good book and a great read. He pointed out that Rule 1.1 is broken every day on countless golf courses all over the world. If two competitors aren’t playing match play and they are putting out and one says to the other “that’s good!”, and the competitor picks up his ball before holing the final putt, he’s broken Rule 1.1. In order to play within the rules for stroke play, you have to hole all your putts. In REGL we violate the rule every single week in every match because we allow “gimmies”, but it is allowed because of a decision of the league committee. It’s probably another REGL rule I’d like to see go away, but I’m sure I’d be in the minority there. Again, in league play I offer gimmies, and I do accept them from other people. It’s become an accepted and encouraged practice for our after-work, have-fun league, but if you ever make the jump to a more competitive brand of stroke play, brace yourself for a different round of golf.