If there’s a sport other than golf that can evoke a plethora of emotions so dichotomous to one another (relaxation vs. frustration, joy vs. rage), I’ve yet to come across it. I took-up the sport in earnest about ten years ago. I’m talking lessons followed by practice, more lessons followed by more practice, more lessons followed by…well, you get the idea. I actually felt a not so small measure of terror the day I played my first round, but once I made it off the first tee (yes, I had to take a mulligan), I was fine. I dissolved into the beauty of the course, letting the privacy it offered from the outside world shield me from my mundane daily responsibilities and worries.
Flashing forward to today finds my clubs gathering dust in the closet, not having played one round in the last few years. I’ve only been to the local driving range one time in recent memory. There’s no rhyme or reason why this has happened. My wife and I still vow to play the game some day (note: this is the only sport my wife will partake with me); the thought of all those lessons (and money) going for naught doesn’t sit well with us. More importantly, we simply had a good time during our brief affair with the game.
In the course of some of my recent leisurely reading, I’ve come across a new set of “rules” for golf that I think will dramatically increase my resolve to stick with it the next time I pick-up my clubs; in fact, I strongly believe all 50 plus males who have a passion for the game may find an uptick in their level of enjoyment should they decide to play by these new “rules,” so graciously proposed by Mr. Donald A. Metz of Devon, Pa.
Here are a few of his more important changes I can live with:
1. On beginning play, as many balls as may be required to obtain a satisfactory result may be played from the first tee. Everyone recognizes a good player needs to “loosen up” but does not have time for the practice tee.
2. A ball sliced or hooked into the rough shall be lifted and placed in the fairway at a point equal to the distance it carried or rolled in the rough. Such veering right or left frequently results from friction between the face of the club and the cover of the ball, and the player should not be penalized for erratic behavior of the ball resulting from such uncontrollable mechanical phenomena.
3. A ball hitting a tree shall be deemed not to have hit the tree. Hitting a tree is simply bad luck and has no place in a scientific game. The player should estimate the distance the ball would have traveled if it had not hit the tree, and play the ball from there, preferably from atop a nice tuft of grass.
4. There is no such thing as a lost ball. The missing ball is on or near the course somewhere and eventually will be found and pocketed by someone else. It thus becomes a stolen ball, and the player should not compound the felony by charging himself with a penalty stroke.
5. If a putt passes over the hole without dropping, it is deemed to have dropped. The law of gravity holds that any object attempting to maintain a position in the atmosphere without something to support it must drop.
6. A putt that stops close enough to the cup to inspire such comments as “you could blow it in” may be blown in. This rule does not apply if the ball is more than three inches from the hole, because no one wants to make a travesty of the game.
I know what you’re saying, “Bobby Jones must be rolling over in his grave,” but just think how much more pleasurable the 19th hole would be for everyone…
-Neal
