Rumour has it that some of the keenest minds in golf, to wit the rules makers of the R&A and the USGA, are attempting to simplify the blighters.  Good luck, after all these years of making them more and more complicated and adding decision upon decision upon decision as they try to cover every eventuality.

The late, great Peter Dobereiner – he used to call me Eric for reasons now lost in the mists of time and red wine – once set out to re-write the rules and gave up, I believe, because even he, with the best of intentions, found them getting longer and more complicated.  Even so, the denizens of the governing bodies should read everything Dobers ever wrote about the rules (I refuse to give them a capital R) because he is scathingly funny on the subject as only the truly knowledgeable can be.

In ‘Dobereiner On Golf…and more’, edited by Robert Green and Ruth Dobereiner, Peter’s daughter, with a foreword by Seve Ballesteros, there are a few pieces on the rules.  At the end of one, entitled simply ‘What is a stroke?’ there is an editors’ note:  “One of Peter’s favourite pet peeves:  the phrasing of the Rules of Golf.  They gave him, and his readers, endless hours of amusement.”  A footnote to a piece called ‘The true definitions of golf’ reads:  “Another example of Peter’s pre-occupation with the absurdities of the rulebook.”

The opening paragraph sets the scene:  “It has been sagely established by George Bernard Shaw, unless perchance it may have been some other witty blighter such as Oscar Wilde or Noel Coward, that the invention of private languages, as practised by all the learned professions, constitutes a conspiracy against the public.  If the law was written in plain English, all lawyers would starve.  Golf is guilty of the same con trick….”

There follows a glossary of common golf terms and here is a definition of what the word ‘Forwards’ means in golf (there is a long riff on this in ‘What is a stroke?’):  “Backwards, as in the definition of a stroke:  ‘A forward movement of the club, etc’ when it really means the first movement from the top of the backswing which is, of course, backwards.”

In the interests of fairness and research, I double-checked the current rule book (effective January 2016) and as far as I can tell forwards still means backwards.  Try writing your own definition of a stroke and you’ll probably start sympathising with the rules makers.

More research was required because I couldn’t remember how many rules there were originally.  My guess was 13 but detail has never been my strong point (although I do try, sometimes).  Anyway, I didn’t use Google or DuckDuckGo (my current search engine of choice).   I went old school and brought down a pile of books, including Charles Price’s ‘World of Golf:  A panorama of six centuries of the game’s history.’  It was published in 1962, the foreword is by Bobby Jones and it’s a miracle that this blog has appeared on time because it’s not just fascinating, it’s a brilliant read and without an uncharacteristic display of iron discipline, I’d have given up writing and continued reading.

And you know what?  I was right.  For once.  Hooray.  There were 13 rules to begin with because all games need rules, to try and settle disputes and set limits.  The thing about that, of course, is that people try to find ways round the rules or come up with things you never thought of, so you have to be more specific and so on and so on and so on.  Then you get people who don’t necessarily break the rules, just bend them – which leads to joys like Stephen Potter on gamesmanship, another must read for rules makers and anyone who’s never heard of him.  Genius.

In trying to be equitable, when in essence there’s nothing intrinsically fair about golf, or life, the rules people have gone into so much detail that it’s become the devil, to understand and administer.  And people like Simon Barnes, who was for many years the chief sports writer of The Times (London) and a disliker of golf and its mores, could thunder about the game’s “seismic pomposity” and call it “the game of the man who thanks God that he is not as other men are.”

Many of us golfers are, as you know, women and I’ve always been a bit sad that Simon detests us but then he writes this (a propos an incident involving a 16-year old Michelle Wie in her first tournament as a professional) and I find myself cheering:-

“That’s golf for you.  A golfer must have a deep respect for rules.  More:  a worshipful respect for the rules.  In golf, rules are not devices for running a contest:  they are a fetish, a matter of faith, a religion….

“Rules!  Rules about clothes, about behaviour, rules about balls, rules about clubs, rules about women, rules about rules.”

If he’d stopped there, I’d have kept cheering but he carried on:-

“Rules for the suffocation of individuality, of creativity, of artistry, of all those dangerous things that we don’t want in our world, the only world in which grass looks like a nylon carpet.”

Ah, this is a man who doesn’t know golf at all and has no interest in trying to understand it but, of course, he was writing a column called ‘Thunderer’ and the object was to go in all guns blazing.  That doesn’t mean that we golfers should ignore his comments, because our rules do us no favours.  Or is it just our interpretation of them?

 

 

There’s a well known adage to “beware the sick or injured golfer” but, believe you me – and as many of you reading this well know – being injured is zero fun.  And if you are a professional sportsperson, it can be so serious that fun doesn’t come into it at all.

Many years ago my playing career was somewhat derailed by a serious back injury which resulted in surgery.  Thank you to David Jaffrey at Gobowen  for his expertise and particularly neat sewing!   Decades of back exercises and maintenance mean that most of the time I can now play golf pretty much when I like but it doesn’t seem to take too much to crock me or for my back to go on me – now assuredly anno domini as much as anything else, I suspect.

Cast an eye down the lists of touring professionals, most of whom are supreme athletes nowadays and at any given time it is easy to reel off numerous names who are out of action.

Rory has rib trouble at the moment;  Tiger has undergone copious knee and back ops and has withdrawn from several tournaments; Jim Furyk has had long term wrist injuries; and in Thailand this week Inbee Park returns to the competitive arena for the first time since she won the gold medal in Rio six months ago.  A damaged left thumb kept her out of action and she had to call on all her reserves of determination and stubbornness even to play in the Olympics.

 

No matter how lowly or lofty our standard of play we share one thing in common:  golfers are much happier people when they can play golf.  Sure, we may take time to get back into the swing after a lay-off, we may have to readjust our goals and even our reasons for playing may change a little.  I now find that I have no desire to go out with a card and pencil despite loving that format for years.  Frequently there is a mental adjustment to be made to accommodate a decline in standard – something good players often find hard to do – but there is still so much fun to be had.

I’m currently recovering from shoulder surgery and the congenial company of three of Dunham Forest’s finest the other day was as good as a tonic.  A new course and new friends – what’s not to like?

Remember, there is more than one way to play this great game.  There is no right or wrong way.  It is simply about finding the way that is easiest for you and your physical capabilities.  That applies to all of us, even the Rorys and Tigers of this world.  So, do what happy golfers do – get out and play!

Thinking about the blog this week has been making me feel a bit blah and irritable, cross in an indeterminate sort of way.  I’ve been sad and down since hearing about Dave Musgrove’s death the other day – given the current rate of attrition, this could easily turn into an obitblog – but deep down I know what’s been annoying me.  (I was tempted to use another expression but just in time remembered my resolution to reduce my swearing!)

It’s all this stuff about golf being too dull and boring and needing to jazz up its image, to get its act together and appeal to a younger demographic, to try different formats and liven things up.  I heard European Tour boss Keith Pelley on the radio the other day – couldn’t see if he’s still rocking those blue-framed specs – hyping up this week’s bold new event in Perth (the sunny one in Western Australia) and then I heard myself, shouting at the radio.  Oops.

“Don’t blame the game.  It’s your fault; it’s professional golf that’s to blame, with its interminable diet of 72-hole stroke play events, week in, week out, all over the world, now televised day in, day out (yawn, yawn) in its tedious entirety.  It encourages players to be risk averse and, above all, slow, slow, slow.  It’s not golf that needs livening up, it’s your players.”

We amateurs, certainly in Ireland and Britain, have always tended to play matches with our friends and even mix our competitions up with different formats:  greensomes, foursomes, Stableford (oh happy invention), the odd Texas scramble (fun but always long for some reason).  For the pros, however, it’s the spirit-sapping tyranny of the card and pencil.

And how slow they’ve become at it.  Now that they’ve nothing else to do, no shop to run, no members to teach or placate or beat up (on the course), nothing to do but play golf, they don’t care how long they take about it.  They may pay lip service to speeding up but they won’t bother their eye, continuing to waste the time of rules officials like the legendary John Paramor, a man of infinite patience, who was recently awarded the Christer Lindberg Bowl for Services to European Golf by the PGAs of Europe.  Perhaps the Tour should unleash an impatient Paramor, an angry bull elephant permitted to trample any slowcoaches into the turf no questions asked.  Paramor on the rampage, that would be a sight worth seeing.

Sadly, the only thing likely to help is penalty strokes, lots of them, applied ruthlessly and relentlessly but no tour player is going to vote for that and they will continue to dawdle and footer about to their wallet’s content and the game’s detriment.

Because, worst of all, the rest of us will follow their example, taking hours longer to play than we should, forgetting that golf, invented in Scotland, where it is often bitterly cold even in the summer, is a game played on the move for fear of hypothermia.  Too many people seem to have forgotten, or never learned, to think and calculate as they approach their ball, so that their decision about the next shot is nearly complete by the time they reach the ball.  If you mostly play on your home course, why do you need long deliberations over what club to hit from a position you’ve been in thousands of times?  You don’t.   As my aunt used to say, “Just get on with it, dear!”

Anyway, on reflection, I think that Keith Pelley and I are probably on the same side because he’s trying to remind everyone, not least his players, that golf, big business though it’s become, is FUN and a game for everyone, from toddlers to totterers.  If you’ve got time to spare, seek out a copy (undoubtedly remaindered) of Teach Yourself Golf by David and Patricia Davies, who try to share the sheer enjoyment this frustrating game has given them over the years.  For a start, we’d never have met without it!

This train of thought raises other issues, including providing people who are new to the game with places to play.  We don’t need more ‘championship’ courses, we need more munis that are accessible and well run.  That takes money that councils don’t seem to have any more, failing to appreciate that if golf is available to all, it has health and social benefits that could be invaluable.  Perhaps the R&A could use some of its Open money to fund local, low-key, accessible nine-holers; could help councils keep open their munis; and could help ensure that people taking up golf and developing a taste for it, have places to play and progress.

The professional tours, the sponsors and the governing bodies need some serious joined-up thinking if the game is to thrive as it should.  If it’s beyond the wit of man, perhaps we women should step up to the tee.