That's how it works for the professionals. However, for 98% of the people who play golf, there's a much different reality: everyone cheats. In this "game of honor," cheating is so widespread that it's actually sanctioned by amateur league and tournament rules, to the point where it's not even considered cheating.
How do weekend golfers cheat? Let me count the ways. 1. Picking up the ball when it's not yet in the hole but is within "gimme" range (typically, within a couple of feet of the hole). 2. Taking the occasional "mulligan" (an errant or stubbed tee shot which is forgiven, allowing the player to tee up another ball without penalty). And, the most widespread and insidious of all, 3. Improving one's lie (moving the ball so it's sitting up in the fairway grass, making it easier to strike cleanly).
Gimme that!
It's embarrassing to miss a two-foot putt -- so many weekend golfers never attempt one. As soon as the ball is within embarrassment-potential range, someone in the foursome says, "We'll give you that one," and the player picks the ball up and counts it as if he'd knocked it in the hole. The idea is that if I give you a two-foot putt on this hole, you'll give me one on the next, and neither of us will face the ignominy of missing a shorty -- it's an exercise in mutual face-saving.
A rationalization sometimes offered for "gimme" putts is that picking the ball up, instead of putting it into the hole, saves time and speeds play. Well, it may speed play ever so slightly -- but what it really does is avoid the uncomfortable truth that a two-foot putt is not automatic (neither is an 18-inch or even a 12-inch putt. In fact, in this year's Doral-Ryder Open, PGA Tour star Michael Bradley missed an 8-inch putt, in front of a national TV audience -- fortunately, it didn't cost him anything, as he ended up winning the tournament by one stroke). And picking up the ball does not teach you how to make short putts.
One of my early mentors, when I was first taking up golf, related an episode that occurred in a country club of which he was once a member. In the club championship tournament one year, the defending champion was defeated by a high-handicapper in an early-round match. When asked how he'd accomplished such an upset, the winner explained, "My opponent's regular foursome always picks up everything inside three feet. Well, when I played this guy, I made him putt every ball into the hole. He missed a two-footer early in the match, and started to get steamed up. I continued to make him knock everything in, not conceding any putts -- and he kept missing short ones. He got madder and madder, and missed more and more short putts, until I closed him out!"
[For non-golfers who might be reading this, match play -- such as a club championship tournament -- is the one kind of golf in which it's legitimate to "concede" a putt and let an opponent pick the ball up. If your opponent's ball is only a foot or two from the hole, you can say, "That's good," and let him pick it up -- in fact, you're insulting him if you don't. But our hero in the club championship didn't care about insulting his opponent by suggesting he couldn't make a two-footer; all he was interested in was winning the match. His opponent, because he normally played with friends who "conceded" every short putt, had never bothered to sharpen his short-putting skills -- and it cost him his championship.]
Awhile back, I ran across an anecdote involving the legendary golf teacher, Harvey Penick. Seems a young couple with a small child approached Penick one day in a state of excitement. "Our son just made his first birdie!," they told him. "How long was the putt?," Penick asked. "Oh, it was only a foot or so away, so we gave it to him." "I have bad news for you," Penick replied. "Your son still hasn't made a birdie." His point was that golf is a game of knocking a ball into a hole. Close may count in horseshoes and hand grenades, but not on the green.
Mulligan stew
Another peculiar way a lot of weekend golfers have of deluding themselves is the mulligan. This involves hitting a poor tee shot (either into the woods, if there are any, or into a pond, or just dribbling the ball a short distance off the tee), then teeing up a second ball and proceeding as if the first one had never happened. Not much need be said about this one, except to note that it's almost as widespread as the gimme putt and the preferred lie (see below). Typically, a foursome will allow each player one mulligan per round, or one per nine holes. I say if you're going to do that, why not just play by the rules, then subtract two strokes from your score at the end of the round? It's the same thing.
Lies, damned lies, and preferred lies
By far the most common way of cheating on the golf course -- so common that most people don't even consider it cheating -- is the preferred lie, sometimes known as playing "with the ball up." When you don't like the position your ball is in, simply roll it around until it comes to rest in a higher spot -- on a tuft of grass or small raised spot, the better to make solid contact.
Many, many golfers play with the ball up -- even a lot of people who should know better, who consider themselves serious players, turn in their scores for handicaps and so on. They never hit a ball out of a bad lie (sitting down in the grass, in a depression, or simply in a tight spot in the fairway) -- they'll roll the ball over into a better position on almost every shot. Improving a lie is such a common practice that many golf leagues actually allow it explicitly in their rules. Well, so be it -- but as with "gimme" putts, getting into the habit of improving lies does not improve your game -- it simply prevents you from learning how to hit a clean golf shot. I read an apt quote that sums it up pretty well: "Playing golf with the ball up is like playing tennis with the net down."
'Fess up, Urb
In the interest of truth, justice, and full disclosure, it must be admitted that even though I've never taken a mulligan, I knock every putt, no matter how short, into the hole, and I play the ball where it lies, it would be less than truthful to claim 100% adherence to the USGA rulebook. For example, when I find that the ball has come to rest in a damaged area not marked as ground under repair, I'll occasionally move it to an undamaged area. I'm especially prone to doing this if the turf has been damaged by golf carts (which are an abomination -- but that's another column). I've been known to bend or even break a small branch of a tree or bush, to give myself a chance to take a swat at a stray ball. I frequently carry more than the legal limit of 14 clubs in my bag. And after a heavy rain, I'll take a ball out of a waterlogged greenside bunker, playing the bunker as ground under repair. (After all, bunkers are supposed to be full of sand, not water.)
A couple of weeks ago, I hit my second shot out of bounds on a par-5. Officially, when your ball is lost or out of bounds, you're supposed to go back to where you played the shot and drop another ball, taking a stroke-and-distance penalty (in this instance, I'd have taken my 4th shot from the same spot from which I hit my 2nd shot OB). This is impractical for casual daily-fee play, though -- going back 200 yards, several minutes after the original shot, would have provoked the wrath of the following group, who'd been watching me look for my ball, hoping I'd find it, so they could get on with their round. So instead of playing strictly by the book, I dropped a ball at the approximate spot where I thought my original ball probably trickled into the brush, and took a two-stroke penalty (hitting my fifth shot from there). A bit of a fudge, but true to the spirit, if not the letter, of the rules.
Play 'em where you find 'em!
There's no need to memorize all the minutiae of the rulebook. Some of the Official Rules of Golf are just plain goofy (again, that's a subject for another column -- just to take one example, though, if you're on the green, and you touch your ball with your putter and move it, you're obligated to replace it and take a stroke-and-distance penalty -- if you simply count it as a stroke and play the ball from its new location, you get a two-stroke penalty. This happened on the LPGA Tour a few years ago. Where's the logic in that rule?). But there are some basic principles that shouldn't be ignored -- and the fact that the majority of golfers ignore them doesn't make it OK. Play the ball where it lies, count every stroke, and knock every ball into the hole. Otherwise, don't bother keeping score. How is golf supposed to be a "game of honor" if everyone cheats?
Copyright © 1998 John J. Kafalas