About five years ago I expressed my affection for golf with the post, A Modest Proposal to Fix Golf.
For those of you (like me) who are disinclined to read anything about golf, I made a case for improving the sport dramatically by offering four simple and straightforward rule changes.
1. Shorten every course from 18 to 11 holes.
2. Place a forecaddie on every hole.
3. Time every hole; if you’re on the green when the buzzer sounds, pick up your ball, add two strokes and get the heck off. If you're not on the green, add three and keep moving.
4. Players with higher handicaps pay less. (My logic: suffering should be a bargain.)
You may have noticed that the United States Golf Association has failed to adopt any of my proposals. However, I was highly gratified to learn the other day that they have--in an apparent act of reckless abandon--amended nine principal regulations from the Rules of Golf, much like the church slightly adjusting three or four of the Ten Commandments.
You can assume that these changes, like my proposals above, will strike at the very heart of the playing experience.
In Adam Schupak’s Change 267 Years in Making, we learn that the most earthshattering of the nine are these two:
For those of you (like me) who are disinclined to read anything about golf, I made a case for improving the sport dramatically by offering four simple and straightforward rule changes.
1. Shorten every course from 18 to 11 holes.
2. Place a forecaddie on every hole.
3. Time every hole; if you’re on the green when the buzzer sounds, pick up your ball, add two strokes and get the heck off. If you're not on the green, add three and keep moving.
4. Players with higher handicaps pay less. (My logic: suffering should be a bargain.)
You may have noticed that the United States Golf Association has failed to adopt any of my proposals. However, I was highly gratified to learn the other day that they have--in an apparent act of reckless abandon--amended nine principal regulations from the Rules of Golf, much like the church slightly adjusting three or four of the Ten Commandments.
You can assume that these changes, like my proposals above, will strike at the very heart of the playing experience.
In Adam Schupak’s Change 267 Years in Making, we learn that the most earthshattering of the nine are these two:
1. No longer will a player be penalized a stroke if the wind moves his ball while his club is near it, and
2. If he or she smooths the sand before playing a shot from a bunker, and in doing so does not gain an advantage, that’s O.K., too.Do you get the drift? The other seven are equally monumental.
"This was not a knee-jerk reaction," said Thomas Pagel, the USGA's director for the Rules of Golf.
Ya think?
I would be remiss if I did not remind you serious golfers, Mike and Steve, that these changes do not take affect until January 1, 2012. Until then, keep your club under control or suffer the little gusts of wind at your own risk.
Incidentally, I take full personal credit for these changes, no doubt inspired by my call to eliminate the last seven holes of every golf course in the world--though admittedly, they are a small start.
But in golf, as I learned long ago, you should take each and every tiny victory you can get.
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