The Pellucid Perspective - December 2015 - (Page 16)

THE LAST WORD Single? No posting allowed T he mission statement of the USGA encompasses many things, including preservation of the spirit of the game of golf and its traditions, writing and governance of the game's rules and equipment standards, handicap systems, course conditioning and maintenance standards and conduct of competitions and tournaments. It is a continuing conundrum to me that an organization with the over-arching title of United States Golf Association continues to reiterate, and to demonstrate, that their mission is not to grow the game. You can look at that disclaimer as either clarifying what their mission is not, or for some of the more cynical observers among us, their mission is to not grow the game. It defies logic that such a large, established and in many ways prestigious organization which derives considerable revenue from its golfer membership fees, and whose chapters derive much of theirs from providing handicap services to golfers, would not be more actively involved in increasing the amount of golfers and volume of play. Even more frustrating is that periodically they issue pronouncements from their Far Hills, N.J. ivory tower that have the effect of discouraging, rather than encouraging, both existing and potential customers of the game. The most recent, coming on the heels of the anchored stroke ruling that goes into effect next month, is a series of revisions or "clarifications" of various aspects of the official USGA handicap system that go into effect January 1. While a few features of the rules governing handicap determination and application may provide helpful guidance to handicap chairpersons or weekend warriors dueling over a $2 Nassau, the dictate that has raised many golfers' ire is a ban on posting scores for rounds played as a single. USGA officials have defended the change as necessary to uphold the "key system premise of peer review." That prohibition is designed solely to prevent "sandbagging" by nefarious golfers posting higher scores than they actually shot in order to jack up their handicaps for future matches or competitions. 16 The Pellucid PersPecTive (I suppose conceivably it could work the other way, if a golfer were trying to artificially lower his or her handicap in order to qualify for a particular event, but that's probably relatively rare). The whole point of the posting rules change is to add another obstacle for cheaters. In yet another irony, the USGA is the first to tout the essential nature of golf as an honorable game, virtually the only major sport where competitors are encouraged to call rules violations and penalties upon themselves and to generally pay homage to the spirit of fair play. Pocket change jiggling or the untimely cough in an opponent's backswing and other sleazy forms of gamesmanship are discouraged. And yet the USGA is telling us that the game is so rife with cheating in the form of handicap inflation that golfers cannot be trusted to post a score that was not witnessed by others. The solitary rounds posting ban is problematic in many ways. For one, how does the USGA, the local chapter or the club determine whether the round in question was played with other "peers" or not? If it's a private club, does the handicap chairman poll the membership to see if Mr. Jones, whose handicap has ballooned but just ran away with the Net division in the latest tournament actually played with any of them during the most recent 20 rounds that accounted for his handicap index? Does a public course ask the marshal or starter to jot down names of singles and then check the posting station to see if they posted that score? And, really, how big is the problem? Most private clubs, men's or women's clubs or tournament organizers have undoubtedly, by the law of averages and human nature, encountered hustlers whose game seems to blossom at tournament time or when the stakes increase. As a result, most of those clubs have rules in place to keep that from happening more than once, whether it be arbitrarily adjusting the miscreant's handicap in future events, making it their business to check with playing partners to ensure the scores posted were accurate, etc. Tournament scores are typically weighted more heavily than non-tournament events, which also puts an automatic brake on sandbaggers. More devastating in my mind is that the ban can't help but accelerate the decline in the number of golfers who have handicaps, which colleague Stuart Lindsay cites as more than 30 percent over the last decade in his "Naughty and Nice" awards article earlier in this issue, and penalizes the undoubtedly sizable number of golfers who enjoy or simply end up playing by themselves from time to time. It is yet another instance of the USGA telling golfers and potential golfers "No." It is wrong for many of the same reasons that their totally misguided ban on the anchored putting stroke was ill-conceived. We can celebrate the fact that rounds played in the U.S. this year were up slightly from the previous year, but we shouldn't overlook the fact that those rounds were played by a significantly smaller number of golfers than last year. Telling players who are plagued by putting woes that they can't enjoy whatever marginal improvement they achieve by anchoring a long putter is not a recipe for increasing or even continuing their play. Similarly, telling golfers that when they play by themselves, they are essentially not a "real" golfer and can't post that score (because we don't trust you) is likewise not exactly an incentive to play a solitary round instead of amusing oneself elsewhere. On the other hand, I suppose that if one of your most cherished roles is, along with the R&A, establishing and maintaining the rules governing the game, it stands to reason that from time to time you have to either add to or tweak those rules to justify that raison d'etre. If those rules changes only realistically apply to those who are already truly committed to the competitive spirit of the game, and disregard the need to replenish their numbers with newcomers or marginal participants, so be it. I just wish that those august gentlemen and ladies of the USGA would devote as much of their energies and considerable financial resources to advancing the future of the game as they have to its past. -Jim Dunlap December 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Pellucid Perspective - December 2015

TOC
Winds of change blowing at NGCOA?
The one that no one saw coming: The GPAPA
Naughty and nice – Best wishes for the New Year
CaddieMaster joins the Troon family
November golf weather impact: Off the Charts! Better East than West
Columbus, OH: Fiesta for OSU football, golf not so much
Single? No posting allowed

The Pellucid Perspective - December 2015