A game within a game

August 29, 2014 07:30 pm | Updated 07:50 pm IST

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30mp_urgent1

Hercules to lapidarist

“Drive for show and putt for dough” is an old adage in golf. After having displayed your skills in majestic drives and powering fluidity in approach shots to the green, this annoying game requires a complete change in character, from being a Hercules to a lapidarist, whilst onthe greens. Without the subtle and precise touch on the greens, many a great game of golf would never have been. There is little wonder then that the pundits call putting, a game within a game!

Table land or green?

Our “antients” did not distinguish between the entire playing area and “the green”. The entire playing area was referred to as the green and out of this have come the expressions “through the green”, “rub of the green”, ”green keeper” and “green fee”.

The modern golfer whines when he has to play on a bumpy green. Imagine, in the old days, the flattest (table) piece of land was selected; a hole cut with a penknife and voila, a green was ready to play.

The hole truth

In the early days, the size of the hole at different courses varied dramatically, thanks also to the practice of scooping sand out of the hole last played and using it as a mound to tee up the ball for the next hole. It wasn’t until 1892 that the R&A standardized the size of the hole and it remains till date at 4 1/4 inches in diameter and 4 inches in depth.  While no one knows why these dimensions were fixed, scuttlebutt is that this was the size of the 1st hole-cutter that appeared in 1829.

Teetering on the brink

When a ball, tantalizingly teeters on the edge of the hole, one cannot dance around it or blow on it to make it fall. You have 10 seconds to wait and should it fall before that, you have holed out with the previous stroke, else just add one.

Stick marking the hole

While a flagstick is something that we accept as commonplace, this

simple device has a hoary past. In 1783, the Aberdeen Code read “When the hole is distinctly in view of the player, no person shall be allowed to stand at it for direction.” This implied that there was nothing to indicate where the hole was. The Liverpudlians, in 1869, said that it was the duty of the first couple to place a feather to mark the position of the hole for those following. In 1874, a Local Rule read, “The players are preceded by a scout, who carries a red flag.”

  Croquet anyone?

Sam Snead was a great exponent of the croquet style of putting. Using a centre-shafted putter , Sam would stand astride the ball and make a croquet stroke. The R&A rushed in to ban this in 1968 and the rule stands today.

The earliest code read “At holing, you are to play your ball honestly for the hole and not play on your adversary’s ball lying in your way to the hole”. I am sure there are many of you today who would love to put your hated opponent’s ball into a deep bunker, much as they would do in croquet!

Stymie — What’s that?

The modern golfer knows nothing about this glorious tradition that existed till 1952. When your adversary’s ball lay between you and the hole, you were stymied and you were compelled to play over or around his ball. Of course, one was allowed to do anything to hole the putt, including striking the opponent's ball. This is the one reason for the modern rule not applying a penalty for striking the opponent's ball in match play, but applying a 2-stroke penalty in stroke play. Those who could not negotiate the stymie were many and it took 119 years from the first attempt to ban the stymie and consign it to the history books, prompting the great Bobby Jones to say “the only place where I think a real mistake was made came with the elimination of the stymie”.

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