Perspective from the 19th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write. I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf. The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie. And it is where you want to be on a golf course.
If I would have been smart – how many times in life have I said that? – I would have added a key point yesterday in a blog I wrote about my support for changing a golf rule, divots in fairways.
The point would have been this: The late professional golfer Payne Stewart had bad luck with his ball coming to rest in a fairway divot during the 1998 U.S. Open at The Olympic Club, then again a year later in the Open at Pinehurst.
This stands as the hallmark of the need to change the unfair golf rule.
Of course, Stewart didn’t like what happened either time. But, what do you do?
Official golf rules say, “live with it.”
When the “divot problem” happened again at Pinehurst, Stewart was ready for it the second time around because he had practiced on how to escape from such a predicament.
Here is the way golf writer Lee Pace put it in a story I found through Mr. Google:
“Payne Stewart made a remarkable personal metamorphosis over the 1990s. Always a graceful and talented performer on the course, Stewart, as a young tour pro, wasn’t universally embraced away from the course as his somewhat bratty, churlish ways rubbed many he encountered the wrong way.
“A variety of circumstances and lessons conspired over the 1990s to soften and smooth the edges, and the 42-year-old Stewart who came to Pinehurst for the 1999 U.S. Open was significantly more humble and likeable than the one who won the 1991 Open at Hazeltine.” Or, I add, almost won at Olympic in 1998.
“That evolution of Stewart, Pace writes, “is perhaps best illustrated in the story of the divots of Olympic 1998 and Pinehurst 1999.
“Stewart enjoyed a four-shot lead to begin the final day of the ’98 Open in San Francisco, but he was two-over on the front nine and his lead had shrunk to two shots over Lee Janzen by the time he reached the tee of the par-four 12th hole.
“Stewart hit a good drive but encountered a bad break — his ball landed in a divot made earlier in the week and subsequently filled with sand and tamped down by course maintenance workers.
“Stewart and his caddie took a little extra time to examine the lie and contemplate the shot, then Stewart hit his approach from the divot into a greenside bunker.
“USGA official Tom Meeks had been clocking Stewart’s shot and told him, as Stewart walked to the green, that he had taken too long and that Stewart was being issued a slow-play warning.
“Stewart was stunned and aggravated. Unsettled by the divot and the warning, Stewart made two consecutive bogeys, fell out of the lead and opened the door for Janzen to rally from behind for the win.”
Given what happened, Stewart said something with which I agree — there should be relief when a good drive in the fairway lands in a divot.
Then, in 1999 at Pinehurst, the same thing happened to Stewart – a drive in a divot. He was ready for it and played well from that divot to win the Open title, but the bottom-line point is the same:
Even if golfers demonstrate the ability to hit out of a divot in the fairway, a good drive should not be punished in that way. Just as occurs on a green where there are ball marks and spike marks, give golfers relief in the fairway. A free drop out of the divot without penalty.
It’s the fair and right action to take.
Payne Stewart’s experience in the 1990s is one of the best illustrations on this change in golf rules – and I wish I would have cited it yesterday. It’s not too late today.
Perspective from the 19th Hole 