Golf is for partners
HAL LENOBEL
Contributing Columnist
golf@lbknews.com
This is my 100th golf article I have written for the Longboat Key News. I have thoroughly enjoyed my relationship with this newspaper and am very happy to continue writing my golf column. It is a distinct pleasure working for such a fine group.
Whether it’s a local club tournament, the Ryder Cup matches, or your weekly partner’s Nassau, team competition is often more intense than individual play. Maybe it is because when we play with a partner we are both comforted by the presence of a teammate and burdened by the sense of responsibility. As you establish your game plan, it is important to understand the Rules as they apply to team competition.
Partners are permitted to give advice to each other. You can make comments, smile or otherwise, about anything, including swing thoughts, strategy, club selection, yardage or how a putt will break. On the last point, however, be advised that in match play, if your partner touches the green while pointing out your line, or if he improves your line or if he improves your line by tapping down spike marks, you are out of the hole (Rule 16). Or, if your partner “goes to school” on your putt by standing behind you on an extension of your line while you stroke the putt, or if he insists on holing out to show you the line after your opponents have conceded his putt, you again, are out of the hole.
Your partner may help you search for your lost ball. However, if he moves the ball during the search, or improves the area of your intended swing by pressing down grass or breaking branches, you suffer the penalty.
Partners may play in the order that the side considers best. This means that it is all right to have your partner tap in for a par to give you a “free run” at a 40-foot birdie (Rule 30-3b). You are not, however, allowed to unreasonably delay play by, for example, having your partner run 200 yards to the green to putt out before you decide whether to go for the green.
Technically, partners can share clubs, as long as the total number of clubs carried by the two players does not exceed 14. For example, if you decide to share clubs but still want to use your own driver and putter, the two of you would be limited to a total of only 12 other clubs. This rule is rarely applicable since most people carry a full set of clubs, but it also means you cannot use your partner’s 5-iron, even if you lost yours or broke it “in the normal course of play.”
If your partner oversleeps and gets to the course late, you can either forfeit the match or start without him, without penalty. Your partner may join the match between holes, but not during play of a hole (Rule 30-3a).
If your partner uses a non-conforming club or ball, or he plays a stroke with a club whose playing characteristics have been altered, other than during the normal course of play, both of you are disqualified from the match. If your partner has too many clubs in his bag or uses a cart in an event that is “walking only,” you would suffer the penalty along with him. And both of you will be disqualified if your partner announces and plays with an overstated course handicap (Rule 30-3e).
If your partner breaches a Rule and it assists you or adversely affects your opponents, you incur the penalty (rule 30-3f). For example, say you both lie in a bunker, and interfering with both balls is a small branch. If your partner removes the branch, he is penalized for violating Rule 13-4, in match play that means loss of hole, and you are penalized because his Rule violation also assisted you.
The best way to avoid these pitfalls of partnerships, of course, is to go it alone. Nevertheless, it might be a better idea to give your favorite partner a copy of the Rules of Golf, and maybe a weekly quiz.
Here are a few interesting stories about golf
At Addington Palace in England, Ronald Jones performed a numerical marvel in 1934. He played a stretch of five holes like a man counting down for a rocket lift-off. On holes 12 through 16, he recorded scores, respectively, of 5-4-3-2-1.
In the quarter-finals, the semi-finals, and the finals of the five United States Amateur championships won by Bobby Jones, he stood a total of 136 holes up on his 15 opponents. In other words, he won those 15 36-hole matches by an average of 9 and 8.
Greg Norman has done some astounding things on the golf course, but none as amazing as the time he told a 17-year-old leukemia patient that he would win a tournament for him, and then did it. Norman won the 1988 MCI Heritage Classic for Jamie Hutton, who had met Norman through the “Thursday’s Child” Make-A-Wish program. The patient passed away shortly thereafter.
