TERRE HAUTE —
You’ve hit a drive into some brush in an area marked as a hazard, but you can’t find the ball to prove it is there.
And no one actually witnessed it go in the hazard. You just think that’s where it probably is. What is the rule for this situation?
Well, if you don’t happen to carry your Rules Of Golf book with you, there’s an app for that. The App is available for iPhone, iTouch, Blackberry and Android. If you are an iPhone user, you could have kept up to date with the latest scores and happenings with the 2010 U.S. Open App.
Those are just a couple of ways that golf is different today than 100 years ago — or even 20 years ago. Modernization of clubs, shoes and balls are obvious differences. Another huge change that has come in the past century is television coverage.
The first U.S. Open to be televised was in 1974 when KSD-TV St. Louis showed it locally. In 1953, the Tam O’Shanter World Championship near Chicago was the first nationally televised golf tournament and that was because the owner of the club paid ABC to televise it!
George S. May began hosting tournaments at the Tam O’Shanter C.C. in the 1940s. In 1953, the purse for his championship included a winner’s share of $25,000, an unheard of sum in those days. It exceeded the total purse of every other event on the PGA Tour. The excitement created by those dollars, plus the fact that May was willing to pay ABC, was enough for the network to decide to televise the tournament.
The advent of TV coverage has changed the professional game entirely, creating sponsorships and purses that professional golfers in the early 1900s couldn’t have fathomed. One of the downfalls of golf being on TV is that there have been times when players were penalized because alert viewers recognized a rule violation and called it in.
The one I remember best was when Craig Stadler used a towel to keep his trousers dry when he had to make a shot from his knees in Saturday’s round of the 1987 Shearson Lehman Brothers Andy Williams Open at Torrey Pines. PGA officials at the time didn’t notice the violation, but viewers who had seen the shot on NBC Sunday replays, called it in when Stadler was on the 17th hole. If the violation had been noted on Saturday, Stadler could have assessed himself a two-shot penalty before signing his scorecard. Instead, he was found guilty of signing an incorrect scorecard with the penalty being automatic disqualification. The error cost him $37,333, what he would have made for a second-place tie.
An innovation believed to be “modern” by golf’s standards is the electric golf car. Although its invention and subsequent popularity hasn’t changed the professional game much, it has brought huge changes to the amateur game.
The electric golf car was first produced in 1951 by a company called Marketeer. By 1954, E-Z-Go and LEKTRO also were building golf cars. Think a moment about the prevalence of golf cars now and the virtual absence of caddies in the casual game. Then imagine a time when you either had a caddie or you carried your clubs. How many of you wouldn’t even play the game if it weren’t for the electric (or gas-powered) golf car? Probably quite a few. I haven’t found any statistics to verify it, but the invention of the golf car probably did a lot to increase the popularity of golf while putting a lot of young caddies out of work at the same time. The addition of the cup-holder had to have a hand in its popularity too.
A much newer innovation helping the amateur golfer is the GPS device. Many courses now have golf cars equipped with these devices and there are also many hand-held devices. They aren’t quite the same as having your own caddy, but they certainly help with decision-making in the game because they take the guesswork out of one element, distance to the hole. They don’t take into account wind or elevation, but they help a lot.
I’d much rather have a good caddy, if I were playing in a tournament, because a GPS device can’t read putts and it can’t rake traps.
• • •
Quote of the Day — “Golf is a funny game. It’s done much for health and at the same time has ruined people by robbing them of their peace of mind. Look at me, I’m the healthiest idiot in the world.” — Bob Hope.
Upcoming events — The THWGA Women’s City Golf Tournament will be July 23-26 at Rea Park.
• The THGA Mini-City will be July 10-11 at Hulman Links.
• The Junior City Tournament will be July 13-15 at Rea Park and Hulman Links. Sign up in either pro shop.
On & Off the Course
On and Off the Course: Technology adds even more fun to the course
- On & Off the Course
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: With some tricky rules, golf is not a walk in the park
Golf is not a casual sport, even though it has a term called “casual water.”
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On and off the course: Sycamores seeded sixth heading into MVC golf tourney
It wasn’t too long ago that Indiana State University didn’t even have a women’s golf team.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: A hard ticket to come by
This is the weekend of the Masters Tournament, the first of the four major tournaments.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Some things on golf course are worse than steep putts
It’s not often that anything gets more scary on a golf course than a steep downhill putt, but on some courses around the world, things a little more on the supernatural side might give you a bigger fright!
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: The shot heard round the world
I don’t know if the Golf Channel will show a “Best Shots of 2011” highlight reel, much like ESPN does for baseball or football.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: The Red, White and Blue visits the Isle of Green
In 2006, the Ryder Cup was held in Ireland at The K Club in County Kildare.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Fall may be coming but golf season is far from over
Once the major tournaments are over with, what’s there to look forward to in the world of golf?
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Golf… simplified!
Golf is not a simple game. A golf course is made up of 18 holes, all different. There are par-3s, par-4s and par-5s; they all vary in length and elevation, and each has its own challenges. There can be water hazards, trees, sand bunkers, tall grass, hills, valleys — and then, if that’s not enough, there’s probably wind too.
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On and Off the Course: Northern Ireland builds on golf history
Northern Ireland is only about 5,452 square miles in area and has a population about the same as West Virginia, which is about 1,880,344.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Women’s Open at the Broadmoor
This is the weekend of the U.S. Women’s Open, and this year it’s being played at The Broadmoor, East Course, in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: The Fort Golf Course: A Walk in the Park…
Indiana has some pretty spectacular state parks, but one of them gives you the ability to “spoil a good walk” by chasing a little white ball.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Father’s Day is a good day for golfers
Most people consider the time around Christmas to be the gift-buying season.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Playing with lead a difficult task
As exciting as last week’s Masters was, with six players being tied for the lead at one point on Sunday, it was very difficult watching Rory McIlroy fall apart to shoot an 80.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Masters a rite of spring
This is Masters weekend, the grand kickoff to the golf season for a lot of golfers. Sure, there have been tournaments on TV, because the professionals have been playing in Hawaii, California, Texas, Dubai, and other areas not so affected by winter as we are here in the Midwest, but to me, watching The Masters is a rite of spring.
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ON THE OFF THE COURSE: Some history on the Ryder Cup
I fell asleep in way too many history classes to ever qualify as a history buff. However, since I have grown up a bit (not much), I enjoy learning about all kinds of history. I often have questions about how something began, or how something came to be.
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On and Off the Course: Purdue's Kampen Course a gem in Indiana's rough
About a month ago, Indiana was still heavily mired in heat and humidity, making outdoor activities such as golf less appealing than usual. At that time it felt like the repressive heat would never go away, it would never rain again, and all of the grass was just going to continue to wither and die. And the month prior to that we kept getting rained out of golf events!
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On and Off the Course: Successful golfers know ... focus is the key
I have a good friend who coached his daughter’s basketball team for a number of years, and told me that his theme with the girls was always “focus”, until it was ingrained in their brains. Now when they play high school ball, if they hear “focus” yelled from the stands, they know the source.
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On and Off the Course: Technology adds even more fun to the course
You’ve hit a drive into some brush in an area marked as a hazard, but you can’t find the ball to prove it is there. And no one actually witnessed it go in the hazard. You just think that’s where it probably is. What is the rule for this situation?
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On and Off the Course: Anthony Gonzalez First Tee Classic a worthwhile charity event
On Monday, I worked as a volunteer for the Anthony Gonzalez First Tee Classic, Golf Tournament and Auction at Eagle Creek Golf Course in Indianapolis. It was an absolutely beautiful day, with clear blue skies, just a few wispy clouds here and there and a high temperature of about 76 degrees.
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On and Off the Course: Trends show golf in decline
You don’t have to watch the news or read the paper to understand that America is struggling on the economic front. The evidence can be witnessed at the local golf course.
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On and Off the Course: Remembering former South golfer Ian White
It’s usually a bit of a struggle for me to figure out what my topic will be for this column. This week I could have written about Tiger’s withdrawal from the Players’ Championship due to a bulging disc in his neck, or by association, the health hazards a violent golf swing can have on the human body, or any number of other golf-related topics.
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On and Off the Course: Ochoa’s departure to impact LPGA
LPGA Commissioner Michael Whan already had a tough job, trying to promote the LPGA tour and keep the 25 events that they have on the schedule, but that job was made tougher last week when the tour’s No. 1 player announced her retirement from the game at the ripe old age of 28.
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On and Off the Course: Examining the square groove rule change
Even though the Masters is going to have its own little drama going on with the return of Tiger Woods, an interesting thing to note will be how well the players are able to hold the hard fast greens at Augusta. An underlying part of the bigger picture that everyone might not realize is a rule change that could dramatically affect most, if not all, of the players. That rule change took effect on Jan. 1.
- On and Off the Course: President's Cup should be entertaining Just when we thought golf season was over, and it was time to concentrate on football, we must awaken from our naps, because there’s going to be some exciting golf for us to watch next weekend. The President’s Cup will run from Oct. 6-11 at Harding Park in San Francisco.
- On and Off the Course: The obscure of golf's rulebook Golfers know that the rules that govern the game are abundant. The game originated in the 15th century on the links of Scotland, and somehow as time went on and people became more civilized, rules were adopted.
- ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Women’s City Match Play had tough competition I played in the Terre Haute Golf Association Women’s City Match Play Tournament a couple of weeks ago.
- On and Off the Course: One for the ages … well, almost! I wonder how long people will be referring to last week’s British Open, as “one for the ages.” They could also refer to it as “one for the aged!” Tom Watson’s near miss of a 9th Open Championship (as the Brits prefer to call it, and as it rightly should be by virtue of its longevity) was a rallying cry to all those golfers who have toiled for so many years at their game, but had given up hope as for ever getting it back to where they had it twenty years ago.
- ON AND OFF THE COURSE: In a bad economy, should LPGA raise its fees? For 31 years The LPGA’s Corning Classic was held at Corning Country Club in Corning, N.Y., with Corning Glassware as its title sponsor. This year, however, was the end of an era as LPGA players played their final rounds in its’ longest-running event. Due to many factors Corning chose to not renew their contract for 2010.
- ON AND OFF THE COURSE: ‘Average golfer’ ready to face challenges of Bethpage Black Golf Digest, in association with the USGA and NBC Sports, has asked the question, “Can the ‘average golfer’ break 100 at Bethpage Black under U.S. Open conditions?”
- On and Off the Course: Golf is for Mother’s, too I’d like to wish all of my readers who are mothers, whether they play golf or not, a Happy Mother’s Day — and if you do play golf — I hope you have a fine day today and that you find the time to get out on the course.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: With some tricky rules, golf is not a walk in the park
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