Lessons in Maturity

We had finished nine holes at the Gauntlet and I was feeling really good about my golf game. I had shot a 44 on a tough course and was high from that feeling of hitting good shots and scoring well at the same time.

My partner wasn’t as lucky that day. He shot in the high forties and was feeling a little down.

We stopped at the pro shop and I decided to go in and get a hot dog for some energy for the back nine. As I came back out to the cart I noticed a serious look on my partner’s face. Uh oh, I thought. I’m in trouble.

My partner all of a sudden says that he thinks that we should play the ball down on the back nine. I thought at the time that he was irritated that I had outscored him on the front and that if he insisted on playing the ball down, he could beat me on the back.

I voiced my displeasure, but agreed to play the ball down.

The tenth hole is a short par 5 with bunkers on the right and trees to the left. I pulled my drive a touch and ended up in the left rough. My partner hit his ball down the middle.

I set up to my ball and casually pushed the heavy rough down behind the ball. To my surprise, the ball moved a hair. I never knew much about the rules of golf because I had always played what I call recreational golf, but I knew that I had just committed an infraction of some kind. I told my partner that the ball had moved so I was assessing a two shot penalty on myself.

I set up to the ball more carefully this time, took a mighty swing and hit the ball in a fairway bunker on the right.

I hit the ball out of the bunker into the fairway, but was still a long way from the green. I was really steamed at this point. I hit the ball again with my three wood and managed to get the ball up around the green in six.

Long story short, I then chipped onto the green and two putted for a nine.

My partner got a routine bogey.

As we headed to the next tee, I decided that since my partner had insisted on playing the ball down, I was going to watch his every move and make him as miserable as he had made me.

The tenth hole is an extreme dogleg right hole which forces you to either lay up on your first shot or fade your driver off of the tee. My partner drove first with his driver, but didn’t cut the ball, so his ball bounced into woods. I also hit driver but cut it too much so that my ball ended up in the right rough at the bend of the dogleg.

As we were driving to our balls, I knew I had him. If we couldn’t find his ball, I was going to invoke the stroke and distance penalty for a lost ball.

Sure enough, we got to the area where his ball went into the woods but couldn’t find it. He flipped another ball down and said that he was going to play from there and take a penalty for hitting into a hazard.

That’s when I went ballistic. The woods are not considered lateral hazards at the Gauntlet. So, you have to either find your ball and hit it out of the woods, or take a one stoke penalty and re-hit from the tee.

To me, this is the most misunderstood and disregarded of the plethora of arcane golf rules. But, since my partner had started us down this path of rules enforcement, I called him on it.

I told him that he had to go back to the tee and re-hit. He replied that he was going to play the woods as a lateral hazard and play from where he had dropped a ball.

We argued for a few minutes without any resolution. My partner hit from where he dropped the ball, came up short, chipped on and two putted for a six. I hacked my ball out of the rough, hit my third shot around the green, chipped on and two putted for a six.

I then confronted my partner again on the eleventh tee, to no avail. He insisted he was right and I insisted he was wrong. We both finally calmed down. I shot 62 on the back and ended up with 106. He shot 48 and ended up with a 97.

We had many discussions about that incident in the ensuing days. My partner insisted on playing the ball down and conforming to the golf rules which he felt were fair and ignoring the other ones, most notable, the lost ball rule. While he was on this kick, his scores averaged four or five shots higher then his norm, which was around 88. I immediately went back to my recreational golf mode, and started shooting decent scores again. For me, that meant that I shot in the lower nineties on most days.

His sojourn into golf rule compliance came to a crashing end a few months later in Williamsburg. He announced that he was playing the ball down and promptly shot 113. He never mentioned playing down again.

So, why do I even document this truly mundane story. Well, to me, it was a psychological exercise delving into the psyche of different individuals.

My partner believed that he should only conform to the society’s rules that he thought fair. And, more importantly, he thought that I should also conform to his skewed view of the world.

I, on the other hand, believe that I should be able to play by my own set of rules even though these ruled may differ from the culture with which I’m currently interacting. Of course, I shouldn’t modify any rules in such a manner that causes harm or hardship to myself or others. Additionally, I don’t attempt to convince others that my way is the best way.

I believe that if one lives in a particular society which has preset rules which govern everyday behavior, those are the rules to which everyone should espouse. If individuals decide to disregard some of society’s rules, and set up a different value system for themselves, they should not attempt to directly influence others to conform to those personal rules. These nonconformists can and should work within the system to change the overall society if they deem some rules to be harmful or disruptive.

My partner believed that it was his moral obligation and right to attempt to impose his value system on others on a one to one basis, rather than attacking the system as a whole.

So, who’s right. I don’t know. The reader needs to decide.