IN PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE...

As I see kids from of all ages (7-59) and adults (60 & over) hone their skills in the full swing outside the pro-shop every day, I realize that most of them, if not all of them, really do it in order to improve their swing, and therefore, their scores.... At the same time, I wonder if they also think of other things that will help them lower their scores, like putting, chipping (I can't see the putting green from the pro-shop) and, just as importantly, getting as much playing experience as possible and.... knowledge of the rules.

Hitting a solid shot is important, and yes, there is nothing more satisfying and fun in a round of golf than pulling out a shot exactly like you thought it should be struck. Whether it is a tee shot on a tough par 4 hole, or a difficult approach into the wind that requires a long club, when it comes out just as planned, it is very satisfying. But, just as it is satisfying to hit a good golf shot, it is very frustrating to waste a shot or more with a bad chip, putt or -particularly-, a bad decision on the course. To play one's best, one must be aware of details.

In his book, "The Heart of a Champion", Bobby Richards points out that champions have three distinct characteristics: 1) They know their equipment (in the old days, golf pros worked on their own equipment and knew exactly what they needed to do); 2) They believe in a higher power (you have to have faith in yourself and in someone much more powerful than yourself); 3) They believe in details that will gain them 1/100th of a second, or 1/4 of an inch or an extra 10th of a point. DETAILS!

Jack Nicklaus did not become Jack Nicklaus just by a lot of practice -he practiced as much as Ben Hogan ever did-, but Jack went a step further: of all the greats in golf, he is the one who started measuring courses as well as his average carry distance with each of his clubs (he actually copied the practice from his friend Dean Beman). Jack and his long time caddie, Angelo Argea, with whom he won many of his 18 majors, charted golf courses, measured from sprinklers, trees or bunkers to front of green, then depth of greens, and so forth. You could say that Nicklaus invented "Sky-Caddy" before there was GPS. There is nothing worse in a round of golf that not knowing how far you need to carry a particularly important shot. DETAILS!

And what about the rules? How can the rules help you score better? I remember one time a friend playing with me tried to go over a hill to try to get closer to the green of a dog-leg hole. He had a stroke play bet against another player in the group and was a few strokes ahead. When he found his ball, it was unplayable in an area full of rocks and shrubs and lose sand. The problem is that he only knew ONE of the three options of an unplayable lie, the one about two club lengths around the ball. So as I am watching from 80 yards away, I am thinking, "what is Tommy doing dropping there? Maybe there is a flat area there that I can't see from here". There wasn't, he dropped and had another almost unplayable lie from where he hit a very bad shot, and another, and so forth. He ended up with a score of 12 on the hole. Going back to the tee (second of three options) would have helped him score a 6 or 7.

Recently, my daughter Anya qualified and played in the LPGA final stage of Q-School and over five rounds (90 holes) missed full status by 5 shots and limited status by 2 single shots. Her putting during the week was not as sharp, and by all accounts, her on course decisions might have been a little suspect. She had started slow with two 75's and needed two good rounds to qualify for Sunday's play for a fifth round. She had a third round of 69 and reached 2 under par in her fourth round when she hit a wayward tee shot. Her ball was unplayable just beyond a red line. She took a penalty drop under rule 26 (lateral water hazards), hit her shot in the green, scored a bogey only to find out a little later that the red line was not a hazard!

It just so happens that one of the two courses used for the qualifier had hosted a Sun Coast Tour event a couple of weeks before. Sun Coast officials had designated and marked certain areas of the course as lateral hazards (red lines). When LPGA rules officials came to mark the course two weeks later, they decided that some of those areas should not be a lateral hazard so they decided to remark the course. LPGA rules officials made their changes in the "hard card" rules (the general rules) and wrote "red hazard lines are only a hazard when accompanied by stakes" (nebulous at best), but did not advise competitors that there had been such change nor was in the player's daily rules sheet.

You can say what you want about the handling of this by LPGA (very poorly), but as a policy, when I play or caddie in a tournament, I always ASK the starter if there are any rules or situations that I should be aware of. The ensuing two penalty shots that Anya received kept her from "conditional status" (she could have played in about 1/4 of the LPGA tournaments in 2013! KNOW DETAILS!!

Rory McIlroy almost missed his tee time during the Ryder Cup, he saw in TV his tee time in the Golf Channel, however, what they were showing was Eastern Time, not Central Time, which is where Rory was playing. DETAILS!

One more story about the rules. In 2010, Dustin Johnson came to the last hole of the PGA Championship 2 shots ahead of eventual winner Martin Kymer. Whistling Straits is a very hard golf course built on sand dunes, and much of that sand is still there, usually played as an "integral part" of the golf course, but not as bunker. PGA of America decided that all sand should be played as a bunker, SO INSTEAD OF INFORMING PLAYERS DIRECTLY, THEY POSTED A SHEET OF PAPER EVERYWHERE IN THE CLUBHOUSE DESCRIBING THEIR DECISION. Dustin Johnson had not bothered to read sheets of paper posted in the clubhouse, and since no one was advised directly and since he did not ask for any changes or situations that he might run into, on the 72nd hole, he hit a wayward tee shot in one of those sand dunes, where he grounded his club, hit a nice shot just over the green, and failed to get up and down, supposedly for a 5 that would have won. Wrong! PGA officials went to him and assessed him a two shot penalty for grounding his club in a bunker that didn't look like a bunker (all the gallery had been stepping all over this area as well), ended up with a 7 and one shot behind the playoff eventually won by Kymer.

Both, Anya's and Johnson's incidents were caused by poor communication with players, however, players have the responsibility, under Rule 6, of knowing all that is associated with the competition.

IN SHORT, ALL DETAILS, INCLUDING KNOWING SOMETHING THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SWING, CAN SAVE YOU STROKES AND YOU ARE ON YOUR WAY TO PURSUE EXCELLENCE.