Friday, July 30, 2010

3+4=7 but 4+3=Disqualification


Most of us dream of shooting a 65 in a professional golf tournament. Hell, we'd take 65 on 16 holes.

The problem with some of the rules of golf (which are incredibly ridiculous, btw) are if you do one little thing wrong, you will not be asked to come back the next day, even if it didn't really change anything about what the final score was in the first place.

Robert Rock, who you might remember had a great showing at the British Open earlier this month, finished tied for seventh, kept the momentum rolling at this week's Irish Open. His opening 65 was a shot back from the leaders, but he incorrectly scored the 14th and 15th holes. He made a 3 on 13 and a 4 on 14, but wrote 4-3, which still added up to 65 but not the way it was supposed to.

That's it. You're out. Don't come back, you dirty rascal.

I think there are some super stupid rules in golf, but getting disqualified because you accidentally messed up your scorecard is one of my least favorites. These guys are golfers, not math majors, and while it may seem easy to add up 18 holes of a bunch of 3s and 4s, just imagine doing it four times a week for 10 years, and I'm sure you'll mess up a time or two. Give them a penalty, slap them on the wrist, but don't give them the boot for such an error.

When baseball players make an error, they don't get shot by their owners (well, unless it's the movie "Hook").

6 comments:

courtgolf said...

Would you rather believe that they played the course out of order ? He had to skip a box to write the first "correct" score - OR - he wrote two incorrect scores.

Which was it ?

The game has been played the same way for hundreds of years - are modern players dumber than players of eras gone by ? Lazier ?

Marty said...

I don't get what the big deal is for Rock getting a DQ.
The rules are obvious. He screwed up. Tough.

Barry Rhodes said...

"These guys are golfers, not math majors"

Math(s)majors!!! How difficult is it to enter a single digit figure at the end of each hole and then check that you haven't made a mistake by comparing your 18 entries with your marker's 18 entries? And, by the way, these are not just golfers, they are professionals who make their living, in some cases a very privileged living, from playing the game they excel at to the same Rules as everyone else playing golf, anywhere in the world.

Barry Rhodes

TXQ said...

Great headline. Very clever.

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