Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

Nick Faldo and David Duval, two men I hoped would do well in this tournament, have pretty much ended their hopes of playing this weekend. Both are at the bottom of the leaderboard, at +11 and +13 respectively.

Ouch!

If you’ve never read anything David Feherty has written and you consider yourself a golf fan, take a look. I keep a link to his stuff at Golf Magazine’s web site for easy access.

When George Peper hired Feherty to write for the magazine, he described his writing in glowing terms, and offered a few snippets such as…

“Never has my flabber been so completely gasted. He is the longest hitter I’ve ever seen, he’s pretty straight, and he’s pretty.”

Feherty also has the golf credentials to go one-on-one with the Tour pros.

If you’re a more serious student of the game you know Feherty as a five-time champion on the European Tour and a member of the 1991 Ryder Cup Team.

When the politics get you down, you need to read David Feherty.

If you know the rules well, you can often use them to advantage. Or not.

Today we had a real breeze. Not a South Texas breeze. That means it was what most of you would think was a high wind. Only about 5 MPH at the start. And it was coming out of the north. By the time we reached the back nine, it had returned to SE, and picked up a little. It was one of those days where a rules issue came up which I don’t agree with.

Blogger Vance has a piece on one rule I think needs to be changed. Many of the women on the LPGA Tour have their caddies line them up on every shot. The rules have nothing to say about this practice except that nobody can be behind the player helping with alignment during the stroke. So, the caddie simply moves to the side before the player begins her swing. Every Tour pro and instructor talks about alignment as being one of the most important things they work on regularly. Yet the rules allow you to completely disregard this part of practice on the range if you trust your caddie. If alignment is key to the swing, nobody should be allowed to get assistance with it during a round.

I had my own rules problem on the 15th today. It is a par five, and I needed to hit an easy wedge over a large palm tree on my third shot. I just wanted to get it high enough to clear the tree and drop the ball on the front edge of the green and let it roll toward the hole. So I hit it high and it came down shorter than I wanted–right into the top of the palm. There it stayed.

With an unplayable lie, I could take drop within a clublength of the tree with one stroke penalty. We could all see the ball plainly 30 feet up, but there was no way to identify it as mine. For that reason, it is considered a lost ball, not an unplayable lie.

27/15 Ball in Tree Visible But Not Identifiable

Q. A player is certain that his ball is lodged high in a tree. He can see a ball in the tree, but he cannot identify it as his ball. Is the player?s ball lost, in which case he must proceed under Rule 27-1?

A. Yes.

Which means I had to drop and replay the shot from the original position. I did, landed on the green, and two-putted for a double bogey. Had I been able to drop next to the tree, there is no guarantee I could get a lower score, but I have enough confidence in my short game that I would have chipped it close, if not in. At best, a par, At worst, a bogey.

What bothers me about the decision on the rules I cited is that we all knew precisely which tree my ball went into, and all agreed that the ball we saw was mine. And unlike Tiger Woods, I didn’t have anyone in the gallery willing to shinny up that tree to find out.

What wonders a little water will achieve on bermuda grass. They finally put some down on the local course, and the bermuda sprang to life. We almost have fairways again!

When I coached baseball at a private high school, I became the groundskeeper, too. I knew how to take care of the basics, but needed to learn more about turf. I searched the internet, and found a couple of free subscriptions to sports turf management magazines. I also spent a lot of time asking questions of the experts at seed and fertilizer distributors. I’m still no expert, but I know more than most people about the subject.

One key ingredient to a healthy turf is a deep root zone. Bermuda is one grass that will choke out weeds if given the strength. Unfortunately, our course manager doesn’t like expense, and will cut anywhere he can. Not watering serves his purpose two ways: He pays a smaller water bill and has to cut the grass less. In his eyes, it’s a win-win situation.

The course was refurbished two years ago at great expense. They put down Tif bermuda on the greens and fairways, but never established a good root zone. And there still isn’t one. It requires deep watering, not just a simple wetting-down.

It’s troubling because the course has an excellent layout, and could be one of the premier courses in South Texas. Instead, we play on some really nice grass intermingled with Saint Augustine, Johnson Grass, and dandelions. We all complain, and nothing changes.

Too bad. Potential going to waste has always bothered me.

I follow the professional tours–when I feel like it. Next week is one tournament I always pay attention to: The US Open.

To me, the golf “season” begins with the AT&T Pebble Beach Celebrity Tournament and ends with the British Open. I follow the Masters as well. For many, it is the first real tournament of the year, kinda like opening day in MLB.

But I have a soft spot for Pebble Beach. The tournament offers fun before the serious business takes over. In 1977, I got to watch one round in person. It was then still the Crosby Clambake. I stood at the first green and watched all the groups come through, then followed Nicklaus around the course. I took some detours to see many of the celebrities play, and hung out at #16 for a while.

Most players and celebrities were happy to interact with the gallery. Jack Lemmon, Clint Eastwood, Mac Davis, Johnny Bench–all had grins permanently stretched across their faces.

Several months later I scraped together the $25 green fee to play the course myself. It was exciting comparing my own inept play to those of the pros. But it was simply a pleasureable morning.

This photo–

is a view from behind the eighth green looking back toward the landing area for your tee shot. It is just as spectacular looking from the other direction, and pretty intimidating. I put three balls in that chasm, but was determined to hit that tiny green if it took every ball in my bag. I wasn’t about to walk away from Pebble Beach without having done it. Nicklaus called this the best par four in the world.

I have always wanted to play the course again, and would really like to take my father there to play. He refuses. He won’t let me pay the $380 green fee for him, and won’t pay it himself. But, there may be some relief on the horizon. Someone told me, and I haven’t confirmed it yet, that military active duty and retirees can play the course during the week for a special rate. Once I convince the Old Man, I’ll set up a trip for us to play there, Bayonet, and Del Monte some week.

There is much more, including live cams at the first tee and 18th green, at the Pebble Beach Resorts web site.

John Retzer has joined the small group who write of golf in the blogosphere.

I intended to write much more on golf than I have, but I don’t follow the tour as closely as others and my mind has been preoccupied with many other issues. I hope to do much better in the future.

John’s focus is on gadgets, and he has a background in club-making. We now have Pat, Scott and Ed on Women’s Golf Watch, Blogger Vance, the guys over at The Golf Blog, and John linked.

My golf credits pale in comparison.

I had a great playing partner when I lived in Dallas. Simon was a 6-handicap. At the time, I was somewhere around 18, bouncing above and below on a regular basis. We played a match each weekend for a dollar, and that single bill went back and forth. I couldn’t compete against him in stroke play, but heads-up in match play I could handle things pretty well.

When we paired up in tournaments, though, I could use only 11 handicap strokes. That’s because we had a club rule which allowed for partners to have no more than a five-stroke differential. That always put us in a higher flight than I normally would have played in. It really didn’t matter. We always played well as a team, and kicked butt.

Before tournaments, we usually had a Calcutta bid. Each team is posted, and everyone has the opportunity to bid on “owning” that team. Depending on how the team finished, the “owner” got a cut of the Calcutta pool. We generally went high. Not at first, mind you, because people saw I was playing higher up the food chain than I should. After we won a couple of times, however, we became a hot property. It sometimes reached the level that I couldn’t afford to even bid on myself. Cash only, and I seldom carried more than $100 with me.

Anyway, we were quite the Ham & Egg team. Although I wasn’t scoring well in general (my scores at the time ranged from 78 to 108 in the handicap book), I could pull off some good ones. Simon was solid, but when he hit a bad one, I generally hit a good one.

I remember one par five where we played a two-man scramble. Neither drive was very good, and Simon put his second in the water. I put mine in the woods 200 yards short of the green. We arrived at my ball to see it lying in some muddy water, and decided not to take relief because it would have carried us further into the woods. I opted to hit first in hopes of getting the ball somewhere close to the green. I swung my 3-iron and closed my eyes to keep water and mud out. I asked, “Did you see it?”

“Look on the green.”

It was two feet from the hole. The two guys we were paired against almost cried. “What did you say your handicap is?” Easy birdie.

We did the same in better ball, alternate shot, whatever format. For some reason, we simply clicked as a team. My best shots always seemed to counter his worst.

I have yet to find another partner like Simon. I keep hoping Bogey will get some time to get his game in shape so we can partner up. I miss having all those pro shop credits to spend.