PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

Those who know me know that I, for some unknown reason, like golf rules, including writing about them from time to time.

Perhaps the reason is that I have time on my hands in retirement.

This blog reports more recent rules issues.

A RULES CONTROVERSY FOR THE LPGA: It always seems that there are new rules controversies. Such was the case over the weekend in an LPGA tournament in Thailand.

American player Amy Johnson and Thailand playear Ariya Jutanguarn were involved in a situation on the 18^th green that prompted a lot of to’ing and fro’ing over rules.

What happened as that both players missed the green. It was then Jutanguarn’s turn to play first and she hit a good chip shot to about three feet from the pin. Then, instead of waiting for Jutanguarn to mark her ball, Johnson motioned her that she would hit her chip shot first.

The Johnson shot hit Jutanguarn’s ball and came to rest about two feet from the hole when, otherwise, it probably would have gone 15 to 20 feet past the pin.

The incident, which was caught on TV, prompted questions about whether Johnson was guilty of violating a golf rule (15.3 in the new golf rule book), which bars what has come to be called “backstopping.”

Here’s what the rules says:

“If two or more players agree to leave a ball in place on the putting green to help any player, and the stroke is made with the helping ball in place, each player who made the agreement gets two penalty strokes.”

LPGA tournament officials met with both players after their round and decided there was not an intent to violate the rules. Johnson especially said she was interested in speeding up pace of play. So, no penalty.

Tough to decide whether “backstopping” has occurred or not. But the rule is in place for a reason and the best that can said this time is that an intentional decision was made that there was not a violation.

As an aside, Johnson played recently at The Palms where I play in La Quinta. She did well, posting a course record for women from the white tees.

RICKEY FOWLER VIOLATES A RULE: Fowler is one of my favorite golfers and I am glad he won the recent tournament in Arizona.

This time, in Mexico for another major tournament, he committed a rules violation, one he readily admitted. He hit a bad shot, actually a shank, that went out-of-bounds. Then, to compound his error, he took a drop in the wrong way and did so fast enough that even his caddy did not see the error.

Fowler dropped from shoulder height, the old standard, rather than the new knee-high standard. He played on without correcting his mistake, so incurred another one-shot penalty.

I tend to agree with his assessment after the fact. While not opposing the penalty, Fowler suggested that rules should allow a drop anywhere between shoulder and knee. For golfers like Fowler, who have dropped from shoulder height for more than 25 years, making the new adjustment can be tough under the pressure of a major event.

Fowler suffered another unfortunate rules situation as he won the Arizona tournament a couple weeks ago. He hit a ball into the water just over a green, then took a drop in the proper way. As he walked up to the green to survey his next shot, the ball moved on its own back into the water. Another penalty.

That should not have been the case. My view is that he should have been allowed to drop again, no penalty.

AND MORE ON SLOW PLAY: Several of my on-line golf magazines have written lately about the continuing problem of slow play in golf – as I did a week or so.

Initially, I was motivated by the often agonizingly show play of J. B. Holmes, who went on to win the Genesis Open at Riviera. He is becoming known as THE major violator of slow play issues, often rivaling another very slow player, Bryson DeChambeau.

Holmes doesn’t care about the moniker.

He has been seen plumb-bobbing a two-foot putt and, repeatedly checking his green-reading book before getting around to making his next stroke, even a very short one.

Five-hour rounds? They are becoming commonplace on the PGA Tour and, until someone does something about the problem – penalty strokes? – nothing will change.

I have a few ideas, as I have mentioned in previous blogs. The one with the most potential is to mimic the European Tour’s experiment with a shot-clock on the back of a golf cart for each playing group. One result of failing to play in the allotted 40 seconds after you arrive at your ball gets a warning; the second gets a penalty stroke.

Until tournament and rules officials get the attention of tour players, slow play will continue unabated. And, unfortunately, slow play often works against one of the objectives of most golf advocacy organizations — growing the game.