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 to 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 press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as 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.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that it what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions like.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

You may wonder how I find time to write about such an arcane subject.  At least two reasons:  I don’t have much else to do during the virus pandemic and I love the game of golf.

So here is the issue.  One of the realities in golf is that handicap values are assigned to each of the 18 holes on a course, which is one of the ways golf can be played and scores tallied for groups of different abilities as they play together.

Too much to understand?  Yeah.  But, remember, this is golf with a myriad of hard-to-understand rules written in something other than plain English.

Let me try to explain this for at least one reason:  If I write something, it is often a stimulant for me to remember it.

The conundrum is this:  When a golf hole on course receives a #1 ranking on the handicap scale, it is not necessarily the hardest hole on the course.  The common perception is that such a ranking would denote toughness.

I am indebted to my friends at the Oregon Golf Association for this explanation.

“There are two misconceptions about the Stroke Index Allocation. The first being that the number 1 ranked hole is the “hardest” hole on the course. The purpose of the ranking of the holes is to determine where the higher handicapped player deserves the assistance of an extra stroke in order to tie, or halve, a hole with the low handicapper. 

“That stroke should be assigned on the hole where the relative difficulty of the hole is more difficult for the higher handicapped golfer than the relative difficulty for the lower handicapped golfer.

“Did you notice that the word ‘hardest’ was not mentioned?

When someone tells us about the ‘hardest’ hole, we often ask back: Hardest for whom?  The difficulty of a hole is relative to the set of tees, the level of golfer, the landing zones where each player hits and more.

“On occasion, there may be a hole where the higher handicapped golfer has less difficulty due to their landing zones being nice wide fairways, but the low handicapper may have a landing zone where they must lay up to not hit through the corner on a dogleg, or they have a very narrow landing zone with close in bunkers, water, trees etc. In that case, the hole might be relatively less difficult for the Bogey golfer than the Scratch.

“The #1 allocated hole should not necessarily be the ‘hardest’ hole on the course.  Often, that hole is one where the relative difficulty is the same or similar for low and high handicapped golfer.”

So, in this arcane world of golf rules and standards, does that make sense?

Well, read it a couple of times and it may make more sense.

And, if I do that – read it more than once – I may be able to explain to my friends why the #1 ranked hole is not necessarily the hardest.