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 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 is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

This department, one of four I run as the manager (dictator), is now open.

The others, by the way, are the Department of Pet Peeves, the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering, and the Department of “Just Saying.”  No doubt I am a jack of all trades.

Inquiring minds want to know: 

Item #1:  Why do golfers call the 3-metal they hit a 3-wood?

The old name, of course, hearkens back to the day when all clubs except irons were made out of wood.  Now, with metal clubs, most golfers are not able to change their terminology.  Especially in regard to a 3-wood, er, 3- metal.

I just thought I’d point out the discrepancy.  I often am guilty of the mistake.

Item #2:  Misusing the word “handicap” in golf.

If you play or follow golf – and I do both – then one of the least understood words in the sport is this:  Handicap.  It means several things.

Mostly, it refers to the level of your golf.  So, a higher handicap player can play against a lower handicap player and have a chance to hold his or her own.  The player with the higher handicap “gets strokes” from the lower player, allowing them to play, at least in theory, “even.”

Oregon Golf Association writers the other day dealt with the word “handicap” in a different way.

Why, they asked, “is hole #3 on my course designated as the hardest hole? My friends and I think it should be hole #7.”

Golf holes also have a handicap number assigned to them, so golfers, based on their own handicap, know where they “get a stroke and where they don’t.”

“Just for giggles,” the OGA writers said, “we googled ‘What’s a handicap hole on a golf course?’  The top searches all quoted spin-offs of the following:  ‘Handicap holes are ranked in order of difficulty, with No.1 being the hardest to 18 as the easiest.’

“’Let’s bust that myth to smithereens.  It was never supposed to be the ‘hardest hole’ that gets the No. 1 spot.

“The No. 1 handicap hole should be the hole where the higher handicap player is most likely to need a stroke as an equalizer, since the idea is to provide an equal playing field for golfers of different handicap levels.

“If a low-handicap golfer is just as likely to make bogey as a high-handicapper on a particular hole, then it clearly wouldn’t rank No. 1.”

So, there you have it.  Clear now?