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.

……….This is the second blog recently dealing with golf rules, a hot-button issue for me……….

I have written about this before, but it still surprises me, even rankles me, that the United States Golf Association (USGA) and the Royal and Ancient (R & A) produced a new set of golf rules in 2019 that includes absolutely stupid words on bunkers.

If you read the rule – Rule #12 – I suspect you’d be surprised, too.

The worst inclusion:  You are now allowed “to strike the sand in frustration and anger.”

For the life of me, I cannot understand why the two excellent golf associations – they govern the game of golf around the world – would allow such a phrase to be included in a set of rules.

My friends at the Oregon Golf Association (OGA) told me that, if a player in an OGA tournament was seen “striking the sand in frustration and anger,” that player would receive either a two-stroke bad-conduct penalty or be disqualified.

All of this came to mind for me when I read an article in my on-line edition of the Global Golf Post (GGP).

According to the GGP, the following is not allowed in a bunker – and all prohibitions sound familiar for those of us who try to avoid the sand, but sometimes reach it:

• Grounding your club immediately in front of or behind the ball

• Making a practice swing that touches sand

• Touching the sand in making a back swing

• Taking any other action purposely to test the condition of the sand

Also, according to the GGP, the following is now allowed in the sand:

• Putting clubs down in a bunker

• Touching the sand accidentally [whatever that means]

• Raking the bunker to take care of the course

• “Striking the sand in anger and frustration”

Seems to me that these allowances amount to testing the sand before a shot, just as what is prohibited.

And, one other major change has been included by the USGA and the R &A.  It is that, if you are in the sand and don’t want to hit your next shot from there, you are now allowed to remove your ball from the bunker and drop it back outside the bunker on a line between where the ball was and where the hole is. 

To do this, you would take a two-stroke penalty, which could strike some amateur golfers as welcome relief from a bunker.  But, even I, a regular amateur, would not opt to take such relief.

The fact that I am focusing on this will strike some as strange. 

It illustrates two motives:  (1) I love golf and love focusing on the arcane rules of the sport, which exist in substantial detail if only because the game is played outdoors on large tracts of land, not inside a stadium or pavilion; and (b) and I don’t have much else to do in retirement.

So, if you are in bunkers as you play golf, take advantage of the new rules and, as pro golfer Sergio Garcia did a year ago or so in a tournament in Saudi Arabia, feel free to “strike the sand in anger and frustration.”

Just hope a rules official isn’t watching.