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.

I didn’t watch professional golf on TV last weekend, but I did the next best thing – I read about it in my on-line golf blogs.

What happened?

It was, as this blog headline notes, a strange and complicated golf rules issue, which may be redundant because, in many ways, all golf rules always are complicated.

Here are excerpts from how GolfWeek described the situation which befell pro golfer Collin Morikawa who was hit with two-stroke penalty just before the start of his fourth round at the Hero World Challenge golf tournament.

It was reported that he “unwittingly” violated Model Local Golf Rule G-11 in the third round, so he started his final round two over par.

“NASSAU, Bahamas – Collin Morikawa was assessed a two-shot penalty for violating local model rule G-11, which restricts the use of green-reading material, on the fourth hole of the third round of the 2023 Hero World Challenge.

“The rules committee was alerted to a potential rule violation late Saturday night after a question was posed by a player in the field.  When asked if it was Morikawa’s playing partner during the third round, Matt Fitzpatrick, who brought the potential rule violation into question, chief referee Stephen Cox of the PGA Tour confirmed that was the case.”

What does the rule say?  Below, for everyone who, like me, is addicted to golf and its rules, I reprint the text below.  For now, this:

The “local” model rule was added in 2022 to protect the fundamental skill of reading greens.  Notice the word “local” in that sentence.  That means there is a rule that could be employed in a tournament if the “golf committee” for the tournament wants to use it.  At the Hero World Challenge, the committee had opted to use the rule.

What happened this time was that, in preparing for the third round, Morikawa’s caddie JJ Jakovac created a putting chart on the practice green.

Okay so far.

Then, he used a tool on the green — a level – to gauge putts, writing what he learned in the yardage book for the third round.

What he did created a later problem.

He used the book, with the notations provided by the tool, to judge a putt on the fourth hole in Saturday’s third round.

Under Rule G-11, that’s a breach.

The head rules official for the tournament, Cox, told GolfWeek:

“This is a very complicated issue.  We were very specific in the fact that these handwritten notes needed to be obtained through traditional methods to protect the fundamental skill of reading greens through our sport and that’s the foundation of why we put the model local rule in place.

“In this situation, again, unwittingly, the player used a level to determine degrees of slope on the practice putting green, which in itself, isolated, is not a breach, but what that player did was formulated a chart and transferred that into his book.

“Had Jakovac devised a chart using his feet and estimated the slope or simply retained the information obtained from the measuring devise to memory rather than as a handwritten note, there would have been no penalty.”

An unanswered question for me is how using a tool to gauge putts on the practice green would help on a specific golf course green, in this case green #4.  I suppose it would be that an experienced caddy would notice the same kind of slope on a green in play that existed on the practice and put his “tool knowledge” to use.

If there is good news in this strange and complicated situation, Morikawa eventually accepted the penalty, saying this:

“At the end of the day we made the mistake and it’s on us. Thankfully it only happened that one time.”

But one of my friends asked another very good question, which is why Morikawa did not get an extra penalty for signing an incorrect scorecard on Saturday.  Had he been penalized for posting a wrong score, it would have been much like what happened to Ladies Professional Golf Association golfer Lexi Thompson a couple years in a major tournament in Palm Springs.  She endured a “signing a wrong scorecard penalty” before starting her fourth and final round, generating loads of complaints for what she had to accept without knowing about it until she teed off in the final round.

When I first read about Morikawa’s problem, I couldn’t figure out how a rules official would come to have knowledge of the breach.  Then, I learned that it was through a report from another player, Fitzpatrick. 

No disrespect to Fitzpatrick.  He knew the rule, he saw that it may have been breached as he played on Saturday, and reported it to tournament officials. 

It’s called “protecting the field.”

And, for any golf rules afficionados, here is the wording of the specific rule in question:

Restricting the Use of Green-Reading Materials (Model Local Rule G-11): 

Purpose. Rule 4.3, and specifically Interpretation 4.3a/1, puts limitations on the size and scale of detailed green-reading materials. But to ensure that players and caddies use only their eyeand feel to help them read the line of play on the putting green.

The Committee may further restrict the use of green-reading materials by requiring that players are limited throughout their round to using only the yardage book that has been approved for use in the competition.

This Local Rule is intended only for the highest levels of competitive golf and, even then, only to competitions where it is realistic for the Committee to undertake an approval process for yardage books.

When introducing this Local Rule, the Committee is responsible for approving the yardage book that players may use, and the approved yardage book should contain diagrams of putting greens with minimal detail only (such as significant slopes, tiers or false edges that indicate

sections of greens).

Players and caddies may add handwritten notes to the approved yardage book to help them read the line of play on a putting green, so long as those notes are allowed under this Local Rule.

Enough!