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.

If there is one golf rule to change, it would be easy for me:  If your drive lands in a divot in the fairway, you would get free relief.

Too often, I have seen pro golfers hit a good drive only to be foiled by a fairway divot.

While pros have ability to hit out of a divot, they should not be faced with that challenge.

Neither should we as recreational golfers.  And, of course, in a gentlemen’s game at my Club, we would probably take relief from a divot, as long as we weren’t playing in a tournament with formal golf rules in place.

My on-line Links Insider asked this question in its most edition:  For PGA Tour players what One Golf Rule You’d Love to Change?”

Here is a summary of the results, with, first, a couple introductory paragraphs as written by Shaun Tolson:

“The rules of golf are generally clear, straightforward, and — most importantly — agreeable.  Every once in a while, however, golfers will come across a rule that seems antiquated or flat out unnecessary.  Amateurs aren’t taking their rulebooks out for most casual rounds of golf, but the pros are well-versed in the statutes of the game.

“With that in mind, we asked a handful of PGA Tour players which rule — either specifically for the tour or a general rule of golf — they’d most like to change or eliminate completely.  

• A Scorekeeper’s Dilemma

It may not happen often, but occasionally, a player will be disqualified from a tournament for signing an incorrect scorecard. It’s understandable that in the early years of competitive golf, such a rule was necessary to curtail cheating, but these days there are plenty of preventative measures in place for that.

• Keep It Moving

“If you find your ball out of bounds [after your tee shot], you have to go back to the tee.  Pro golfer Stewart Cink says the current rule doesn’t have a place in casual rounds. “I just don’t see how that really fits into weekend golf.  If you’re playing on a crowded Saturday and you find your ball out of bounds, you’ve got to go back to the tee and tell the group behind you, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I need to come back here and hit another shot while you wait.’  To me, that just doesn’t make any sense.”

• Lightening the Load

A rule change that pro Russell Knox would like to see implemented — at the professional level, at least — is a reduced number of clubs allowed in a player’s bag.  “I think 14 clubs is too many,” he says, adding that he’d limit the number of clubs to a dozen.  “The shot-making part of golf is the lowest it’s ever been.  With the latest technology, guys are turning the game too much into robot science.  It would be more fun if guys had to be a little more creative with shots and eliminating clubs would definitely help that.

• Playing Dirty

For many players, including pro Billy Horschel, the obvious rule to change pertains to balls that come to rest in a divot in the fairway.  “As I understand it,” Horschel says, “the definition of ‘ground under repair’ fits that perfectly.  If you’re on the green and you land in someone else’s pitch mark, you’re able to fix it.  It should be no different, in my opinion, when you’re in the fairway.”

• Or This

Instead, the big deal for pro Zach Johnson is not being allowed to clean mud off a golf ball that has come to rest in the fairway.  “If you have mud on your ball… arguably, you now have zero control out of the middle of the fairway.  But if you hit a worse shot off the tee — if you hit it 20 yards right in the intermediate rough — you can have more control.  There’s something wrong with that.”

• Too Much Information

If pro J.B. Holmes could change one aspect of the rules on tour, he wouldn’t change a rule, per se, so much as he’d change the way a rule is implemented.  More specifically, he’d prevent television viewers from calling in to alert tournament officials of a potential rules violation.

Moreover, he explains that, in many instances, players might be doing everything right to determine what their ball did prior to ending up in a precarious situation, since those details will determine if they’re entitled to a free drop.  However, if a camera used for a television broadcast captures evidence that runs contrary to what a player may have seen or what he has been told by witnesses on the ground, retroactive penalties can be administered, even if the player did everything by the book.

“It’s also unfair in that sense because not everybody in the field has a camera on them.”

And this conclusion.  The Links writer, Tolson, starts his story with this sentence:  “The rules of golf are generally clear, straightforward, and — most importantly — agreeable.”

No.  I have no idea how he reaches that conclusion.  To me, the opposite is true.  Golf rules are not clear, not straightforward, and not agreeable.

So, one of the best ways to answer the question about golf rules to change is to re-write them in a way that makes them more understandable.  Do they have to be a bit complicated?  Yes, because they apply outdoors to all kinds of settings.

But, as complicated as they are?  No.