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

One of my good friends loves when I write again about golf rules.

He loves the words because he is a golf rules afficionado.  I won’t use his name here because he is famous enough already.

So here goes.

For some reason, I have thought a lot about a rules decision involving pro golfer Carl Yuan as he finished the 18^th hole of the last round of the Sony Open in Hawaii a couple weeks ago.

That hole was a par 5 and, while Yuan hit a decent drive, he pushed his second shot far to the right.

There was no way to tell if the ball hit the top of a corporate tent or went over that tent toward an out-of-bounds line.

A rules official came up quickly and, also quickly, gave Yuan a favorable ruling.  Without, I add, either the official or Yuan taking any time to look for the golf ball to determine whether it was lost or out-of-bounds.

Play on, the rules official said, with the favorable no-penalty ruling.

For some reason, I thought about that situation again today and came to several conclusions.  Which, my friend might say, shows that I am addicted to golf rules and/or have nothing better to do in retirement.  So, the conclusions:

• My basic conclusion is that the rules official should have taken more time to issue a ruling and, at least if not more, should have spent time looking for the ball.  Or, at least call for a second opinion from another official.

I suppose it could be contended that it didn’t matter because Yuan wasn’t going to win the tournament, no matter the ruling.  But, I add, rules are rules.

• My second conclusion is that I suppose it is possible the rules official was using a confusing definition in golf rules – “known or virtually certain.” 

The definition:  “The standard for deciding what happened to a player’s ball – for example, whether the ball came to rest in a penalty area, whether it moved,  or what caused it to move.  Known or virtually certain means more than just possible or probable.”

On TV, it was not possible to know if the rules official was applying this definition or not.  Possible, I guess.  But, if it was being used, at least it would have taken a bit more time to render the decision.

It was nothing if not interesting that the TV commentators did not weigh in on the decision as they often do on such issues.

No doubt my friend, as I said a golf rules afficionado of the highest order, will be glad that I spent more time on this.

And, if nothing else, I am glad because it gave me more to do this morning before heading out to the golf course.