These Guys Play By Different Rules

You know, when you and I played golf over the years, it was a game of “You hit it there, you play it there.” Nobody had any real need for the rule book. You never got any free drops or rights to place the ball.

But Ernie Els would not be the U.S. Open champion today if the pros played the kind of game we played.

For instance, on the first hole Sunday, Ernie hit a wild hook off to the left of the fairway into the deep rough. The TV announcers described him as having “no chance” to hit the green. He was looking at a double bogey. At least.

All of a sudden, he gets to drop it back in the clear, where he gets an open shot and a chance at a birdie.

You think the guys at Fox Hills in the old days would have let you get away with that kind of carrying on? You’d get kicked out of the foursome.

But the pros today are like clever criminal lawyers. They never panic when they do something awful. They know there’s a law out there somewhere that will mitigate the penalty, maybe even wipe it out. You can, so to speak, overrule it.

Take the grandstand rule. This is a little refinement that came in since golf became a certified sit-down-and-watch sport. It used to be you “galleried” this game, i.e., you walked around with the contestants. Now, they put up grandstands around some of the greens.

The pros love these. Even back in the early days, Hogan used to say he liked a crowd around the green, the denser the better. You could fire at the flag knowing that even if your shot was long, it would be stopped by the spectator mass.

Grandstands are even better. That’s because even if you hit a horrible shot, if it hits the grandstand, it doesn’t matter. You get a free drop. Nearer the hole. You may be better off than a guy who doesn’t hit grandstands, who hits the green even.

Young Master Els was the beneficiary of this kind of modern USGA largess on No. 17 in the final round. He hit a savage smother hook off the tee, so bad it wound up behind the grandstand. If the grandstand’s not there, he’s lucky to make six. But from his drop area, he gets a four. Could have been three.

The gang at Bel Air wouldn’t pay you on that kind of monkey business.

But it goes on all the time on tour. Some guy hits shots up to a hole that would be headed onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike if the seats and spectators weren’t there. He’d be hunting his ball for a week.

Actually, the USGA gave Els his free drop on No. 1 by mistake. He’s entitled to it only if the obstruction he faced is immovable. It was not. As a matter of fact, it was later moved. Officials regularly give pros breaks because of TV cables, microphone positions and assorted imaginary obstructions.

It was that kind of a tournament anyway. You know, a U.S. Open is designed to run the ribbon clerks out of the game. But of late, it seems bent on running them in.

I have seldom seen a more motley cast of characters coming down the fairway in search of the U.S. Open title than greeted us Monday morning:

--Colin Montgomerie looked like someone’s aunt, the first guy in history to try to win the U.S. Open with a slice.

--Loren Roberts is so little known that the TV announcer referred to him as Lorne Greene. He has won only one tournament in 14 years on the tour.

--Ernie Els is going to be a great player but he made so many mistakes coming down the final 36 that you were reminded of the Open in which Ben Hogan finished and then told the press, “The kid I played with would have won the Open by five shots if he had a brain in his head.”

The “kid” was a 20-year-old amateur--name of Jack Nicklaus.

Meanwhile, back in the booth, an announcer kept telling us that Els or Montgomerie would be the fourth foreigner in history to win the Open, naming Tony Jacklin, David Graham and Gary Player as the only others. Actually, the first 16 U.S. Opens were won by foreigners, English- or Scottish-born.

The announcer also told us Hale Irwin was “the only man to win three Opens.” Well, maybe the three is correct. But what about Nicklaus, Hogan, Willie Anderson and Bobby Jones? They all won four. Don’t you have to win three to win four?

It came down to a playoff featuring some of the sloppiest golf this side of a member-guest tournament at Burning Tree. If these three guys had showed up at a public links in Dallas, the hustlers would have been selling raffle tickets on a chance to get into a game with them. The playoff trio missed so many fairways and greens, you wondered what their handicaps were. I know some guys at Riviera could give them two a side.

What happened was, the game came down to match play, which the modern player has no idea how to do. It’s a lost art. Walter Hagen would have had these guys in a straitjacket by the turn. They were 15-over at the end of the day.

It was like winning the batting championship with a .289 average. It wasn’t even good enough to be described as winning ugly.

But, take heart. We’re going to take a leaf from their book. The next time you send a wild approach shot screaming 40 yards to the right of a green and off in the trees, you shout, “We’ll make believe there’s a grandstand there! I get to drop on the fringe--no penalty!”

And if you hit it far left off the tee, you get to put it back on the fairway, explaining, “If this were the U.S. Open, there’d be a camera there!”

It’s only fair, isn’t it? Why shouldn’t we get the same breaks these guys get? Next time you get on the tee with the guys, you say, “Let’s pretend there’s a forklift out there!” And if they say, “Out where?” you say, “Wherever this ball lands!”

Fore!