How Cop-Out Pros Get the Drop on Us

Well, I see where those great cop-outs of sport in our time are at it again--the pro golfers.

Listen, let me ask you something! When you hit a ball over in the trees, you go over and play it, right? Hit a ball in the water, you reload, right? Try anything else and the guys you play with are all over you like a swarm of bees. “You hit it there, you play it there!” they yell at you.

Not the pros. These guys should all be defense attorneys. They know every loophole in the rules. They play a game with which you are totally unfamiliar--and I’m not talking about hitting a six-iron where you would hit a four-wood ( then, a six-iron), sinking two-break putts or getting out of a trap in one.

These guys never get a bad lie. The minute the ball rolls into one, they start hauling out the rule book and hollering for a PGA official. They are very persuasive. The grass was too high. The gallery rope interfered with their swings. They were abused as children. Anything to get a free drop, an open shot.

Perhaps you remember the U.S. Open this year. A player, I believe it was the eventual winner, Ernie Els, hit a tee shot that came to rest--off line--behind a TV truck.

Big to-do. The truck is not part of the course. And it is movable. Hey! We just move it!

But, it can’t be moved. It would take two trucks and 15 horses. It stays.

So, the golfer gets to move the ball. Only fair, right?

Wrong! That truck was there when he hit the shot. He could see it. Just as he could see the immovable trees nearby. He should no more have hit it behind the truck than he should have hit it behind a tree. Would you let him saw down the tree? Why let him around the truck?

If the truck was in the middle of the fairway, he has a point. But it wasn’t. It was over near the out-of-bounds line. He hit a bad shot. He should have had to play his next shot over the truck. Why not? He would have had to play it over a tree, correct?

He got a drop. Away from the obstruction. He got his clear shot to the green. I think he birdied.

Arnold Palmer in a Masters once dumped an approach shot short of the 17th green. It plugged. The greenside was muddy.

He called an official. He wanted a drop. The official said No. Arnold said the official was in error. So Arnold played the plugged ball and bogeyed the hole. Then, he dropped a ball and played a provisional. He parred it. By the time he got to the clubhouse, his provisional was ruled the legal shot.

What brings all this to mind is last Sunday. The pros were playing the Greater Milwaukee Open. A golfer named Mike Springer approached the 18th hole on the final day with a one-shot lead. No. 18 is a par five on this course.

Springer got off a good drive. Now, he had an option: Play safely short, protect his one-shot lead--or go for the green, make a birdie and put the tournament out of reach.

But Springer sees that 18 is surrounded by a 20-deep grandstand. That’s good. He loosens his belt, takes the club back around his ears and gives the ball a solid belt.

It’s way off line. It slices way right. We all know the shot. It comes down in the trees somewhere between the grandstand and the clubhouse.

Not to worry. The pros know all about this shot.

You see, you can’t be asked to play over the grandstand. So Springer doesn’t even bother to find his ball. Someone goes and gets it for him. Throws it up to him on the green. He gets to place it on the front of the green, no penalty. In a position closer than a layup shot would have been. He only lies two. He easily makes his par, wins the tournament.

Now, it is my contention that the errant shot might have been: (1) an unplayable lie, (2) behind a tree, (3) lost, (4) in hip-high weeds, (5) under a bush.

It doesn’t matter. Some guy throws him a ball and he drops it in front of the green and has an open 20-yard shot to the hole.

Happens all the time on the tour. These guys are all F. Lee Baileys in spikes when it comes to getting out of tight lies with new rules.

Springer carded a 67 and won the championship, but I would like to have seen him play No. 18 from where the ball landed.

When the 18th hole is a par-five surrounded by grandstands, a golfer is playing with house money. He knows he can go for the jackpot. The worst he can get is a 20-yard chip from in front of the green. It’s a no-risk shot.

That’s why I felt like throwing my hat in the air at the recent National Amateur tournament in Florida when that extraordinary young player, Tiger Woods, came up to an errant shot on a late hole. His tee shot had flown into the woods. It came to rest on pine needles and behind pine trees.

I nodded. Because there, in full view, was a cart path. I knew the shtick. Every pro in the business would come up to that shot, carefully site the back of his golf shoes on the side of the cart path and argue that the cart path had “interfered” with his stance.

There isn’t a golfer on the tour who wouldn’t have gotten relief. Not one would have played that shot without first getting permission to drop and reposition the ball--more advantageously--in relation to the hole.

Tiger Woods just came up, looked at the shot, reached for a club, gripped it and hit the ball as it lay.

He’s only 18. He’ll learn. But for now, he can play in our foursome any time he wants. We don’t want to know from movable objects, burrowing animal holes, staked trees, inability to take your stance or balls hit behind grandstands.

When you play with us, leave the law books at home. We have just one rule: If you find it, hit it.