Kobe Bryant can make free throws at the end of a basketball game with 15,000 fans screaming and waving stuff behind the basket, but Matt Kuchar can’t putt unless he’s in the freakin’ library? …… Hey, the ball doesn’t move. The hole doesn’t move. Step up and play, pal.

Norman Chad

Couch Slouch Column

July 2011

This is a very amusing piece written for The New Yorker by Larry David of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” fame.  Certainly a familiar process every one of us who has ever picked up a seven iron can relate to.  Only question remains is the one my friend posed to me, “What stage are you in?”

(Click here to read the Larry David article)

Larry David

The New Yorker magazine

July 2011

During the Battle of Britain early in the Second World War, the St. Mellon’s Golf and Country Club, located in Monmouthshire, adopted a set of unusual rules for unusual circumstances.

Written by B. L. Edsell, the club secretary, they read:

1 – Players are asked to collect the bomb and shrapnel splinters to prevent their causing damage to the mowing machines.

2- In competition, during gunfire or while bombs are falling, players may take shelter without penalty for ceasing play.

3 – The positions of known delayed-actions bombs are marked by red flags at a reasonable by not guaranteed safe distance therefrom.

4 – Shrapnel and/or bomb splinters on the fairways or in bunkers within a club’s length of a ball may be moved without penalty, and no penalty shall be incurred if a ball is thereby caused to be moved accidentally.

5 – A ball moved by enemy action may be replaced, or if lost or destroyed, a ball may be dropped without penalty, not nearer the hole.

6 – A ball lying in a crater may be lifted and dropped not nearer the hole, preserving the line to the hole, without penalty.

7 – A player whose stroke is affected by the simultaneous explosion of a bomb may play another ball under penalty of one stroke.

USGA Museum

Far Hills, New Jersey