Before the Open Championship began at St. Andrews, many had bought into the idea that Tiger Woods could contend at his old stomping grounds. His first swing of the tournament looked ideal, though the result was anything but.
On the easiest tee shot in golf, Woods found an awkwardly shaped divot in the middle of the fairway and sent his badly misjudged approach into the burn short of the green. An opening double bogey sent him into a spiral, and he never recovered.
There is a small list of things we truly deserve on the course – perfect lies from each tee box, relief from manmade objects, a hot dog at the turn – but the competitive game is meant to be played from wherever the ball finished after the previous stroke.
As it often does, one of golf’s evergreen debates resurfaced because of the incident. There is a vocal camp that believes divots within the fairway should be regarded as ground under repair, warranting a free drop. Competitive players are entitled to drop away from drains, sprinklers, casual water, cart paths, ground under repair marked off by tournament officials and temporary immovable obstructions such as grandstands, so why wouldn’t they get relief from a divot that some hacker gouged out of the earth during the pro-am? Some are so passionate that they’ve deemed this the worst rule in golf.
In light of the discussion, I propose an unpopular course of action: we should do nothing, other than to put an indefinite moratorium on the topic.
Golf is inherently unfair. There is a small list of things we truly deserve on the course – perfect lies from each tee box, relief from manmade objects, a hot dog at the turn – but the competitive game is meant to be played from wherever the ball finished after the previous stroke. You won’t hear anything from me if you want to play by “winter rules” on a Saturday morning with your friends, but scorecard-in-your-hand golf has a sacred code. You play out of bunkers that have more or less sand than the next one. You chip off of hard-pan lies one shot and lush rough on the next one. Embracing changes to your environment is kind of the entire point of the game.
Even if that were to be dismissed, the problem is that any fairway relief is up to interpretation. Divots come in all shapes and sizes, so is any indentation in the fairway going to be considered a divot? Do we need a rules official to come out with a ruler and binder full of examples so that he can examine each divot as if going through a Rorschach test? Imagine the arguments when a player quickly takes relief, whether he honestly assumes that he deserves it or, Patrick Reed argues, his mildly imperfect lie needs a slight enhancement.
I’ll rest my plea with a story. During the final round of the 1998 U.S. Open at Olympic Club, Payne Stewart famously found a sand-filled divot in the 12th fairway. He didn’t handle it well. Stewart missed the green, made bogey and went on to lose to Lee Janzen by one shot. Stewart called the divot “a fairway bunker” and later had an exchange with USGA official Tom Meeks, arguing that such situations warrant relief. Meeks poked back, telling Stewart that he should practice the shot more often. Shortly after, there was a PGA Tour players meeting during which Greg Norman argued that players should get relief from fairway divots. Stewart spoke up against the idea, having changed his mind after letting the result of the tournament settle.
Then came the 1999 U.S. Open at Pinehurst. On the practice range, Stewart attempted shots out of divots each day.
Remarkably, he found four sand-filled divots during the tournament. It happened twice on No. 5, and he made par both times. He won by a stroke.
And that is the essence of golf.
Sean Fairholm
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