The Washington times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1902-1939, 1928-07-11

generosity OF an opponent has
In tournament play, especially In
medal competition, 1t is the duty OF
every competitor to call attention to
attractions Of the rules and to see
that the proper penalty is imposed.
Nearly everyone must hesitate to call
a penalty upon an opponent. and
usually the embarrassment ~ re-
lieved by the presence of an official
referee whose duty 1t is to take cog
nizance of q breach by either com.
petitor.
But In medal play there should be
no such hesitation. for every player,
as regards what happens within his
ken, is the representa- OF every
other player, He might be willing to
waive the penalty in a personal en-
counter, but he has no right to waive
it for the hundred-odd men against
whom his playing partner is compet-
ing. II he does so, he is liable to
disqualification.
: ] do not recall that have ever
seen what appeared to me to be an
intentional breach Of the rules.
do not profess to be an expert upon
the rules Of golf. for ] have not made
a very serious study OF them.
But I should never think or en-
tering an important competition
without d fair understanding Of
the questions which are apt to
come up. Time and again, I'M
watching national championship
competitions, you will see dis
played an ignorance Of the rules
which is really surprising.
In Atlanta several years ago Tom
Prescott and Louis Jacoby met in the
final Of an important tournament at
Druid Hills. The match was even
coming to the seventeenth, Jacoby
was on the green with his tee shot
and Tom was bunkered beyond. For
some unaccountalnle reason, Tom
took practice swing q few inches
from his ball, knocking up a double
handful of sand Now the penalty
for grounding the club in q bunker
before player strikes at the bali is
loss Of the hole in match play. Inn
mediate1y realizing what he had done,
Tom picked up his ball and conceded
the hole, eventually losing the match
one up. No one yet, not even Tom,
knows why he took that swing.
Reggie Lewis. at the thirty-sixth
green of that historic match at En-
gineer'a when Chick Evans, on the
way to his second amateur cham
pionship, beat him on the forty
second hole, committed a breach of
the rules which should have lost
him the hole without the excite
ment of Chick holing a longa putt
and of Reggie missing a short one.
OF course, Chick was right in not
calling the penalty, for he could
not want to win the hole because
of a purely unintentionaI lapse on
Reggie's part which gave him no
advantage whatsoever. The referees
position was equally difficult. He
knew Reggie we'll enough to know
that he would never have thought
of infringing the rules il he had
known what he was doing.
Reggie's ball lay on grassy slope
beyond the green and fully forty
yards from the hole. He was, there
fore. not within the twenty-yard
radius which is defined as the
putting green. In that position
Reggie had the right to remove only
those loose impediments in his line
which were within twenty yards of
the hole or within a clublength of
his ball. But he went carefully
down the slope, picking up dead
hole. And very properly, no one
said anything about it. for Reggie
was perfectly innocent, and it
couldn't be helped anyway.
One must be very careful in
removing distractions ON the
putting surface. Particularly is
this true i'm Great Britain, for
there the green's are much
larger than ours. and q bali
may be far onto the green and
still be over 20 yards from the
hole.
Many people have the idea that
the putting green comprises all the
closely cropped and rolled surface
around the hole, but 1t certainly
does not. If your ball Is on the
putting surface but more than 20
yards from the hole, you have no
more right to remove Instructions
than you would have II you were in
the fairUay 200 yards from the
green.
This is, of course. a comparatively
small matter, but it is always i'm
portant to observe painstaking
respect for the rules. Your oppon-
ent may not always know you well
enough to understand that the
breach Is unintentional. If you are
in doubt about your distance and
there is a referee, let him decide: If
there is not, appeal to your OPP
ponent.
I saw one instance where ignor-
ance of the rules caused player
to lose a valuable right to which
he was in all good conscience en-
titled. 1t was in the qualifying
round of the amateur championship
at Merton in 1924. The mans ball
was buried in the white. fluffy sand
of the bunker in front OF the 18TH
green and had disappeared COM
pletely from sight.
The caddie preceded his player to
the ball and, pointing TO depres-
sion in the sand bank, he said, 1T
went in here" Whereupon the
PLAYER took two or three vicious
wallops at the sand. Nothing
emerging, he discovered that his
ball was not there, but some elSht
or ten feet away from his point of
attack. OF course, he had to count
the strokes and barely failed to
qualify.
He did not know that he had
the right to remove enough sann