Minnesota Golfer - Summer 2011 - 7

(editor's letter
)
Who Misses the Stymie? Anyone?
T
he stymie was a maneuver in match
play whereby a player could position
his ball between his opponent's
ball and the cup. It forced the manufacture of
a sliced, hooked or lofted putt around or over
the obstructing ball in order to hole out. The
stymie was excised from the rules in 1952. As
far as our modern sensibilities are concerned,
it is a quaint practice from another era far removed
from today's game.
Not everyone was pleased with its passing.
For Richard S. Tufts, a former USGA
president, it was a sign that golf was going
Any sporting pursuit worth its salt must offer
a challenge, and if that challenge tested the
mettle of its participants, all the better.
soft. It preceded another crack in the game's
foundation when, in 1960, the Rules poobahs
allowed for the repair of ball marks on the
green. Tufts feared the change could lead
to the repair of divots in the fairway, making
greenkeepers of us all. Tufts thought the
change unwise because it breached one of his
primary principles: the golfer must play the
course as he finds it.
For Tufts, these changes were evidence
of a popular movement that he tagged " the
friends of golf, " which wanted to soften the
Rules of Golf to make the game easier. Tufts
felt the changes would undermine the game's
inherent character and ultimately lead to its
destruction. Any sporting pursuit worth its
salt must offer a challenge, and if that challenge
tested the mettle of its participants, all
the better.
" The keener the test of skill and fortitude,
the greater should be the popularity of that
particular sport...[and] if there is to be a
reward in golf it belongs to the player with
the skill necessary to play from difficult situations, "
he wrote at the time.
Tufts lamented the general spread of the
" welfare attitude " -accommodating the less
skilled participant in the ill-conceived notion
that making the game easier would make it
more popular. Like climbing Everest with
guides and bottled oxygen-almost anyone
with money could do that.
Ironically, Tufts was also an architect for
modernization of the rules. He was part of
the USGA team that met with the R&A to
unify the Rules of Golf in 1951. A reverence
for amateurism and a love of amateur golf
ran deep. He was the grandson of Pinehurst
founder James W. Tufts and took over operation
of the resort when his father relinquished
control in 1935; he ran it until it was sold in
1970. He was instrumental in bringing both
the 1936 PGA Championship and the 1951
Ryder Cup to Pinehurst. He was influenced
by Donald Ross, a respected golf pro and the
architect of Pinehurst's famed No. 2 course.
Although Tufts conceded that time may
prove the ball mark rule change a good thing,
he feared that " one by one the challenges
which have made the game great " would
be undermined by softening some of the
game's hard edges. In an article appearing
in the November 1960 issue of the USGA
Journal, Tufts linked (albeit obliquely) the
" friends " movement with the increasing influence
of money on the game.
One wonders how Tufts would find the
game today. Caddie programs and walking
the course have been displaced in many
places by the use of motorized golf carts. The
arrival of GPS and other distance measuring
devices have made the art of judging distance
as quaint as, well, the art of the stymie. For
the purist, Tufts' fears may have been realized.
For the rest of us? Well, there is a summit in
the Himalayas...
See you on the tee.
W.P. Ryan, Editor-in-Chief
www.mngolf.org
Summer 2011 MINNESOTAGOLFER
5
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Minnesota Golfer - Summer 2011

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