Flexibility a key in "weather" or not in Professional Golf

As the rains continue to descend on the spongy grounds of The K Club in Ireland, I am reminded of the flexibility needed in the conduct of tournaments and qualifiers on professional golf tours.

This week, a story made the rounds about a British Open qualifying round that was re-started due to a rogue hole position. Calling to mind the Callaway commercial a few years back about the mischievous greenkeeper, the hole was deemed unputtable and was moved from high to low in an effort to ensure fairness. In an unprecedented motion, the eight players who had come through (with a five-putt and a four-putt among the results) were returned to the scene of the crime, and ordered to replay the hole. Most improved their lot, although swede Fredrik Hed Anderson dropped a deuce, from par to double-bogey. Fortunately for the lad, his miscue did not cost him a qualifying spot in the tournament proper.

Subsequent to the qualifier, the Smurfit Kappa European Open reduced its course length by over 650 yards and its par by two strokes, in order to eliminate saturated turf from play.

The point, perhaps an ordinary one, is that hubris ought not to prove an impediment to the practice of common sense. Weather is clearly the boss in the later case, but it is the increasingly-more-common practice of pushing to the extreme a hole location, a rough length/thickness, or a bunker excavation that converts tournament execution from the challenging to the farcical.