An Open Answer To Mike Stachura On Institutional Loyalty & Respect

In a blog post on another site, respected golf technology guy Mike Stachura puts a hazy spin (I’ll get to the hazy part later) on a point raised by a previously-unknown (to me!) writer Matt K. Lewis on abandonment of respect for institutions. Stachura’s jumping-off point, based on a quote from Lewis, is “…where we are with respect to, well, the respect leadership is given in today’s world of easy attacks, faceless confrontations and divisiveness as cultural sport.”

Lewis (and Stachura, by extension) raise but do not comment on this sequence of facts: “Americans once belonged to the same church their whole life, worked at the same job for 40 years, and stayed married to the same person till death did they part. Those days are gone. Institutional loyalty has been degraded, and the person leading such an institution no longer has as much sway as he once did.”

Stachura goes on to cite the USGA’s Mike Davis, seemingly waxing on the anchoring issue, or is it the stance issue? Or the definition of what defines a stroke? It’s hard to say. A post that began with promise trails off with no resolution other than “Maybe what this whole thing needs more is, gulp, a political solution.”

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Mr. Stachura, I was quite hopeful that we would reach a golden tape marking the finish line of these topics. I anticipated that we might emerge from your post with a definitive trace for golf’s governing bodies (how many were there at last count? do they all agree?) but all that I have are more questions.

Have all institutions earned and retained our trust, without caving in to greed and other deadly sins? If they have not, should they be preserved?

Does any institution truly serve all the good of all the people, all the time?

As a school teacher, I remember older colleagues bemoaning that “first the family failed, then the church and now the courts. Who backs the teacher now?” Yet education, like other institutions, also fails its constituency at times.

Is it wrong to question the direction of institutions? Should they be followed blindly or held accountable?

Should golf have remained in a neanderthal era of wooden shafts and feather-stuffed balls? If technology is to advance, should not the swing as well? If a restriction of swing innovation is implemented, yet technology is not reigned in, what does that say about the governance of the game?

Like this blog post, we are left with more questions, concern and debate than when we began the reading.