Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my.
Speaker 2: Ball in a brid egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida Egg,
Speaker 2: Frida Egg, frid Egg.
Speaker 3: Bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of
Speaker 3: the hum.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. My name
Speaker 2: is Garrett Morrison, and today we have a special episode
Speaker 2: on a particular aspect of match play golf, or I
Speaker 2: should say something that used to be a factor in
Speaker 2: match play, and that is the stymy. Basically, a stymy
Speaker 2: worked like this. You and your opponent were both on
Speaker 2: the green, but your opponent's ball blocked your path to
Speaker 2: the hole. Today you can ask your opponent to mark
Speaker 2: their ball and even move their mark out of your line.
Speaker 2: But until seventy years ago, that wasn't the case. Unless
Speaker 2: the two balls were within six inches of each other,
Speaker 2: you just had to play it as it lay. You
Speaker 2: were stymied. As you can imagine, this led to all
Speaker 2: sorts of complications. It was an entire dimension of match
Speaker 2: play golf that good players had to master the strategy
Speaker 2: of it. The question of whether to create a stymy
Speaker 2: intentionally the techniques for playing around or over another ball,
Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff. But in the twentieth century
Speaker 2: the steymy became controversial. Many golfers began to think of
Speaker 2: it as a relic of an old, antiquated form of
Speaker 2: the game, and finally, in nineteen fifty two, when the
Speaker 2: USGA and RNA came out with their first jointly published
Speaker 2: set of rules, the stymy was abolished. So the basic
Speaker 2: goal of this episode is to tell the story of
Speaker 2: the stymy, and I hope one thing that becomes clear
Speaker 2: is that it wasn't just a charming little core of
Speaker 2: match play, though it certainly was. That it was also
Speaker 2: an embodiment of a whole attitude towards the game, an
Speaker 2: attitude that fell out of favor around the same time
Speaker 2: and for many of the same reasons that the stemy did,
Speaker 2: and the result was essentially modern golf. To learn more
Speaker 2: about this history, I called up Stephen Proctor.
Speaker 4: My name is Stephen Proctor. I write books about the
Speaker 4: history of golf, narrative history books. My first book was
Speaker 4: about young Tom Morris, and I have a next one
Speaker 4: coming out next June that is about the age of
Speaker 4: golf before the Great War.
Speaker 2: Stephen and I actually talked last year, so his book
Speaker 2: is available for pre order right now. It's called The
Speaker 2: Long Golden Afternoon. Now, a quick note on the format
Speaker 2: I'm using here. Some of you may be familiar with
Speaker 2: Frida Egg's stories are audio documentary series which I host.
Speaker 2: This episode has some elements of that, but it's not
Speaker 2: quite a full fledged documentary narrative. The focus is really
Speaker 2: on the interview I did with Stephen, and I started
Speaker 2: that interview by asking him to tell three stories about
Speaker 2: three different stymies. I wanted to understand how the stemy
Speaker 2: functioned in an actual high stakes golf match. So story
Speaker 2: number one, John Henry Taylor versus Horace Hutchinson, eighteen eighty eight.
Speaker 4: You know what would happen is that players who are
Speaker 4: looking to establish their reputation as a gifted golfer could
Speaker 4: often do so by the lofting of a brilliant stymy
Speaker 4: in a critical moment. So in eighteen eighty eight, John
Speaker 4: Henry Taylor is a young man, not yet a professional.
Speaker 4: He's just a greenkeeper at Northam, at the westward Hoe
Speaker 4: golf course there where he was born in Northam, and
Speaker 4: he plays in a match as a member of the
Speaker 4: working Man's Club against the Amateur champion, the reigning Amateur Champion,
Speaker 4: Horace Hutchinson, for whom he had previously worked as a bootblack. Honestly,
Speaker 4: so it was a kind of an interesting match in
Speaker 4: that regard.
Speaker 2: Taylor, by the way, went on to become a five
Speaker 2: time Open champion and, along with James Bray and Harry Varden,
Speaker 2: one of the so called great Triumvirate of golf in
Speaker 2: the eighteen nineties and early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 4: In any case, John Henry Taylor surprisingly beats Hutchinson, and
Speaker 4: he notes in his memoir with great pride, and if
Speaker 4: you don't mind, I'll just quote it. It may be
Speaker 4: that mister Hutchinson treated me with some tolerance, but the
Speaker 4: truth must be told that once I had a grip
Speaker 4: on him, I stuck to him with a greater intensity
Speaker 4: and finished him off by winning three and two, successfully
Speaker 4: pitching a stymy with my one and only iron on
Speaker 4: the sixteenth green. So you can see that he took
Speaker 4: a bit of pride in the fact that he had
Speaker 4: one iron. It was probably a mid iron, I would guess,
Speaker 4: or a mashiet, but it wasn't a very high lofted
Speaker 4: iron like a niblick or what we would think of
Speaker 4: as a sand wedge, And he was able to loft
Speaker 4: the ball over a Hutchinson's ball and drop it directly
Speaker 4: into the cup and win the match with that shot.
Speaker 4: And those were the kinds of things that could establish
Speaker 4: a reputation for you as a crafty, skilled golfer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so the ability to negotiate a stymy could
Speaker 2: be a particular point of pride for a golfer in
Speaker 2: this era.
Speaker 4: It most certainly was, and I think the players who
Speaker 4: opposed to the stymy being eliminated felt that it took
Speaker 4: a key level of match play skill out of the game.
Speaker 4: And I'm pretty sure that Bobby Jones was in that
Speaker 4: same category. He was brilliant at lofting stymy's, putting around stymi's,
Speaker 4: as were most of the great players of the age,
Speaker 4: Willie Park Junior, John Henry Taylor as we mentioned, and others.
Speaker 2: Story number two Freddie Tait versus Douglas Rowland eighteen ninety four.
Speaker 4: In eighteen ninety four, the first Open Championship ever to
Speaker 4: be played on English soil was conducted at Royal Saint
Speaker 4: George's where the Open happened this year. Naturally, as part
Speaker 4: of that, they wanted to have a special event to
Speaker 4: supplement the Open itself. And what they did was they
Speaker 4: arranged a match between amateur golfers and professional golfers, eight
Speaker 4: amateurs versus eight professionals. This was a per perfect time
Speaker 4: for that kind of match because amateurs, for the very
Speaker 4: first time in history, had shown the ability to play
Speaker 4: against and beat professionals. John Ball had won the eighteen
Speaker 4: ninety Open Championship as an amateur and Harold Hilton followed
Speaker 4: that up by winning the Open in eighteen ninety two
Speaker 4: as an amateur, both of them players from Hoyley.
Speaker 1: It's worth noting.
Speaker 4: In eighteen ninety four the amateur players didn't do nearly
Speaker 4: so well in that match as the amateurs who ran
Speaker 4: the game hoped for. Only John Ball and Freddie Tate,
Speaker 4: the great hero of Scotland, manages to five even around.
Speaker 4: Freddie Tate went on to almost get to the final
Speaker 4: and it was a stemy two stemies actually that thwarted
Speaker 4: him from getting there.
Speaker 1: And that's the interesting.
Speaker 4: Part about this story. He was playing against a man
Speaker 4: named Douglas Rowland, a professional from Scotland, a bit of
Speaker 4: a rascal, and on the eighth hole he was brutally
Speaker 4: stymied when he had a two up lead, so he
Speaker 4: ended up having that hole that he should have won
Speaker 4: and taken a three up lead into the ninth hole,
Speaker 4: which is a pretty tough lead in a match at
Speaker 4: the turn. He ended up then fighting against Roland the
Speaker 4: whole way on the back nine and the match was
Speaker 4: all squares they came to the seventeenth. On the seventeenth hole,
Speaker 4: Freddy Tait hits a gorgeous approach to the green that's
Speaker 4: probably four feet from the hole. Rowland's approach is way wide,
Speaker 4: forty to fifty feet from the hole, but when he puts,
Speaker 4: he puts offline and leaves Freddy with the dead stymy.
Speaker 4: The dead stymy prevents Freddy from winning that hole, which
Speaker 4: would have left him with the one up lead going
Speaker 4: into the eighteenth and thereby almost unbeatable. Unfortunately, the match
Speaker 4: ends up being haved in regulation and Freddy loses on
Speaker 4: the twentieth hole. And it was really those kinds of
Speaker 4: stymies that prevented somebody from winning a match in which
Speaker 4: they had clearly played better, that turned people against the
Speaker 4: Stimy in the long run.
Speaker 2: In other words, there was a sense that this was unfair.
Speaker 4: There was a sense, yes, that it was unfair in
Speaker 4: the regard that Freddie Tate lost the match when he
Speaker 4: played better golf, and of course Roland then went on
Speaker 4: to win the whole thing against John Henry Taylor, the
Speaker 4: great English golfer who had won the Open that year
Speaker 4: at Saint George's, tremendous breakthrough for English golf.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it seems like in this case the Steymy
Speaker 2: injected a kind of chaos into the match.
Speaker 4: Yes, that is pretty rare that it produced that kind
Speaker 4: of outcome, but it did on occasion, and that was
Speaker 4: the thing that aroused the ire against the stymy to
Speaker 4: begin with, is that in certain matches, at certain critical moments,
Speaker 4: Steymy's would prevent the right person from winning. On the
Speaker 4: other hand, other people looked at it as a fabulous
Speaker 4: way for Douglas Rowland to stay in the match when
Speaker 4: he was clearly up against it.
Speaker 1: So it depended on your point of view.
Speaker 2: Finally, story number three, Cyril Tlly versus Bobby Jones nineteen thirty,
Speaker 2: the year that Jones won the Grand Slam, which back
Speaker 2: then consisted of the US and British Opens and the
Speaker 2: US and British Amateur Championships.
Speaker 4: Certainly the most difficult tournament to win, at least in Jones'
Speaker 4: opinion in the mine also is the British Amateur Championship,
Speaker 4: because you have to win a million, not million, but
Speaker 4: seven or eight singles matches and then a thirty six
Speaker 4: hole final. And obviously, as match play shows all the time,
Speaker 4: and the reason television hates it is that anything can
Speaker 4: happen in an eighteen hole match, and a person who
Speaker 4: might be considered an inferior player can get on a
Speaker 4: heater and defeat a great golfer. In any case, Jones
Speaker 4: was playing in the nineteen thirty Amateur in one of
Speaker 4: his late matches to get into the final against a
Speaker 4: man named Cyril Taly, a big burley golfer from England
Speaker 4: who was a great golfer and one of the top
Speaker 4: figures of that age. He is playing against Tolly and
Speaker 4: beats him on one hole by virtue of the fact
Speaker 4: that Tolly accidentally stymies himself, allowing Jones to win the hole.
Speaker 4: And Jones himself wrote in his own book Down the Fairway,
Speaker 4: I believe that he regretted winning the tournament in that way,
Speaker 4: and he probably wouldn't have been able to advance because
Speaker 4: Tally had to drop on him at that moment. And
Speaker 4: winning that hole when he would have maybe lost it
Speaker 4: proved pivotal in the outcome of that Amateur championship and eventually,
Speaker 4: obviously in Jones completing the Grand Slam. That's probably the
Speaker 4: most famous stemy in history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this one was where he stemied himself. And
Speaker 2: when you say steymied himself, you mean that Jones's ball
Speaker 2: was quite close to the hole and Tolly accidentally hit
Speaker 2: a lag putt that was farther away from the hole,
Speaker 2: and Jones's ball was in the way.
Speaker 1: Correct, That is exactly what happened.
Speaker 2: And maybe the usual stemy scenario that we would think
Speaker 2: of would be the opposite, where a player farther away
Speaker 2: from the hole would stemy the other player by lagging
Speaker 2: it up closer in between the other player's ball and
Speaker 2: the hole exactly.
Speaker 4: And this kind of steymy was the sort of stymy
Speaker 4: that really raised Hackles about the outcome of the match,
Speaker 4: because Tali had just inadvertently in lagging his putt stuck
Speaker 4: it right behind Jones's ball, and there was pretty much
Speaker 4: no way he could negotiate the stymy without knocking Jones's
Speaker 4: ball into the hole. And of course, if you did
Speaker 4: that under the Steymy rule, Jones would have been considered
Speaker 4: to have hold his previous shot and therefore it would
Speaker 4: all be over. So those kinds of stimys were more painful,
Speaker 4: I think than even the Roland one, which you could
Speaker 4: take a two edged point of view on that. You
Speaker 4: could take the point of view that Roland did a
Speaker 4: brilliant thing in preserving himself by steymying Tate, or you
Speaker 4: could take the point of view that he unfairly won
Speaker 4: by steymying Tate. But there were at least two distinct
Speaker 4: point of views. But most people, and I think even
Speaker 4: the winner himself, acknowledged that nobody likes to win when
Speaker 4: somebody accidentally stymies themselves.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, there's something ungentlemanly about it, but you know
Speaker 2: that's golf, okay, So why don't we go back to
Speaker 2: the beginning. Could you just tell me about the origins
Speaker 2: of the Steymy in some of the earliest rules of golf.
Speaker 2: Where did it come from, how did it come about
Speaker 2: that this was a thing that was a feature of golf.
Speaker 4: Certainly, the Steymy was never actually written down itself as
Speaker 4: a rule. It evolved from the understanding of the original
Speaker 4: thirteen rules that were created in seventeen forty four by
Speaker 4: the Gentlemen Golfers of Leith, who later became the Honorable
Speaker 4: Company of Edinburgh Golfers. They got from the City of
Speaker 4: Edinburgh that year a silver club to compete for annually
Speaker 4: over their links. But the one thing that was necessary
Speaker 4: was a set of rules for the game to be
Speaker 4: played by, and so they wrote down the original thirteen rules.
Speaker 4: Rule six of those rules stipulated that in a circumstance
Speaker 4: in which two balls laid very close to one another,
Speaker 4: the ball closest to the hole could be picked up
Speaker 4: while the other ball was played. So they were referring
Speaker 4: primarily to situations what you would call through the green,
Speaker 4: on the fairway or somewhere else. But it was inferred
Speaker 4: from that that you were not able to move your
Speaker 4: ball under any circumstance other than that circumstance, and so
Speaker 4: it eventually evolved into a rule whereby if a ball
Speaker 4: was within six inches of your ball and within six
Speaker 4: inches of the hole, it could be lifted, but no
Speaker 4: other circumstance could it be lifted. So and then eventually
Speaker 4: it just became a rule where you couldn't pick up
Speaker 4: your ball on the green at all in a match.
Speaker 4: This only applied to when you had an opponent's ball
Speaker 4: blocking your ball. If you were in a stroke play match,
Speaker 4: you were not considered to have an opponent per se.
Speaker 4: You was only in match play that this applied, And
Speaker 4: that's how the rule came to be in existence.
Speaker 2: So, in other words, it was defined negatively. The rule said,
Speaker 2: this is the specific scenario in which you can pick
Speaker 2: up the ball or pick a request that an opponent's
Speaker 2: ball be picked up, if your balls are within six
Speaker 2: inches of each other and within six inches of the hole.
Speaker 2: And it was a since that was the you know,
Speaker 2: the one situation where you could pick up the ball.
Speaker 2: It was, as you said, inferred that in all other
Speaker 2: situations you couldn't.
Speaker 4: It's definitely defined by its negative I think the original
Speaker 4: rule referred only to balls in play, not specific to
Speaker 4: whether they were on the green or not on the green.
Speaker 4: And then eventually the rule that was adopted by clubs
Speaker 4: was that if you were on the green and within
Speaker 4: six inches of the hole. There were circumstances in which
Speaker 4: a ball closer to the hole could be lifted, but
Speaker 4: under no other circumstances. So you're right in the sense
Speaker 4: that people inferred from that that the only two times
Speaker 4: you could touch your ball was to put it on
Speaker 4: a tee and to pick it up out of the hole.
Speaker 1: That was how golf was always played.
Speaker 4: And of course the player actually never did either of
Speaker 4: those two things.
Speaker 1: They had their caddy do it. But that's neither here
Speaker 1: nor there.
Speaker 2: Am I right to say that no player would admit
Speaker 2: to intentionally stymying his opponent.
Speaker 4: That is correct the way the original rule was written
Speaker 4: in the original thirteen rules. As we talked about at
Speaker 4: the beginning, one of those was you are not to
Speaker 4: play against your opponent's ball. You're to play fairly for
Speaker 4: the hole. So the noble idea was that stymis were
Speaker 4: always accidental, but the real idea was that they were
Speaker 4: they were not always accidental. You can be sure that
Speaker 4: Roland wanted to hold his putt, but if he didn't
Speaker 4: hold it, he wanted it to stop in between Freddy's
Speaker 4: in the hole, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: And you know, players I.
Speaker 4: Can assure you that the man chipping off the green
Speaker 4: against McClain was hoping that if he didn't make it
Speaker 4: would stop in between McLain's ball in the hole, because.
Speaker 1: It saved you.
Speaker 4: It gave you one last out, you know, one last
Speaker 4: get out of jail free card. So you know, I
Speaker 4: think it was just really had a level of tension
Speaker 4: in a man because of the last minute uncertainty that
Speaker 4: it could occur from a devastating stymy that was unanticipated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, and when you're playing one of
Speaker 2: those shots, when you're behind on a hole and you're
Speaker 2: and you're lagging a ball up or you're chipping a
Speaker 2: ball when your opponent's ball is closer to the whole
Speaker 2: part of your calculation, your silent calculation, you would not
Speaker 2: admit to this is this is the good place, This
Speaker 2: is the good side to miss two. And this is
Speaker 2: about the pace that I need to play this shot
Speaker 2: at because if it doesn't go in the hole, which
Speaker 2: would be the best scenario, if it doesn't go in
Speaker 2: the hole, then at least I want it to end
Speaker 2: up between my opponent's ball and the hole, and so
Speaker 2: that that would be in a player's mind, you think.
Speaker 4: There is no question that that was in Roland's mind
Speaker 4: at the moment he made that puck, and I don't
Speaker 4: doubt that any player who laid a stymy on another
Speaker 4: player had that thought in the back of his mind
Speaker 4: that if this doesn't go in, it would be best
Speaker 4: if it stymied him.
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Speaker 2: So let's let's go back to the kind of origins
Speaker 2: of the stemy rule. It was initially defined by its opposite.
Speaker 2: This is the situation in which you can pick up
Speaker 2: the ball. Could you talk a little bit about the
Speaker 2: sort of philosophical and cultural implications of the Stemy rule,
Speaker 2: and generally of the principle that you need to play
Speaker 2: the ball as it lies, of which the Steymy might
Speaker 2: be the ultimate example. Right.
Speaker 4: I do think that the Steymy itself and that original
Speaker 4: rule six of the thirteen Rules of Golf helped create
Speaker 4: the notion that you should play your ball as it
Speaker 4: lies by the inference that you're not allowed to touch
Speaker 4: it at any given time. The only other rule that
Speaker 4: existed where you were allowed to pick up your ball
Speaker 4: was if your ball landed next to something that would
Speaker 4: break your golf club what they referred to as break club,
Speaker 4: meaning like a giant stone or something, then you were
Speaker 4: allowed to move your ball with a penalty or watery
Speaker 4: filth as they called it, because they played on the
Speaker 4: seaside and you know, slimy seaweed and things would wash
Speaker 4: up on the shore and your ball could land in
Speaker 4: those and you couldn't really play very effectively from the
Speaker 4: watery filth as it were, and you were allowed to
Speaker 4: take your ball and drop it behind and take a penalty.
Speaker 4: But from those rules it became clear that you were
Speaker 4: never allowed to touch your ball, and so evolved the
Speaker 4: notion that you play the ball as it lies, and
Speaker 4: that's a critically important part of golf culturally. I also
Speaker 4: think it goes to the notion that golf is a
Speaker 4: game in which you encounter rubs of the green that
Speaker 4: are horrible, but that are part of the challenge of it.
Speaker 4: And I think that's probably the more culturally significant aspect
Speaker 4: of the stymy, is that the people who really loved
Speaker 4: the stymy and wanted it to be maintained felt that
Speaker 4: it corrupted the game every single time you tried to
Speaker 4: eliminate a possible rub of the green, which of course
Speaker 4: has been the thing that people have been trying to
Speaker 4: do since the beginning without cessation and continue to try
Speaker 4: to do today, is to remove the difficult bounces and
Speaker 4: make everything quote fair.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about some of the arguments against the stemy.
Speaker 2: There were arguments against the stemy early on, and obviously
Speaker 2: they increased, but what were the basic main arguments against
Speaker 2: the stemy.
Speaker 4: I would say the principal argument against the steimy was
Speaker 4: that it was unfair in the sense that it often
Speaker 4: produced winners who weren't deserving. As many people felt that
Speaker 4: Douglas Rolin was not deserving of the victory that he
Speaker 4: earned over Freddie Tait in that Gentleman versus Players match
Speaker 4: at Sandwich in eighteen ninety four. That was probably the
Speaker 4: main underlying issue.
Speaker 1: With it, you know.
Speaker 4: I think in particular, as the game spread from Scotland,
Speaker 4: this notion that it should be fair begins to creep
Speaker 4: into the game and one of the various first places
Speaker 4: where you see that is the objections to the Stymy
Speaker 4: And I think the English people who took up the
Speaker 4: game didn't have the same reverential view of it that
Speaker 4: Scottish people did, and they began to view it in
Speaker 4: a different way. And it was English people primarily who had,
Speaker 4: you know, campaigned to change the Steymy rule first. You know,
Speaker 4: before the formation of the Rules Committee at Saint Andrews
Speaker 4: in eighteen ninety seven, there was huge commotion to try
Speaker 4: to get a universal set of rules for a very
Speaker 4: fast growing game and the ultimate result of that was
Speaker 4: Saint Andrews became the governing body of golf at that time.
Speaker 4: But during that agitation, which included years worth of letters
Speaker 4: to the editor in the Field magazine newspaper, the Country
Speaker 4: Gentlemen's newspaper by the way, and these had a lot
Speaker 4: to do with the stymy, and they just it was
Speaker 4: the English who generally felt the stymy was not fair,
Speaker 4: and when the game really took root in America, that
Speaker 4: idea only quadrupled. The Americans in particular loathed the stymy
Speaker 4: and didn't understand why it should be part of the game.
Speaker 4: They felt that every player should have a fair chance
Speaker 4: to hold his ball and that a ball interfering with
Speaker 4: their ball ought to be removed out of their way
Speaker 4: to give them a chance to make the putt they
Speaker 4: had in.
Speaker 1: Front of them.
Speaker 2: Was the emergence of stroke play as the dominant form
Speaker 2: of golf also a.
Speaker 4: Factor here, Probably not since stymy's mostly figured in match play,
Speaker 4: so I wouldn't say that, but I do think stroke
Speaker 4: play would have this effect on it, Garrett, which is
Speaker 4: that English people took the rather rare step of keeping
Speaker 4: their score even in a match, which drove the Scots
Speaker 4: absolutely crazy. And Americans were me even more obsessive about
Speaker 4: their score than the English had been before them. And
Speaker 4: so if you are a person who's keeping their score match, well,
Speaker 4: a steymy is going to affect your score. So yes,
Speaker 4: in that regard, I mean it didn't factor in stroke play.
Speaker 4: It was a match play rule, but it did keep
Speaker 4: you from making a great score, and anything that could
Speaker 4: keep you from making a great score was an anathema
Speaker 4: to Americans in particular, and somewhat to the English before them,
Speaker 4: because it was the English really who adopted stroke play
Speaker 4: as there what they felt was the purest test of
Speaker 4: a champion.
Speaker 1: Scott's never thought that, and I don't think they do now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean, I guess my argument would be
Speaker 2: that even if it was never a rule that affected
Speaker 2: stroke play, the devotion that somebody has to stroke play,
Speaker 2: or the idea that somebody has that stroke play is golf, right,
Speaker 2: that that is what golf is trying to make a score,
Speaker 2: trying to do as well as you can individually against
Speaker 2: the course, as opposed to beating your opponent. The more
Speaker 2: you have that idea of golf, the less likely you
Speaker 2: are probably to embrace something like the Steymy, where somebody
Speaker 2: else is impacting your game.
Speaker 4: I think that's completely fair to say, Garrett, in one
Speaker 4: percent true. You know, the English invented a competition called
Speaker 4: the bogie competition. This is another thing that drove the
Speaker 4: Scott's completely mad and for many years, De Royal and
Speaker 4: Ancient absolutely refused to write any rules that applied to
Speaker 4: bogie competitions because, as far as they were concerned, that
Speaker 4: was not golf. In any case, the bogie competition was
Speaker 4: one in which a ground score was set for the
Speaker 4: golf course, which was essentially the score that the best
Speaker 4: club player could probably make on any given hole. And
Speaker 4: instead of playing a match against a component, you played
Speaker 4: a match against Colonel Bogie. In other words, did you
Speaker 4: beat the bogie score that hole? If you did, you
Speaker 4: won the hole. If you didn't, you lost the hole.
Speaker 4: And when you were playing that kind of match against
Speaker 4: Colonel Bogie, that only increases this idea that I need
Speaker 4: to make great scores. And so was those kinds of
Speaker 4: evolutions that helped stroke play become the dominant form of golf.
Speaker 4: You know, the very first thing that helped stroke play
Speaker 4: become a dominant form of golf was Tommy Morris Junior
Speaker 4: started making some absurd scores that made people realize, my goodness,
Speaker 4: you can put up a great score if you're really
Speaker 4: trying and if you have the capability, and that did
Speaker 4: start to get people interested in stroke play, and then
Speaker 4: it kept going from there.
Speaker 2: So was Colonel Bogie, the first emergence of par as
Speaker 2: a dominant force in golf.
Speaker 4: It's they're linked together, but not completely. You know, the
Speaker 4: Bogie score was usually not as good as what you
Speaker 4: would consider a par score, because a professional would be
Speaker 4: better than your best club pro.
Speaker 2: So we've outlined some of the arguments against the stymy
Speaker 2: and where they might have come from. What about the
Speaker 2: arguments in response to those in favor of the stymy?
Speaker 2: What did people say?
Speaker 4: The people who loved the stymy, and those included Bobby
Speaker 4: Jones and many of the high level amateurs who played
Speaker 4: golf in Britain, probably as well professionals, but mostly the amateurs,
Speaker 4: since they were the ones who primarily played match play
Speaker 4: at that time, favored the stymy because they felt it
Speaker 4: was one of the most skillful shots in the game.
Speaker 4: To be able to negotiate to steymy took great skill
Speaker 4: and anybody who has ever watched Bobby Jones loft over
Speaker 4: a stymy on his videos can see that it's rather
Speaker 4: an artful shot. Willie Park Junior was a master at
Speaker 4: putting around stymy's, and he in his book The Art
Speaker 4: of Putting, he explains the art of slicing or drawing
Speaker 4: putts to avoid stymy's, So it was considered a highly
Speaker 4: skilled part of the game. And the early players in
Speaker 4: golf truly valued the skill that risks required to get
Speaker 4: the gutty ball airborne, to make it fly straight, to
Speaker 4: execute these kinds of shots, and they felt and still
Speaker 4: you know that the introduction of rubber balls and these
Speaker 4: other kinds of changes were taking the skill out of
Speaker 4: the game.
Speaker 2: So that's one our given in favor of the stimy.
Speaker 2: Surely another argument would be the traditional one of play
Speaker 2: the ball as it lies. Rub of the green is
Speaker 2: part of golf. And it seems to me that these
Speaker 2: two arguments are somewhat at odds with each other, right,
Speaker 2: because on the one hand, you're saying the steymy is unfair,
Speaker 2: and you need to accept that as part of golf,
Speaker 2: as part of rub of the green, the stymy being,
Speaker 2: you know, one of the ultimate rubs of the green,
Speaker 2: and that's a that's a perfectly persuasive argument in its
Speaker 2: own right. But then you have another argument that you know,
Speaker 2: skilled players can negotiate a stymy, which is essentially saying, actually,
Speaker 2: the stemy is fair, right, And so were these two
Speaker 2: arguments somewhat somewhat at odds, you know, I.
Speaker 1: Think you could see it that way. I guess.
Speaker 4: I feel as if it's more the question of touching
Speaker 4: your ball that makes people rebel against the notion of
Speaker 4: eliminating the stymy. Is many people, and like let's take
Speaker 4: for example, the amateur Robert Harris, who is a amateur
Speaker 4: champion in nineteen twenty five, and you know, just a
Speaker 4: leading figure of his age during that pre war period
Speaker 4: and after the war, and when he wrote a memoir
Speaker 4: called Sixty Years of Golf, and it came out not
Speaker 4: very long after the stymy was eliminated from the rule book,
Speaker 4: and he has a chapter in there about rules changes,
Speaker 4: most of which is devoted to an apoplectic reaction to
Speaker 4: the emanation of the stymy, and he says things in
Speaker 4: the essay like it will result in unnatural and distasteful
Speaker 4: man handling of the ball. Crude, grotesque and ungolf like
Speaker 4: situations are possible. So people had a very passionate devotion
Speaker 4: to this notion that you can't touch your ball ever,
Speaker 4: and that I think was one of the principal reasons
Speaker 4: that people opposed eliminating the stymy.
Speaker 2: Well, so I love the language of man handling.
Speaker 4: The bl a natural and distasteful man handling.
Speaker 2: Of the ball. Another outspoken proponent of the stymy was
Speaker 2: the great Bobby Jones, as Stephen mentioned earlier, and one
Speaker 2: of my favorite stemy stories can be found in Jones's
Speaker 2: book Golf Is My Game, which he published in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 2: The story goes like this. Jack McLain and Johnny Fisher
Speaker 2: are facing off in the finals of the nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: six US Amateur. They're on the thirty fourth hole of
Speaker 2: a thirty six hole match, and McLain is one up.
Speaker 2: McLain plays the hole very well from tita green and
Speaker 2: leaves his second shot within ten feet. Fisher, on the
Speaker 2: other hand, hits his drive in the rough, comes up
Speaker 2: short on his approach, and plays a mediocre chip barely
Speaker 2: closer to the hole than McLean's ball. So mclan is
Speaker 2: lying two and Fischer is lying three. If McLain wins
Speaker 2: the hole, he's two up with two to play and
Speaker 2: has great odds of winning the match and the title.
Speaker 2: Here's what Bobby Jones says in his book about the
Speaker 2: situation quote, Obviously, it was time for a conservative play
Speaker 2: by mclin. The wise play here was to sneak his
Speaker 2: ball down as close as possible to the hole, leaving
Speaker 2: Fisher the job of holing his putt to avoid being
Speaker 2: two down with two to play. A good putt here
Speaker 2: would make a punishing stymy impossible unquote, but that is
Speaker 2: not what McLain does. He plays aggressively and his putt
Speaker 2: overruns the hole by more than three feet. This, in
Speaker 2: turn gives Fisher room to lay a stymy by nudging
Speaker 2: his ball between McLean's and the hole. So suddenly McLain's
Speaker 2: advantage is gone. Whereas Fisher has a short putt for
Speaker 2: a bogie five, McLain needs to negotiate a stymy with
Speaker 2: his fourth shot. Once again, McClain plays boldly, trying to
Speaker 2: chip over Fisher's ball and hole out, and once again
Speaker 2: he goes a few feet past. McLain does make this putt,
Speaker 2: but he has to just to have the hole. So
Speaker 2: McLean remained one up, but Fisher took the thirty sixth
Speaker 2: hole and then won the playoff, and so history remembers
Speaker 2: Johnny Fisher as the nineteen thirty six US Amateur Champion.
Speaker 2: Here's Bobby Jones again. Quote the stymy had been the
Speaker 2: decisive factor, but the blame lay squarely upon McLean. Whether
Speaker 2: it was the fault of his judgment or his putting touch,
Speaker 2: he had invited his own destruction. Without the possibility of
Speaker 2: the stymy, the situation on that thirty fourth green would
Speaker 2: have been completely routine. With the stymy always in the picture,
Speaker 2: suspense and excitement were present from the moment the players
Speaker 2: walked onto the green. With the stymy in the game,
Speaker 2: match play golf becomes an exciting duel in which players
Speaker 2: must always be on guard against a sudden, often demoralizing thrust.
Speaker 2: In my observation, the stymy has more often been the
Speaker 2: means of enforcing a decision in favor of the deserving player,
Speaker 2: rather than the contrary. I think it merits respected place
Speaker 2: in the game. I know a return to it would
Speaker 2: greatly enhance the interest and excitement of match play golf
Speaker 2: for player and spectator alike. What strikes me about this
Speaker 2: story is that it wasn't just a physical skill. It
Speaker 2: wasn't just a skill with having the shot or whatever.
Speaker 2: There was also a strategic aspect right Like anything in golf,
Speaker 2: there's a risk reward question here, How aggressively. Should you
Speaker 2: try to negotiate the stimy. Do you play really close
Speaker 2: to the ball, do you pitch it over, do you
Speaker 2: try to go for the hole? Do you try to
Speaker 2: just sort of lag it up there on a safe angle,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. So I wonder if this was
Speaker 2: a common part of this discussion, that it wasn't just
Speaker 2: like a trick shot skill that you had to have,
Speaker 2: though players were proud of that, it was also a
Speaker 2: strategic aspect of match play on the green.
Speaker 4: There is no question that that was something that was
Speaker 4: very highly valued by people who supported the stymy. There
Speaker 4: is a strategic aspect to how to deal with the
Speaker 4: stymy and when to take the risk of lofting it,
Speaker 4: when to take the risk of going for the hole.
Speaker 4: In that particular case, you know what McLain should have
Speaker 4: done is just lagged up and made sure he got
Speaker 4: a four. And you know, McLain clearly did make a
Speaker 4: misjudgment there in terms of how aggressively he attempted to
Speaker 4: negotiate that stymy.
Speaker 2: So tell me about some of the specific shots that
Speaker 2: players used to get around Steymy's.
Speaker 4: I would say most of the time, the preferred method
Speaker 4: was to put around it. You know, most of the
Speaker 4: time you weren't dead stymy, you were partially stymied, so
Speaker 4: you could put it. You could either depend on the
Speaker 4: borrow of the green as they would call it, to
Speaker 4: carry the ball down to the hole and just assume
Speaker 4: that you could then put a little bit farther right
Speaker 4: at the right pace, and then it would dribble into
Speaker 4: the side of the cup. That was probably the most
Speaker 4: That was the safest method of getting around the stymy
Speaker 4: for the simple reason that if you didn't hold the putt,
Speaker 4: your next one was going to be very holable because
Speaker 4: you were just barely up to the lip probably, and
Speaker 4: you also probably could not be stymy a second time.
Speaker 4: But in certain situations, in particular, if you were in
Speaker 4: a situation where there was a ball a foot in
Speaker 4: front of you and there was another ten or twelve
Speaker 4: feet between your ball and the hole, if you could
Speaker 4: just pitch the ball in the air and let it
Speaker 4: start rolling again, it could roll into the hole exactly
Speaker 4: the same way it does when someone chips in from
Speaker 4: off the green, no different than that shot, just executing
Speaker 4: it in a different moment and in a different way.
Speaker 4: So those were the two primary methods. I think people
Speaker 4: only attempted to loft stemies if there was no other option.
Speaker 4: If it was absolutely dead in front of them and
Speaker 4: there was no brake or anything they could ride a
Speaker 4: little bit of or even a little slice on the
Speaker 4: ball wouldn't carry it down to the hole. Then they
Speaker 4: had to try to pitch the stymy. But that was
Speaker 4: a very very artful shot, and the ability to execute
Speaker 4: it was highly prized. And obviously a player who had
Speaker 4: that shot in his bag is a dangerous match play
Speaker 4: golfer because even if you stymy them, they might still
Speaker 4: be able to win the hole, just as if they
Speaker 4: were putting.
Speaker 2: How exactly would you go about lofting a stymy, What
Speaker 2: club would you use? What kind of technique would you use?
Speaker 4: You would use a highly lofted club, like a modern
Speaker 4: sand wedge, sixty degree wedge, something like that. In those
Speaker 4: days they had niblicks. A typical niblick was probably around
Speaker 4: fifty six degrees of wedge, so common, you know, equivalent
Speaker 4: to a modern sand wedge. No bounce on it, though,
Speaker 4: something that makes it difficult to use, and you would
Speaker 4: just flatten it out and just pop the ball up
Speaker 4: in the air. Enough that it carries the ball in
Speaker 4: front of it and then lands on the green and
Speaker 4: hopefully at a slow pace, trickles down.
Speaker 1: Into the cup.
Speaker 4: And you can see videos of Bobby Jones doing that
Speaker 4: and it's amazing thing to watch. There's a nice image
Speaker 4: too of John Henry Taylor doing it, I believe, in
Speaker 4: the Lonsdale Library book Golf. But it's a very crafty,
Speaker 4: artful shot.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's like a little risk shot. It's like
Speaker 2: you don't see it anywhere else because you don't use
Speaker 2: that club unless you're usually farther away from the hole,
Speaker 2: and so there's this little.
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, it's a little tiny flick of the risk
Speaker 4: that gets it over the other ball. I mean, the
Speaker 4: big danger there is if you happen to scull the ball,
Speaker 4: the most likely outcome is you knock your opponent's ball
Speaker 4: in the hole and then lose the hole by virtue
Speaker 4: of having done so most of the time.
Speaker 2: Right, So we've already sort of talked about this, but
Speaker 2: could you give me a general narrative of why you
Speaker 2: believe the tide of opinion shifted decisively against the stimy
Speaker 2: in the first half of the twentieth century.
Speaker 4: I think when the game first spread into England, the
Speaker 4: notion of the game becoming more fair crept into it,
Speaker 4: and that thing was like a cancer that has continued
Speaker 4: to grow from that day until this day. And it
Speaker 4: all only became metastasized when Americans started taking up the
Speaker 4: game in earnest because Americans were absolutely obsessed with low
Speaker 4: scores as the British many British players were before them,
Speaker 4: and as you pointed out earlier, Garrett, an obsession with
Speaker 4: low scores turns you against anything that produces a higher score,
Speaker 4: one of the most obvious being this silly rule that
Speaker 4: you couldn't pick up a ball that was obstructing your
Speaker 4: way to the whole when you wanted to putt, and
Speaker 4: that is basically the root of it. And more and
Speaker 4: more as Americans began to play, they just rebelled against
Speaker 4: that rule. And of course they had their own governing body,
Speaker 4: which is a unique situation to the rest of the world.
Speaker 4: And eventually their governing body yielded to the many voices
Speaker 4: that didn't want the stymy, softened it, and finally eliminated
Speaker 4: it altogether. And then the royal and ancient went along.
Speaker 4: I don't know how reluctantly.
Speaker 2: One of the interesting wrinkles here, and it's it might
Speaker 2: seem obvious, but it struck me as interesting that the
Speaker 2: most passionate voices against the Steymy within American golf tended
Speaker 2: to be farther away from England, right. You know, the
Speaker 2: more west you got, the more likely people were to
Speaker 2: oppose the Stymy. Right, it was the Western Golf Association.
Speaker 4: I think it still limited it out right at one point. No,
Speaker 4: and I don't think that's untrue, Garrett. You know, obviously,
Speaker 4: when the game came to America, came to New York, initially, well,
Speaker 4: I mean obviously there were very ancient clubs in South
Speaker 4: Carolina and things, but the only club that stuck was
Speaker 4: the Saint Andrew's Golf Club of New York, which was
Speaker 4: founded in eighteen eighty eight and still exists today. So
Speaker 4: the game had its epicenter in New York. And the
Speaker 4: reason that we stuck with the RNA was that Charles
Speaker 4: Blair MacDonald, who was so influential in early American golf
Speaker 4: and built the National Golf Links there on Long Island,
Speaker 4: was passionately devoted to keeping in check, in step lockstep
Speaker 4: with the Royal and Ancient, and you know that mostly
Speaker 4: has happened over time. But Americans are very independent and
Speaker 4: eventually they assert themselves on things they think are necessary.
Speaker 1: And there have been.
Speaker 4: Many examples of that, the Steymy being one, the steel
Speaker 4: shafts being another. It was a long time before the
Speaker 4: RNA agreed to allow steel shafts after the USGA had
Speaker 4: done it. And there have been various different points like
Speaker 4: that over time where the American sensibility about the game
Speaker 4: has overridden the Royal and Ancient sensibility of the game,
Speaker 4: but few fortunately.
Speaker 2: Right, maybe you could give me just a basic narrative
Speaker 2: of exactly how the stemy was ultimately eliminated. So going
Speaker 2: forward through through the you know their alterations to the
Speaker 2: rule in the twenties and thirties by the USGA, how
Speaker 2: was it that eventually the international governing bodies agreed to
Speaker 2: eliminate the rule.
Speaker 4: In nineteen fifty two, the Royal and Ancient and the
Speaker 4: USGA agreed to put out a joint set of rules
Speaker 4: to clarify any ambiguities and to have one that was
Speaker 4: for the first time in history, and this was a
Speaker 4: very important development for the history of the game. A
Speaker 4: set of rules jointly agreed upon by the two main
Speaker 4: governing bodies, and as part of that process, the USGA
Speaker 4: had already eliminated the Stymy in nineteen fifty one, and
Speaker 4: so as part of the negotiation is to come up
Speaker 4: with the joint set of rules. It was agreed that
Speaker 4: the Stymy rule would be eliminated from both codes of rules,
Speaker 4: and that's ultimately how it happened. But it was the
Speaker 4: USGA that ultimately undid the Stymy, partly by virtue of
Speaker 4: movements from other associations like the Western Golf Association, and
Speaker 4: partly from unrest within their own organization about the Stymy
Speaker 4: and the way it produced unfair winners or whatever you
Speaker 4: would like to call them. So it was the United
Speaker 4: States that finally put the nail in the coffin of
Speaker 4: the Stymy.
Speaker 2: Do you have a sense of why the RNA was
Speaker 2: ultimately amenable to getting rid of the stymy? I mean,
Speaker 2: was there some resistance or I.
Speaker 4: Sense that there was just a lot of hue and
Speaker 4: cry against the Stymy in Britain. You know, Scotland has
Speaker 4: a very different vision of the game than even its neighbors.
Speaker 4: Many of the English felt the way that the United
Speaker 4: States did, perhaps not as passionately, and they are not,
Speaker 4: you know, work of nature to rebel in the way
Speaker 4: that the Western Golfer Association did and eventually the USJA did.
Speaker 4: But there was a lot of unrest about the stymy,
Speaker 4: not just in the United States but in Britain as well,
Speaker 4: and I think they just felt like the hue and
Speaker 4: cry had become too loud and it was best to
Speaker 4: move along.
Speaker 2: Do you think there's some significance to the fact that
Speaker 2: all of this happened, that the Joint Rules came out,
Speaker 2: that there was a there was a move to put
Speaker 2: out an international set of rules, and that there was
Speaker 2: also this move to get rid of the stymy in
Speaker 2: the post World War two era? Is there something about
Speaker 2: that era that you know, supplied the conditions that were
Speaker 2: necessary for this change to happen.
Speaker 4: Yes, there was one thing about that era, which is
Speaker 4: America had become the dominant golf country by far, you know,
Speaker 4: really starting after the.
Speaker 1: First World War. The First World War.
Speaker 4: Is devastating on England and it never really recovers, you know,
Speaker 4: everything is very different even after that. But the Second
Speaker 4: World War more so, I mean, obviously Britain was bombed incessantly.
Speaker 4: They were, you know, a great deal of privation in
Speaker 4: terms of supply of materials, including golf balls, and you know,
Speaker 4: the us just assumed such a hugely dominant position in
Speaker 4: golf that it became difficult in some ways to resist
Speaker 4: the tide of what America wanted. You know, obviously, America
Speaker 4: is a much much larger country with many, many more people.
Speaker 4: So eventually America had many, many more golfers, and they
Speaker 4: just you know, America became the dominant force in golf.
Speaker 4: And you know, I think the RNA, probably wisely on
Speaker 4: their part, felt that they needed to at least be
Speaker 4: working together or maybe they would be subsumed. I don't
Speaker 4: know if the RNA ever actually felt that. And I
Speaker 4: am not in any way an expert on the evolution
Speaker 4: of the rules of golf. I'm knowledgeable, but not expert,
Speaker 4: and there's a very big difference between those things. But
Speaker 4: I do feel that probably just you know, it would
Speaker 4: only make sense. You know, there had been by that time,
Speaker 4: the whole steel shafted thing had happened, and there had
Speaker 4: been more and more cases of conflict coming between the
Speaker 4: USGA and the RNA, And I don't think either side
Speaker 4: really wanted that, and that was probably a big motivating factor.
Speaker 4: And then you know, in any negotiation there's going to
Speaker 4: be give and take, and I guess the British didn't
Speaker 4: feel like the stymy was a hill they were going
Speaker 4: to die on.
Speaker 2: Overall, what do you think was lost when the Steymy
Speaker 2: was lost?
Speaker 4: I feel like the Steymy was fabulous for match play
Speaker 4: and created a great deal of excitement in matches. You know,
Speaker 4: when Freddy Tait is lying there four feet from the
Speaker 4: hole and Rolling is forty feet away, you figure the
Speaker 4: matches on the verge of being over and the only
Speaker 4: thing that's able to change that is a stymy. So
Speaker 4: it inject's what I would refer to as a delicious
Speaker 4: element of uncertainty into a game, and that's a good
Speaker 4: thing for an exciting thing like the thrust and perry
Speaker 4: of a match. So I feel like a lot of
Speaker 4: the tactical excitement of match play evaporated along with the
Speaker 4: loss of the stymy, So that would be I think
Speaker 4: is the major thing that it brought to the game
Speaker 4: is a level of excitement that is lost, and I
Speaker 4: personally would love to see the stymy used in the
Speaker 4: Ryder Cup. Can you imagine, for instance, if Ian Poulter
Speaker 4: is able to stymy someone on the American side and
Speaker 4: the excitement that would create and the Twitter would just
Speaker 4: lose its mind.
Speaker 2: And that's actually something that we didn't talk about when
Speaker 2: we talked about the pro stemy arguments that what you've
Speaker 2: just named there the element of tension and excitement that
Speaker 2: the stemy brought to match play. That seems to have
Speaker 2: been one of the main points in its favor in
Speaker 2: the minds of people who defended it absolutely.
Speaker 4: You know, the thing about it was is that a
Speaker 4: hole was never quite won. You would think Freddie Tate
Speaker 4: has that hole, you know, but he doesn't. And the
Speaker 4: same with McLain. You would think McLain has that hole
Speaker 4: because the guy's not even on the green and you
Speaker 4: know he's gonna have to get up and down and
Speaker 4: you have a chance to make an eight or ten
Speaker 4: footer and win. So it made people. It preserved a
Speaker 4: rallying point for the desperate golfer and that's a fun
Speaker 4: thing and a match part of what makes match play
Speaker 4: so fun to watch is the idea that anything can
Speaker 4: happen at any minute. Some shot could go crazily awry.
Speaker 4: That changes everything, and that's what the style he brought
Speaker 4: to it that we've now now loss, and I feel
Speaker 4: it's a sad loss.
Speaker 2: Another general question here, you know, at the risk of
Speaker 2: making a mountain out of a molehill, maybe this isn't
Speaker 2: a mall hill, though, I mean, the stymy certainly seems
Speaker 2: important to me. But do you think the elimination of
Speaker 2: the stymy in nineteen fifty two pretended anything about the
Speaker 2: direction that golf and golf culture were about to take
Speaker 2: in the second half of the twentieth century.
Speaker 4: I certainly do, Garrett. And as I said before, I
Speaker 4: feel like the stymy is the true manifestation of the
Speaker 4: notion that somehow golf needs to be made more fair,
Speaker 4: and that is something that has been an idea that
Speaker 4: has really caught hold. You hear players every day, PGA
Speaker 4: tour players saying I like this course because it's fair,
Speaker 4: and they don't like courses that are quote unfair, which
Speaker 4: mean that you could get odd, bad bounces, the sorts
Speaker 4: of things that those of us who watch the game,
Speaker 4: or at least a certain segment of those of us
Speaker 4: who watch the game.
Speaker 1: Love to see.
Speaker 4: Is the uncertainty of the bad bounce, And I do
Speaker 4: feel like the stymy is the leading edge of the
Speaker 4: fairness police and the first introduction of the fairness police
Speaker 4: to the game, and therefore, to my mind, the elimination
Speaker 4: of the stymy is the beginning of a destructive process
Speaker 4: in which people consistently try to make more fair golf
Speaker 4: courses that are therefore less interesting to watch golf on
Speaker 4: and to play, and the whole notion that golf should
Speaker 4: be more predictable. It is the very unpredictability of golf
Speaker 4: that makes it addictive and makes it fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to get into what we're really talking
Speaker 2: about here, and one of the things is fun, right,
Speaker 2: You know that when the game is more unpredictable and
Speaker 2: more dynamic in the ways that you know a game
Speaker 2: can be, when you have you know, crazy undulating courses
Speaker 2: and bunkers in the middle of fairways and stymys, you know,
Speaker 2: those things are fun. They introduced some tension and excitement
Speaker 2: to the game, and that's certainly one of the intentions
Speaker 2: of designing the game in all these senses, designing the
Speaker 2: rules of the game, designing the courses to make it
Speaker 2: as fun as possible, and we've lost a little bit
Speaker 2: of that because of our devotion to fairness. But I
Speaker 2: also think, you know, at the risk of getting too
Speaker 2: moralistic about it, that some of that original idea that
Speaker 2: golf is a test of character gets lost a little
Speaker 2: bit when you eliminate the stymy, because one of the
Speaker 2: things that revealed somebody's character, revealed a golfer's character was
Speaker 2: being able to deal with things like the stymy, being
Speaker 2: cool in the face of it, being stoic in the
Speaker 2: face of it. And do you think that has also
Speaker 2: that that nature of golf as a as a test
Speaker 2: of character has been attenuated somewhat by the law of
Speaker 2: things like the stymy.
Speaker 4: Yes, I would say it has. You know, I think
Speaker 4: you are right that a golf reveals people's character in
Speaker 4: a way that other games often do not. And I
Speaker 4: think the person who is willing to accept every rub
Speaker 4: of the green shows a certain character that's valuable. And
Speaker 4: I think that's truly exemplified most by the life of
Speaker 4: Bobby Jones. You know, Bobby probably got dealt the worst
Speaker 4: rub of the green of any person that I know,
Speaker 4: being the great athlete of his age, and then getting
Speaker 4: a crippling disease and living with that all the remainder
Speaker 4: of his days, not even being able to get out
Speaker 4: of a wheelchair and all that, And yet he bore
Speaker 4: all that with the same exact cheerful stoicism that he
Speaker 4: did when he loft at a stymy and knocked it
Speaker 4: into the cup. And I do think that this softening
Speaker 4: of the game is something that requires a less stout
Speaker 4: character than it once did.
Speaker 2: This episode of the Frida Egg podcast was produced and
Speaker 2: edited by me Garrett Morrison, with transcript assistants from meg Atkins.
Speaker 2: Let us know if you like this type of episode.
Speaker 2: It's somewhere between a documentary narrative and a traditional interview.
Speaker 2: I enjoyed making it, but it's not about me. It's
Speaker 2: about you, the audience, and a great way to give
Speaker 2: feedback is by leaving a rating and review in iTunes.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, and we'll see you here next week
Speaker 2: as we start to build up to the Masters.