Ladies, while we swelter in the torpid doldrums of the interminable month of July, waiting in vain for the much-anticipated start of football season, we can take this opportunity to learn about another sport.
That’s right—I’m going to talk about golf.
Golf is pretty much a year round sport so that means I can push it on my friends whenever I want. The reason I am bringing it up now is in honor of the British Open recently held at St. Andrews in Scotland. What makes this British Open special is that golf was allegedly invented at St Andrews about a bajillion years ago. No really—golf has been around a couple centuries, giving it a permanence that our American football has yet to attain.
Personally, I love golf. I can have it on all day, biting my nails at every swing and clapping at each bee-yew-ti-ful shot. One of the main reasons I love golf (aside from the fact that it oozes relaxation through the beauty of its verdant courses, the muted golfer claps and the whispers of the British-accented commentators) is that it is so very logical. While I’m not much of a math person, I can appreciate all the numbers and equations that make this sport so magical while also so mystifying.
In the good old US, golf is primarily controlled by the Professional Golfer’s Association of America or the PGA, giving the tournaments and players a strict code of rules and schedules. During the golf year, there are four “Majors:” The Masters, the US Open, the British Open and the PGA Championship. These majors are special events in which, as a golfer, you must be invited and winning them produces oodles of clout for that lucky person. In fact, the majors have a category all their own. For instance, Tiger has over 70 wins in various tournaments in the US but on top of even that, he’s got a whopping 14 major titles. Just in case you’re not sure, that’s very impressive. Majors are perennially hard to win because you have the best golfers in the world, trying to play on the hardest courses in the world. Good luck with that.
A rather new development concocted between the PGA and FedEx has been the addition of the FedEx Cup to the PGA tour. Basically, and this is for all you NASCAR fans out there, golfers win points at each tournament for the FedEx Cup the way drivers do during the NASCAR season. Of course it depends on how well the golfer places in the tournament (obviously more points are awarded the winner and so on down) but by just keeping steady at a higher level of golf more points are awarded to that golfer. At the end of the FedEx season, usually in September, the FedEx Cup Tournament is held in my very own backyard, Eastlake Country Club. (I actually went to see it last year and had a blast. The Tour Championship only allows the top 30 point winners in the tournament so I was surrounded by Tiger, Phil Mickelson, Jim Furyk, Hunter Mahan, YE Yang, and others. It was awesome! I even got a great pic of Tiger while I was on my way to the bathroom and yes they sell beer there.) The reason that FedEx and the PGA decided to use this particular golf course to host this special event is due to the fact that the most famous golfer ever, Bobby Jones, grew up there.
(Bobby Jones is a genius. Not only did he go to GA Tech and become a lawyer and a doctor but he did all this while being a golfer. He never went pro but he’s the only guy to ever win all 4 majors in one year. Oh and he designed Augusta National, the course that hosts The Masters every year. Ha!)
So onto the scoring! I bet you were looking forward to this the whole time, right!?! Even I have to admit that scoring golf is not the easiest thing in the world because basically its premise is contrary to almost every single sport out there—the player with the lowest score wins. Now I’m going off the assumption that you, the readers, know very little to nothing about this game so I will start from scratch. The scoring is actually based on the layout of the golf course and the distance from the tee-off (a flat place where the golfer puts his ball on a little tee to start the hole) to the hole (surrounded by the putting green, this is where the ball must eventually fall to end play). Picture mini-golf. You start the ball off at one side and putt down the green to the hole at the end. You can’t move on until your ball falls in the hole. Now take your little mini-golf hole and multiply it by like 50.
The PGA tour uses an 18-hole course format, which means that on any day of the tournament each golfer must complete all 18 holes on the golf course. These holes (1-18) are ranked in order of how hard they are and this difficulty level is what gives golf its peculiar brand of scoring. You see, golf is measure in “swings.” Every single time the golfer hits a ball, even mistakes, are counted against him. That is why you’ll see a golfer staring at the ball and then off into the distance for the longest time—this swing has to count.
I mentioned before that each hole is ranked and the rankings look like this: Par 3, Par 4, Par 5. Each hole has one of these rankings slapped on it and this ranking gives the golfer an idea of what to expect up ahead. “Par” in the golf world simply means “even.” Therefore, a Par 3 Hole means that to remain “even,” the golfer can use 3 swings. If he uses 4 swings, he goes “over” and if he uses 2 swings, he’s “under.” A Par 4 means that the golfer is allowed 4 swings and a Par 5, 5 swings to remain at par or even. The individual holes get their ranking based on distance. If the hole is a short one and the green can be reached in one swing, then it’s probably a Par 3. A Par 3 is usually so short that a golfer can get to the green in one swing and then have 2 spare putts to get the ball in the hole. With a Par 4 or 5, the hole is a longer one, frequently causing the golfer to hit the ball off the tee onto the fairway before using another swing to get the ball to the green.
The fairway is the long stretch of really manicured grass stretching from the tee-off area to the putting green around the hole. The fairway is usually surrounded by rougher grass and by any other natural-growing stuff. The layout of the course is extremely vital in a golf tournament because it’s going to affect the golfer’s game. So the basic idea here is for the golfer to get the ball in the hole. Golf courses, on the other hand, do not want the golfers to get their balls in the hole so they will make it very, very difficult for them to do so. Thus, the golf course will literally be riddle with all sorts of very interesting obstacles, depending on the climate and the area of the country in which the course is located. For example, Pebble Beach Country Club, right on the water in northern California, uses a spectacular water hazard to make things difficult. Likewise, any British Open is frustrating because golfers almost have to change their swings so that the ball won’t be carried away by the wind. Hazards include sand bunkers, thick, rough grass, trees, bushes, water, rocks, etc. Just about any natural element can be added to a golf course to make it harder.
All golfers, at the beginning of a tournament, start out “even” or E. But what exactly is even in golf? Before any golfing actually starts, the scoring is set by making even a certain number. Let’s use St. Andrews as an example. Here is what a typical scorecard will look like:
BTW, I took this graphic from http://www.pga.com/openchampionship/2010/.
Ok let’s dissect this information. First of all, you can see that Hole 1 has 376 yards and is a Par 4, while all the other holes follow with their yardages and pars. Secondly, you’ll notice that St. Andrew’s Old Course has 2 Par 3s, 14 Par 4s, and 2 Par 5s. If you remember we were discussing even and what that is. Well here is the equation to get the even number: Par 3s + Par 4s + Par 5s=Even. So here we go with St Andrews. (3x2) + (14x4) + (5x2)=72. Yay! When you add up all the holes with their par number, you get even. “72” means that at the end of a round of golf, the golfer who scores a 72 is exactly even.
I know this is confusing. This scoring is not like any other sport in that when the game begins everyone is 0-0. Even can mean zero but it can also mean par, which can mean that someone who finishes their round at even is also equal to someone who hasn’t started playing yet. Sigh. This is harder than I thought.
Let’s say we’re at the Par 4 Hole 1. This Hole gives us 4 swings to break even so we will plan our strategy accordingly using the best golf club to suit our purposes (more on clubs later). Now say we get our ball in the hole in only 3 swings. Well that’s very good. We’ve scored a “birdie.” On the flip side, if we take 5 swings to finish the hole, then that’s not good—we just got a “bogie.” Usually the golf scoring lingo goes like this:
Double (or Triple or Quadruple) Bogie=2+ over par
Bogie=1 over par
Par=Even
Birdie=1 under par
Eagle=2 under par
The key words here are “over” and “under.” If you recall, golf is opposite in that the lower number wins. So it’s better if you score under, a lot under. The first day at St. Andrews, Rory McIlroy, a young golfer from Northern Ireland, scored a freaking 63!! Par was 72 at St. Andrews so over the course of 18 holes, McIlroy managed at least 9 birdies, landing him at 9 under par. That was a new course record.
You notice that the golfer scoreboard is different as well. They call this the “leaderboard” because it usually only contains the golfers doing the best at the tournament. The leaderboard always starts with the person in the lead and it will show their score. For example, Louis Oosthuizen, who won the British Open, had a score of -15. This means that he was 15 under par for the entire tournament. Most tournaments last 4 days and his total score was the product of four days on a 72-par golf course. The first 2 days of the tournament, usually Thursday and Friday, are qualifying rounds. If the golfers score under the “cut” score, then they head into the last 2 days of the tournament, Saturday and Sunday, to compete for the win.
Since the amount of swings the golfer takes determines his score, you better believe that he wants his swings to get the most bang for his buck. Therefore, he needs good golf clubs that will be able to send the ball sailing. However, as the golfer gets closer to the hole he also needs specialty clubs to get the ball close to its destination.
On the Par 4 Hole 1, the golfer would realize that he cannot get to the hole in one swing. So he needs a club that will get him as close as he can, which is why he would probably pick up a wood. “Woods” are clubs with those big old heads on them that send the balls sailing for what seems like miles. Do you remember the movie Happy Gilmore? He used a wood in those shots. Now all golf clubs are numbered and since golf is contrary, all the numbers go backwards. For instance, the 1 Wood, also known as the Driver, is going to send your ball the farthest. There’s also a 3 Wood and a smaller 5 Wood. After that, there are the “Irons.” The Irons are numbered the same way, from 1-9, but don’t have the distance that the woods usually carry. Golf bags are also usually equipped with a putter and some sort of chipper or sand wedge, which will help get your ball out of a bunker or some extremely rough grass. There are even new hybrid clubs being used nowadays that combine the distance of the woods but the control of the irons.
Well, I hoped this has helped someone somewhere. Just try watching a tournament sometime and I guarantee that you will understand it easier after reading this. The PGA Championship, the fourth “major,” is coming up at the end of August and it will be the perfect opportunity to show off your brand-new golfing knowledge…or it’s a great time to nap. Either way, let me know if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them.
