I’ve never been a golfer.
Other than mini-golf, which I’m no damned good at.
I get the theory and all that. It’s just that I completely lack the powers of concentration, discipline, time commitment, and interest that would be required to get good at golf, or any other athletic endeavor. Into which category I believe golf falls, although I’m not entirely sure.
There’s just never been any sport that I liked enough to put in the time to get good at it.
Chalk it up to a pre-Title IX girlhood, I guess, but there was never a point in my life when, if presented with the option of, say, spending an hour trying to heave a basketball through a hoop and reading almost any book, I wouldn’t have opted for the written word. It wasn’t that I’m so lazy. If the book option had come with the stipulation that you had to be pedaling on a stationary bicycle while reading the book, I would still go with the book. Even if it were a Tom Clancy novel. (Well, maybe not a Tom Clancy novel.)
All that said, it’s entirely possible (with a possibility of 50%) that I have some inner athleticism buried deep within me, as my father was a superb natural athlete. He played football, baseball, and hockey growing up, and was a good enough baseball player for semi-pro and Navy League during The War.
He was also a golfer, a pretty good one. One of the great pleasures of my childhood was when he took us kids out to watch him hit a bucket of balls at a driving range. Not that we ever got to take a swing ourselves, mind you. Watching Daddy – and going for ice cream afterwards – was pleasure enough.
It is unlikely that, at this stage in the checkered game of life I am ever going to take up the checkered game of golf.
But if I were, I would surely be a candidate for the Polara, no-slice golf ball that I saw written up in The NY Times the other day.
The Polara has a direct, concise, clear and altogether excellent value proposition:
The world’s first self-correcting golf ball. 75% Straighter. Guaranteed.
To say that I have labored my entire career in hopes of working on a product in which feature and benefit could be expressed in such a straightforward fashion! Never say never, but….
And to work on products “limited only by the laws of physics”, as opposed to oh-so-many products limited only by the flaws of definition, design, execution, pricing, marketing, sales….
Polara, however, had one roadblock thrown in its path that I never had to deal with. And that’s the spoilsports (or non-spoilsports) at the US Golf Association (USGA) who took a mashie niblick to the Polara when it was first introduced in the 1970’s.
Because the Polara actually corrected hooks and slices it posted strong sales in its first year. However, after extensive testing, the USGA concluded that the Polara golf ball did correct hooks and slices and thus refused to approve the ball for tournament play, ruling that it would “reduce the skill required to play golf.” In 1978, the manufacturers sued the USGA on antitrust grounds. (Source here and below, the Polara site.)
As the litigation made its way down the front nine, the USGA changed the Rules of Golf to require:
…that a ball must essentially perform the same regardless of where on the ball’s surface it is struck or how it is placed on the tee.
Which meant that the Polara couldn’t be used in tournament play.
And just to make sure, in 1985, the USGA paid $1.4M to take the Polara off the market.
Fast forward a couple of decades and a new and improved version of the Polara is on the market. And while Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, Padraig Harrington, and Ernie Ehls can’t use it, “recreational golfers” can:
…take advantage of these technology improvements and enjoy the game more.
Purists, of course, are taking up metaphorical cudgels five irons to decry the Polara. (Just read the comments to the Times article.) The Polara, some say, is one more indication that we’ve gone namby-pamby. That the self-esteem generation is now hitting the links, and they want to be great golfers without having to put in the time and effort to even achieve duffer status, let alone good, let alone great. A trophy for showing up has evolved into an expectation that it’s not enough for everyone to just be above average. They have to be really, really good.
Without earning it, of course.
What next? A powerful magnet in the cup that will suck the ball in? Golf balls with homing devices and perfect cup find-ability? Titanium headed clubs. Wait. I think they already have that.
Now I can understand that the USGA wants to – and should – set regulations for tournaments sanctioned by their organization. I can understand that there might be rules under which courses outlaw golf balls that go too darned fast, and could take somebody’s eye out. (Actually, even with non-outlawed balls, this can happen. Many years ago, my avid golfer Uncle Ralph was struck by a golf-ball that ricocheted off of a rock. At first people said it was a miracle that the ball had hit the rock before landing in Ralph’s eye socket. If it had been a direct hit, it might have killed him, rather than just blind him in one eye. But soon it occurred to folks that if the g.d. ball hadn’t hit the rock, it would have missed my uncle entirely…)
So, I get the USGA rule here. In “my” sport, Major League Baseball doesn’t allow aluminum bats, even though you can hit the ball farther with them. And the day they do replace the Louisville Slugger with a metal bat that pings is the day that I burn my Red Sox Nation membership card.
I actually get the value of working long and hard to acquire certain skills, and that the mastery that comes after such long and hard work can yield enormous satisfaction.
But it seems to me that there are a few different categories of golfers, and that the Polara is fine for a couple of them.
For one, I’m assuming that it might provide some benefit to learners by letting them concentrate on other aspects of their game without having to worry about whether they were going to slice their shot into the next county.
More-better, there are the occasional golfers, the duffers, who get out a couple of times a year. They’re not serious golfers; they’re casual. Maybe even slobbing around in ratty tee-shirts and Bermuda shorts. Think Caddy Shack, not the gallery at The Masters. Maybe these duffers just want to have fun, without spending hours shagging after their balls, or taking 20 shots to get the ball on the green. Maybe they like golf well enough to want to go out with friends once in a while for a round, but don’t worship at golf’s altar.
It’s not even as if nothing has changed in golf technology since the first Scotsman bashed a rock around St. Andrew’s or wherever. Even golf shirt technology has changed over the years.
So let those who take their golf seriously abide by the USGA Symmetry Rule. And let duffers hack away with their Polaras when they get their annual round or two in.
Sure, there will be some fools who convince themselves that they’re primo golfers because of their equipment. Just as there will always be those who were born on third base and think they hit a triple. Let them have their self-delusions. The real people will know – and that includes both the serious golfers and the duffers.
And speaking of duffers, the Polara almost makes me want to take up duffering…
Fore!
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