I’ve taken up golf fairly recently, and I enjoy playing it and trying to get better at it, I even enjoy watching it, and I particularly enjoy the fact size and strength are not the most important factors for success. However, there is one thing dragging this particular sport down, and that’s the fact it hides nonsensical rules within it. During The Open Championship last month there were two incidents worth recalling that I think can describe the stupidity of these rules to anyone, regardless of whether they know about or care about Golf as a sport.
Rule 1: If you position your club behind the ball as you prepare to take a shot, and the wind then blows the ball any amount of distance in any direction, you are deemed to have made it move and get a penalty, you must then also replace the ball and play it from the position it first moved on, but with 1 point less, or in more correct terminology having dropped or given away a stroke. This effectively states then that you are to lose a point for the actions of the weather, and any advantage you may have gained because of it will then be immediately taken away as you replace the ball.
The 2nd rule I’m going to question is a bit more of a grey area, so I apologise if this becomes a ramble. After you take a shot, the most basic interpretation of the rules is that you then must play the ball from where you hit it. There are some occasions where the ball falls into an unplayable position and you are allowed a free drop without a penalty and other situations where it is deemed to have been your fault and you drop a shot/ take a penalty when you replace the ball. My issue is with a tee-shot that went a long way left into the deep rough that cleared a rope that held back spectators and put the player in a tricky position at a tight angle and a long way from the hole. The rules however allowed him to take a free drop and continue from within the roped area, and back very close to the fairway and with a shorter and less complex 2nd shot. Frankly that’s just barmy.
The chaos and drama of transfer deadline day…
That one day in the window when anything can happen and any club can pull off a surprising last minute deal… Or more realistically the day that results in everyone making up friends at airports and acquaintances at training grounds along with barmy rumors in a bid to get mentioned by Sam Lyon on the BBC live text as he sits in an office, filling himself with sugar waiting for the obvious 0.1% of the days gossip to come true, and for the transfers we already knew about to be completed. I do enjoy deadline day, I’m just realistic with it. A lot of my enjoyment comes out of the strange rumors and sheer desperation of the general public, and some of it from that small part of me that does hope for a genuine surprise, The Henri Camara to West Ham of that particular window.
Today though I am left even more disappointed than I normally am after a deadline day, and I can’t work out why. Potentially though, it may have something to do with the fact at 5 to 11 last night the biggest bit of news that we were still waiting on was whether Nicklas Bendtner had found a club, and the fact this nicely sums up the quality of the day as a whole.
One a completely different note, I am left once again asking the question, why does everything annoy me? I can’t scroll through a morning of Facebook status’ on my homepage without being annoyed by everyone, definitely can’t read anything without wanting to kill the author and just about every conversation I have leaves me in an irritable mood. What is the answer to this? Do I need to be heavily medicated, or should I simply stop all contact with the human race? All I know for sure is I make Jack Dee look cheerful and the Mafia look friendly.
No comments:
Post a Comment