Golf ball in the mud
Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. - Certain words and phrases are all but forbidden when one is around tour golfers. "Shank" is one such word. "Three-putt" isn't pleasant to hear. "Out of bounds" is out of bounds in conversation. Then there's "mud ball," an ugly bit of description that was all over the PGA National's Champion course during the morning half of the draw during the Honda Classic's second round Friday.
Ernie Els, for one, was not exactly the Big Easy while playing the 18th, his ninth hole of the day and the same one that world number one Rory McIlroy did not complete. McIlroy walked off and withdrew from the tournament, later explaining that his wisdom teeth were killing him and ruining his concentration. He was seven-over-par for the day and the tournament. His withdrawal was the really big news around the course, but the matter of mud balls was soon doing a good job of muddying the conversation.
This brings us back to Els, who said after shooting 70 for a 36-hole total of one-under par 139 that he and McIlroy didn't talk on that 18th hole because he was "going nuts" on a rules official. Els, that is, was going nuts. And why? "Because we had mud on the ball, I mean, crazy stuff."
The course was soft. The course was soggy. The track was muddy. I think that conditions at racetracks are referred to as "yielding" at such times. PGA Tour officials had deemed the course so squishy during the first round Thursday that they invoked the "lift, clean, and place" local rule as a condition of play. It's also known as "lift, clean, and cheat," given that golf's fundamental rule is to play the ball as it lies. But never mind.
Officials decided the golfers should play the ball "down" in the second round. No more lifting, cleaning, and placing, that is. The responsibility would be placed on the player to lift himself up and take a mud ball on the chin rather than rolling it around on a towel for cleaning. It would be a matter of chance whether a player's ball picked up mud or shooed the offending material away as it landed and scampered down the fairway. Well, there wasn't much scampering, because the ground had the consistency of quicksand in places.
Els had a mud ball on the 16th, and another on the 18th hole. He was not happy. He wanted ball-in-hand during the round, as in the first round.
"Yeah, that's one of my little things on tour here," Els said. "I just cannot see the point where you hit a perfect tee shot and you get penalized with mud on your ball. Then it's a guessing game."
Els let the official have it. He said his voice "got to a point," and he was at least laughing by now, where he knew he'd be fined and that he would need to donate some money to charity, "or something."
Els wasn't the only one who got mud balls, of course. Graeme McDowell found the back nine softer than the front, and said some of his shots ended up picking up some mud. McDowell has shot 67-68 in the opening rounds. He invoked the golfer's creed.
"Some of [the fairways] are a little iffy, but it is what it is," he said.
That it was, or is. And what it was, was a muddy mess in places. Mike Weir's first drive was on the 10th hole, and he found the left side of the fairway. His ball had mud on top and on each side. He stood there with his caddy Danny Sahl and they talked about the mud. Weir knew the ball was going to fly wonky because of the mud. It came out low and to the right and Weir could only laugh. He started with a bogey. Ah, golf.
Lee Westwood also had a mud ball, on the 15th hole, his sixth of the day. He shot 68 and is at 135 heading into the weekend. Westwood was playing with Keegan Bradley, who caught a mud ball on the 10th hole, their first of the day. Bradley's ball went straight right, and if you don't believe mud balls should be part of the game, that was just wrong. (Bradley has shot 68-68).
Westwood also noticed McIlroy ahead of him "waving his arms in the air on 11, as well, like he got mud on his ball." Or maybe McIlroy was feeling the pain from his aching wisdom teeth, rather than from a mud ball.
"I did find it quite strange that preferred lies wasn't on," Westwood said, "just through the first two rounds to get everybody through it so there was some kind of continuity."
Then there's Geoff Ogilvy's view. He shot four-under-par 66 and is at six-under 134 through two rounds. He acknowledged that "it's always nice to have the ball in your hand," but added, "Golf is a game meant to be played down."
Playing it down in the second round meant playing mud balls. It meant shots shooting every which way. Nobody said golf was fair, right? Or wrong? It's all clear as mud.
RELATED LINK: More blogs from Lorne Rubenstein
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Lorne Rubenstein has written a golf column for The Globe and Mail since 1980. He has played golf since the early 1960s and was the Royal Canadian Golf Association's first curator of its museum and library at the Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ontario and the first editor of Score, Canada's Golf Magazine, where he continues to write a column and features. He has won four first-place awards from the Golf Writers Association of America, one National Magazine Award in Canada, and he won the award for the best feature in 2009 from the Golf Journalists Association of Canada. Lorne has written 12 books, including Mike Weir: The Road to the Masters (2003); A Disorderly Compendium of Golf, with Jeff Neuman (2006); This Round's on Me (2009); and the latest Moe & Me: Encounters with Moe Norman, Golf's Mysterious Genius (2012). He is a member of the Ontario Golf Hall of Fame and the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame. Lorne can be reached at rube@sympatico.ca . You can now follow him on Twitter @lornerubenstein