Stableford competition rules at Australian golf clubs and it's maybe fair enough; it takes less time and is lots more enjoyable than stroke-play, and nobody complains about it. But there's a format under our nose that one could describe as "match-play against an implacable, nerveless opponent" that should have more precedence, as Matt Cleary argues here.
Since Old Tom Morris subversively sold golf balls made with resin from the Malaysian Sapodilla (or “rubber”) tree instead of those hand-stuffed with feathers by his mentor, Allan Robertson, golf has been resistant to change.
Hickory to steel, long socks to short, generic lager from the same Carlton United Breweries vat to India pale ale with guava notes from a micro-brew owned by a Japanese corporation – someone, somewhere along the line, feared the possible consequences.
Someone, somewhere, like the computer, said "no".
And so it is today in Australia with club golfers’ force-fed a diet of stableford competitions. Week in, week out, outside the first Saturday of the month, stableford competition. And repeat.
Force-fed? Golfers are not force-fed. There is not a giant funnel inserted into golfers’ gullets as French farmers do with geese to fatten them up to make foie gras aka goose pâté.
No.
Rather, pro shops, boards and committees, club and social, supply what they see as demand.
And they can make a case, too, for such is the howling that there be no more par comps after par comps.
Yet it need not be. It just requires a shift in mindset. People need to think of par competitions as like playing match-play against the hole. Instead of a player, it’s a one-on-one match against a 350-metre strip of grass, sand and soil.
Yes, it was created by a human being. There can be no argument there. But the hole, though made of organic matter, is inanimate. It is implacable. it has no soul.
The hole cares not if you split its fairway or hoick it off the property. It won’t applaud when you stiff a six-iron nor empathise with a chunk.
It won’t concede a hole or deny what appears a tap-in gimme. For the hole does not play mind games because it does not have a mind. It is just a thing.
Par competition, then, is like playing match-play against this thing. As in match-play, there are three possible results: plus, minus, square. Or, to look at it another way: win, lose, draw. Each hole, a new mini-contest. Golfer against hole. You hit, you miss, you achieve parity.
And onwards your roll.
Clubs, including social clubs, play too much stableford competition. And too much stroke, too, if you listen to this dribbler from a couple weeks ago. And there is not enough match-play, either, particularly against other clubs in a setting outside Pennant play, a whole other column.
And there are not enough par competitions.
We played a par competition the other week, and it was typically good fun (and yes, I had +1, but this would still be this Monday's column's had I chopped it around in -8. Probably true).
It's just how you think about it.
Consider: hit a green in regulation with a shot, and true, you are not rewarded with four points if you make birdie. There are not two wins. It is not plus-plus.
True, you miss a green and don’t get up and down, and you have no shot, and, yes, you walk off with a miss, a wipe, a loss, and feeling of loss.
But it’s not that bad. For nor are you are not beaten to a pulp if you “wipe” the hole, much less record an octuplet bogey in a stroke competition, and thus ruin your very day, perhaps soul.
It’s just a minus, a miss, a loss. Negative one hole.
And onwards you roll.
And the positives are manifold.
Par is a faster game because there is more picking the ball up. It's also a faster game because there are less putts. Less putts means less three-putting. #Winning.
If you’re facing a curling downhill six-footer for the half, it takes so much extraneous thought from the assignment. It's a binary possibility: hit or miss. You aren’t nurdling it up there to ensure you walk away with at least a point. You’re going at that sucker. Take the break out of it, baby. Smoke it home! Cop that inanimate concotions of tight-cut grass and soil shaped by Dan Soutar and Frank Eyre in 1931. Cop that.
And that's all that can happen: you miss, you miss. You hit, you hit. Either way, you’ve had a crack. And if you’ve gone past the hole, at speed, at least you died on your feet and didn’t live on your knees, and other things William Wallace (Mel Gibson) said to rouse his ragged tribe of Highlanders against the mighty English war machine in Braveheart (1994).
And onwards you roll.
Alas, par comps are relegated, often, to less desirable calendar dates. They sanded the greens at our place the other day, held a non-Golflinked four-club competition, scored by par comp. One of my mates had +3 and didn’t win.
Week later, greens still a little furry, another par comp. I’m one hundred percent not knocking the captain or board, they’re just responding to the apparent demand for stableford, as evidenced by the as-if-by-clockwork griping post-par.
Anyway, when I am golf’s Ultimate Overlord, there shall be more par competitions to spice up the duck-fed diet of stableford. Let’s say your club has eight competitions a month, four on Saturday, four on Wednesday, delegate five stableford, two par, one stroke, job lot.
And prepare for complaints. And prepare to respond that, true story, all it requires is a change in thinking about the challenge of par. Extol the positives. Tell people that change need not be cause fear.
Tell people that if all those Russians in Rocky IV can change, you can learn to enjoy the par comps once or twice a month.
Old Tom would agree.
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