They wear starched white shirts and crisply knotted neckties, carry walkie-talkies and buzz their carts around tournaments with an air of authority. But golf’s version of umpires and referees is all but invisible.
PGA Tour officials do not wear striped shirts or blow whistles, throw flags, single out players who commit fouls, sweep dirt off home plate or go nose to nose with angry athletes or red-faced coaches.
They do much more. They rise well before the sun to double-check weather forecasts, set hole locations, outline water and other hazards with red paint, explain and enforce the rules of the game on a playing field spread out over hundreds of acres of hills and 18 holes measuring nearly five miles through forests and glens.
All the while tolerating occasional verbal abuse from disgruntled players with equanimity and, at times, dispensing advice and counsel to those same players.
“There is almost never a dull moment,” said Slugger White, the former touring pro and a veteran of 30 years as a tour official.
That might come as news to the game’s detractors. But to the eight regular PGA Tour officials charged with making it all work for the 156 players in the field at this week’s Wells Fargo Championship, the occasional hair-raising moment is expected at the Quail Hollow Club.
And if those moments are caused by birdie and eagle roars from thousands of spectators and not an occasional complaint from performers inside the ropes, that would suit the officials just fine.
Dillard Pruitt, a rules official who played the tour from the mid-to-late 1990s, said that a vast majority of tour pros understand what he and other officials are trying to do when they set up a course, and that he and his colleagues take outbursts in stride.
“We should always be able to take criticism, as long as it’s constructive,” said Pruitt, who set Thursday’s back-nine hole positions on Wednesday. “You can’t let it bother you. You’ve got to lace ’em up and go again.”
He acknowledged that a few players have asked, “What were you thinking?” about a particular hole position, but said the remarks were usually made “in the heat of the moment, usually after a player has had a difficult time.”
One rules official described an exchange several years ago between another official, since retired, who was asked by a player who had just been fined for uttering an obscenity, “Can I be fined for what I’m thinking?” The official said no. The player quickly replied, “Good, then I think you are a no-good” and he finished his sentence with an obscenity. He was fined again.
Officials say their main goal each week is to provide a level playing field for all the contestants by ensuring they play within the sport’s 34 Rules (and several thousand interpretations of those rules) while keeping the field playing at reasonably brisk pace. That is not easy to do.
“When we’re trying to get 156 players this week, which means there is going to be 26 groups on 18 holes,” White said. “You’re going to wait. Play is going to be slow. Those are the facts. People say we aren’t doing our job?”
Cracked Mickey Bradley, who was riding in White’s cart: “Twenty-six groups on 18 holes? That’s an eight-pound ham in a five-pound can.
“If you sat in cart with me, you’d see — all day long, we’re talking about where this group is, where that group is.”
That can make it a little difficult for the officials to realize their primary objective for each week, which White described as “72 holes by Sunday.”
Sometimes it happens, and sometimes it does not. Two years ago at the Viking Classic in Madison, Miss., where, after a year of preparation, with sponsorships sold and sky boxes erected, torrential rains fell on the Annandale Golf Club. The fairways turned into quagmires.
Posted by: LARRY DORMAN
Filed under: Golf Articles Tagged: | Golf Tournaments, PGA
