The Grumbler on Marking Your Ball

Sometimes we can get into some bad habits that can get us in trouble.  Carl the Grumbler has developed one that I finally felt compelled to mention the other day.

We were playing the tenth hole, which is about 414 yards, with a pond in front of the green that makes life difficult if you don't hit a good drive.  The best approach, unless you fade your drive, is to carry a stand of cedars that curve into the right half of the fairway.  The wind was in our face and Carl and I both caught one of the end cedar trees and had to lay up.  We both laid up to about ninety yards.  I went first, choosing a sand wedge which came up about thirty feet short of the back pin.  I had thought it wasn't the right club, but  went ahead and hit it anyway, even though that little voice had been telling me to skip a low pitching wedge back to the pin; it was another damned anyway shot.

Carl half chunked a nine iron, just clearing the pond and rolling to about five feet.  Carl has a way of doing that kind of thing.  I called him a phoney so and so, and Carl asserted that there was nothing phoney about it, he was playing that shot.  What really cheesed me off was that he really was, even if he had chunked it.  I was still mad at myself for playing an anyway shot.

I putted up just short of the hole and tapped in for bogey.  Carl made his par, adding a fist pump, and a big shit-eating grin, because he knew he'd got into my kitchen again. It was then that I elected to point out something he'd been doing that I knew could bite him in the ass in competition sometime.

Carl had somehow got into the habit of being careless about replacing his ball after he marked it on the greens.  He regularly replaces the ball about half to three quarters of an inch in front of the marker.  I told him that he could be called on this, because, after marking the ball, you must replace it exactly where it was before marking it.

Carl shrugged, saying he hadn't realized he'd been doing this.  I assured him that I didn't think he was intentionally trying to cheat.  I added that it was only a half an inch, so it wasn't that big a deal.

Carl said, "Maybe not in golf, but it could be if we were talking about sex."

That's men for you.