Golf and Philosophy by Wible Andy

Author:Wible, Andy
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky

AD HOC CHANGES TO THE GAME

Another issue that can profitably be addressed within the goals and restrictions framework—one that has arisen several times in the Tiger Woods era— concerns ad hoc changes to features of golf courses. Striking changes to some tournament courses (such as grass length, tree placement, tee location, etc.) seemed to many commentators to be implemented with the aim of diminishing Woods's advantage and making the tournaments more “competitive.”

But the imposition of such ad hoc environmental restrictions undermines, rather than enhances, the true competitiveness of tournaments. One of the primary external goals of professional golfers is genuine, uninhibited competition in which they can fully test their skills and mettle against their peers’. Of course, they want to win, and to win prize money, but they want to achieve those goals in competition against opponents who have the opportunity to play their best. The ad hoc restrictions artificially make it more difficult for targeted players to achieve the internal goals than the other players, thus undermining the external goal of satisfying, authentic competition. It is important here to note the motivation for these changes in the restrictions—that is, holding back a particular player, or a small group of players: if it were, for example, to change the character of play for all (say, to a shorter game), they would not be ad hoc changes, and the issue would be quite different. Such changes are considered in the next section, which concerns newer technologies in golf equipment.

We should also note that there is substantial variety in golf courses, and therefore to some extent different skill sets are always going to be rewarded on different courses. What is problematic with the course changes in question is the fact that they are ad hoc—that they target only some players. Thus, the grounds for objecting to the changes can be seen as also rooted in fairness considerations. But the goals and restrictions framework brings into sharp relief the fact that there are independent grounds for objections rooted in the practical self-interest of the other competitors. Even the golfers who are not targeted, who we might think would have selfish reasons to tolerate restrictions on others, will have self-interested grounds to object, because their own external goals of genuine competition are undermined.

At first pass this may seem to be at odds with the previous point about the role of handicapping in ensuring competitiveness. But the apparent tension is just a reflection of the different situations of professional and amateur golfers. The amateur's external goals involving enjoyable competition require real possibilities of success and failure, and the differences in abilities among amateurs are so great that this goal sometimes cannot be achieved without handicapping. For touring professionals, among whom the differences are small enough that relative success and failure are real possibilities, satisfying the external competitive goals requires genuine, unfettered competition.

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