Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for November 09, 2021

Old school. He used a rake not one of those gas powered blowers

If he was really clever, he would create a high bank of leaves on the opposite side of the hole.

Totally legal. You see pro golfers cleaning the path all the time.

the Groundskeeper: if it doesn’t cause any divots in the field, I’ve got no problems with it.

Current rules say any impediment to the path to the hole can be removed.

In the O̶͇̞̎̚l̵̤͈̑̇d̷̤́̿͟ẽ̵̛̞͜ days those were true except for spike marks!

Those O̶͇̞̎̚l̵̤͈̑̇d̷̤́̿͟ẽ̵̛̞͜ rules about spike marks were ridiculous!

Don’t laugh. I’ve played where we lost balls on the green

Have your players sweep the path like they do with Curling.

Oh come on, Brandon – get on with it!

Hey, if they actually encourage you to use a broom in curling….

Ah. Memories of the Snow Plow Game.

Could use the blower to move the ball through the leaves.

I was going to clear off leaves and stain our deck today but, at 5 am I awoke to realize that by the time I cleared it and applied stain, more leaves would be landing. Guess a deck covered with leaves stuck in wet stain might not be a good thing. Maybe after leaf fall, like in January?

Yeah, I know. I’m getting a lot slower at thinking things through these days.

If indeed a violation, his game score would be ka-putt.

And in the winter you switch to black golf balls, ‘cause they’re easier to find in the snow.

Just for your amusement, another set of very British rules updates:

https://i.etsystatic.com/5577241/r/il/5661c7/1953318528/il_794xN.1953318528_7p6q.jpg

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: “Golf it the pursuit of the unhittable by the unspeakable”.

As I recall, you can remove leaves and such that are in between the ball and the hole so, technically, it is allowed. :)

It should be OK as long as he doesn’t bank the ball against the leaves on the sides and behind the hole.

It’s a pretty shabby course, if there’s leaves on the green.

If you can move a twig you can move a leaf. Particularly if your ball is in front of mine.

on a related note it’s amazing how balls can find leaves to hide under completely

Rule #1 no “dust blowers”.

I tried diligently for twenty years to learn how to play golf. I took lessons. I went to the driving range. I practiced on the putting green. For twenty years, all I actually accomplished was losing golf balls, catching poison ivy, and killing the occasional snake. On one warm, lovely, sunny spring day I got so frustrated I threw my bag and clubs into the lake that had just swallowed my ball, and gave it up. I took up bowling. I’ve been a happy man ever since. And I’ll swear before the throne of the Almighty that, in a bowling alley, I have never lost a ball, never caught poison ivy, and never even encountered a snake.

Hey it worked for the Patriots in the snow bowl.

Still has to putt straight just because the leaves leave a path is no guarantee of skill.

The one time I played golf was 40 years ago in Grand Island,New York(A resort area between Buffalo and Niagara Falls).

I played an unspeakably high 9 holes on a public course,and found out that the clubhouse had been flooded with calls to “get that slowpoke off the course”.

I’ve stuck to miniature golf since.

Thats why they plant evergreen trees in gold courses

In one corner of my office, near the closet where my cosplay costumes hang, I have a lightsaber, a foam baseball bat, a yardstick, a Harpo Marx cane/horn, and a sink plunger. I’m thinking of getting a golf bag to hold them all.

So how did he create such a small neat path with that large rake?

I think that’s called “improving your lie”

I heard in Scotland sheep graze on the golf courses. What do you do if there are sheep droppings directly between the ball and the hole?

It looks like he should have gotten a two stroke penalty for too many clubs in his bag….

Given 45’s chronic cheating at golf, and for that matter, everything in his life. He’d declare a give me, and take a hole-in-one, giving him a double eagle on a par 3 hole.

In dirt-driveway marbles games, that was called a cow path, and it was illegal.

If you hit a ball and something interferes with it (such as it is right on the edge of the cup and either a bird knocks it in or it was about to go in and a bird knocks it away), you play it as it was, as long as you or another player didn’t touch it, right?

So if someone used a leaf blower to deflect it, they didn’t touch it, did they?

Actually the rules of golf were changed some years ago to allow players to use a towel to remove loose impediments such as leaves – pine needles – sand etc to clear a path from their MARKED ball to the hole.