A Concession Or Two

There is much about the origins of our game that remains elusive, but we're able to nail down one minor quirk.  Writing for the USGA website, Michael Trostel and Victoria Student share "That's Good": A History of Conceding Putts.  Spoiler alert: the stymie figures prominently...

First the deep background:

The phrase itself, “concede putts,” was first mentioned in the Rules of Golf in 1909.

Interestingly, the USGA was strongly against it. The section Special Rules for Match Play Competitions reads, “The Rules of Golf Committee recommends that players should not concede putts to their opponents.” This was mentioned in each subsequent Rules book until 1933.

Color me surprised that it's that recent....and as noted above, the dreaded stymie (and I'd like my mates to consider allowing the stymie for amusement purposes sometime) plays the villain in our tale:

At one point, conceding a putt was used as a way to play around the “stymie rule,” which was in existence until 1952. On September 1, 1920, the USGA added a provision that allowed the stymied player to concede his opponent’s next putt, and it was incorporated into the 1921 Rules of Golf: “If the opponent lay the player a stymie, the player may remove the opponent’s ball; the opponent shall then be deemed to have holed in his next stroke.”

What's most amusing is that this issue quickly devolved into an Old World-New World spat.  First, representing GB&I, is the great golf writer Bernard Darwin:

“American golfers have been criticized for holing out in all matches, which is done for the practice thus gained, and to keep accurate scores for club handicaps. For doing this, American players have been accused of ‘being passionately fond of keeping scores’ and delaying the progress of the players behind by holing out. There is no golf player in the world today who is so good on the putting green that he can afford to lose a large percentage of putting practice that he is deprived of with an opponent who picks up his ball whenever he pleases, or knocks his opponent’s ball away from the hole and concedes the putt.”

British writer and GB&I Walker Cupper Bernard Darwin felt differently. Darwin contended that “the holing out of putts which cannot affect a match, but which are holed purely for private satisfaction, is ‘frankly a bore.’”

Those damn colonists....but wait, shouldn't we give them equal time?

Golf Illustrated writer George Trevor vehemently opposed Darwin’s views. He described the American practice of always holing out a result of values integral to American culture, writing: 

“This American insistence on keeping personal scores is basically sound as well as satisfying to the soul. It is the cornerstone upon which our national golf progress is founded, making, as it does, for the precision of play rather than sloppy, slipshod habits. The American feels that anything worth doing at all is worth doing well. Holing out putts breeds confidence and puts the stamp of finality on a man’s game. Not holing out cultivates a sloppy mental attitude.”

 Now I lied to you above, for what's in reality most amusing about this subject is of course the reaction of players.  As the authors relate:

“Refusal to concede a three-footer may be constructed as poor sportsmanship. It doesn’t seem right to burden a contestant with such a delicate decision. A sensitive golfer fears to be pilloried as a poor sport. He will lean over backwards in conceding missable putts rather than have his sportsmanship questioned. Conceding putts may relieve course congestion and speed up play, but it also takes the joy out of life for the typical American golfer.”

And then there's the reaction of the players whose putts aren't conceded....I recall a quite silly though mercifully brief conversation with a member of our club.  When I made the tactical error of asking how his match went, the first words out of his mouth were, "He gave me no putts."  Putts was exactly the perfect word for him, albeit with an alternative spelling...