I lost four balls in nine holes today. Three of those disappeared in the middle of the fairway, presumably under one of the bazillions of leaves that were strewn in every direction.

It’s an unavoidable hazard on Michigan’s tree-lined golf courses. Even on the most well-tended courses, superintendents fight a losing battle. If they blow the leaves off first thing in the morning, more are back by noon. Wind gusts chase drifts of leaves out of the woods to settle in previously cleared territory.

So it occurs to me that—just as there are special guidelines for winter play—there also needs to be a set of rules for Autumn.

First among the autumn rules is that if your ball that disappears in the middle of a fairway, you may drop a replacement in a reasonable position with no penalty. Fairways were never meant to be penal.

If you’re a liberal sort, you also could agree in your foursome that a ball that rolls just off the fairway and can’t be found also may be replaced.

Second, if a ball comes to rest on top of a pile of leaves, you can pick it up, brush away the leaves and replace the ball on grass. That ruling applies both in the fairways, and in bunkers.

And finally, a golfer may improve his stance at any time. Slippery leaves are a golf injury waiting to happen.

In fact, now that golf is a worldwide sport, I think it’s time for any number of sensible rules exceptions. I’m certain that desert courses don’t have a leaf problem, but surely they have issues that the Scottish founders never envisioned on their links. The same holds for tropical courses, Outback courses, prairie courses, swamp courses, and so on.

And since I’m committing sacrilege, I’ll also suggest that municipal courses need a different set of rules from private and high end courses. Some of the munis in my area are so beat up by the end of the summer that even the biggest rules sticker uses the “one turnover” rule to get their balls out of inch deep divots. It’s not improving your lie; it’s leveling the playing field.

As I was stepping into a bunker at my favorite local course, tour-designed sand wedge in hand, it occurred to me that I had the wrong instrument for the job. Not that I needed a pitching wedge or a nine-iron. The sand wedge indeed was the right club. It’s the “tour-designed” part that had me thinking.

The aggregate material that occupies the bunkers at my local track in no way bears any resemblance to the sand that I’ve seen at tour stops like Oakland Hills, Warwick Hills, or the TPC Dearborn. Their sand is soft, and smooth and fluffy. Mine is chunky, irregular and hard (see photo above). When I try to splash the ball out, I’m just as likely to hit hard clay bottom as anything.

What some aspiring club company needs to do is to create a line that’s “public course”, not “tour”, inspired. These clubs need to be designed for the kind of conditions that your average golfer plays.

The tee boxes at my local course are by this time of year pitted with the divots of tens of thousands of poorly struck drivers. It doesn’t matter for the clubs, since you’re teeing it up, but finding an even, stable spot for the feet is challenging.

The fairways are grown in, but the ground beneath is hard. If you try to take one of those tour divots, your club will bounce back up and hit you in the shins. At the very least, they’ll give you a bad case of golfers’ elbow from the repeated shocks. The rough consists mostly of weeds (although they’re well-mown weeds) and the ground is even harder.

I have to give the grounds keepers credit for the greens. They’re wonderfully maintained. But they’re not nearly as fast as private clubs I’ve played, and those are not as fast as tour stops.

The sand traps? Well, that’s a story in and of itself.

What all of this adds up to is that I—and other public course golfers—need equipment that is “six pack”, not “tour” inspired. The equipment companies need to stop asking the Tour guys for help and start haunting the clubhouses at local municipals.

I need shoes that are designed to keep my feet stable when I have to plant them on the edge of a deep divot because there’s no other flat spot. I want well-padded insoles, because I’m not walking on a tour level carpet. And while they’re at it, shoe makers should make models with bigger toe boxes. We don’t get custom fitted like the tour guys, so most of us need a little more give. Keen brand shoes are a good model.

I need irons that won’t take a tour divot. I need nine- and eleven- woods because they’re the most practical thing for hitting off harder ground. In fact, every line of fairway clubs should include seven, nine and eleven woods as a matter of course.

I need a putter specifically designed for distance control on slower greens. The focus should be on designs that get lag putts close.

And I need a sand wedge designed for three quarters of an inch of aggregate, with an underlying layer of concrete-hard clay.

The course was backed up last night, and while I was waiting on the third hole, I was joined by another single—a young man in a cart named Rich.

I invited him to play along with me, but he hesitated. “I’m not very good,” he said. “I’m just learning.”

“That’s o.k.,” I said. “I’ve been playing a long time, and I’m still learning, too.”

After a couple of holes, both of which I parred, Rich said “You’re really good.”

From his expression and tone, it was apparent that he thought I was stringing him along, pretending to be learning when I was in fact an accomplished player (although my double on the next hole would dispel that notion).

I meant it, though. I’m always learning, and except in competitive rounds, I’m always practicing. When playing casual rounds, I’ll often take a shot I know I shouldn’t just to see if I can learn something. I’ve also been known to deliberately hit a ball into trouble just to see if I can get out. My handicap balloons as a result, but a low handicap isn’t my goal. I want to learn everything I can about the game.

I’m always learning. And so is everyone else who takes golf seriously. I’m absolutely certain that Tiger would say that he still is in the learning process. Ditto Phil, and Padraig and Vijay and everyone else on the Tour.

That it can never be mastered is one of the most intriguing things about golf. My other hobby is painting toy soldiers, and in that, I have by and large mastered the art. There really isn’t anything left except the enjoyment of researching and painting the diversity of costumes and uniforms over the ages.

In a strange way, I don’t really think that I would ever really WANT to master the game of golf. Constantly blasting drives down the middle and tapping in for birdie would be fun for a while, but in the end I think I’d lose interest.

So I continue to learn. And am happier for it.

Here in Ann Arbor, the return of the Goodyear blimps is a sure sign that college football is returning, and with it cooler weather and the waning weeks of the golf season.

We saw the Goodyear blimp today. One was gliding over the club where—rather than playing—I spent the afternoon poolside, watching the boys swim. It was too cool today for Dad to hit the water, but boys somehow seem immune. They spent hours in water that would have turned me into a popsicle. I didn’t mind, however, because I managed to get a great deal of reading done, working through the newspaper, finishing Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, and starting another fantasy novel called The Name of the Wind.

While I often will play golf until the snow flies, and enjoy fall as much as any season, the end of each summer comes with some sadness. Fall means a return to work and reducing my playing time to quick nines after school. And with the seemingly endless (and pointless, but state mandated) after school teacher’s meetings and in-services, I never get out as often as I might like.

So my last two weeks of summer will be filled with the usual gorging on golf. I’ll play five days a week, rain or shine until I can’t bear to pick up the clubs again.

And then I’ll play a some more.

As with many classic courses, tee follows closely on green on my local favorite. While this makes it very easy to walk, it also makes it somewhat easy to hit someone loitering between holes.

So it was that as I lined up my approach shot on the seventh hole last evening, I noticed a guy sitting on the bench between holes. His legs were crossed, he was wearing a wide brimmed hat, and he didn’t look like he was paying any attention. He also didn’t seem to have a set of clubs.

One of the locals, I thought, enjoying the night air.

I swung, and the ball headed left—my usual miss. As I made my follow through, I glanced right to the bench—and the guy was gone.

That was very odd, because I had looked away only for a second. Moreover, there’s no place for anyone to go. There are no woods to hide in—just a couple of isolated trees. The nearest substantial cover is too far away for anyone to reach in that period of time, even if they ran.

I kept scanning the area as I got closer, but he never did reappear.

A trick of the light, I supposed. A shadow that against the setting sun, looked like a man. And one that disappeared as soon as I shifted position.

But still a bit unnerving.

I ended up with a double bogey.

There are two great sins in golf: that of playing slowly, and that of playing poorly. To commit either alone is forgivable. To commit them both simultaneously is an affront to the God of Man and Nature.

The group I fell in behind last night was so bad, and so slow that they were going to need absolution from a priest.

The guy in the yellow sweatshirt was the worst. He would take five or six practice swings, then set up behind the ball, make a strange pumping motion, and finally hit the ball fifty yards. He’d then go through a ritual of posturing apparently designed to let everyone know that this was not his usual game.

His partners then folded their arms, rubbed their chins and made knowing nods.

Not that the other three were much better. The tall one with the wild afro could hit the ball a mile—just not anywhere near the proper fairways or greens. The fat one must have had something wrong with his knees, for he moved so slowly from the cart to the ball I thought he might keel over at any moment. Red golf shirt spent so much time lighting up his menthols it’s a wonder he had any time swing the club.

All of them wasted more time being demonstrative than any group of teenagers I’ve ever seen.

With no one in front of me, I caught up to them on the tenth hole. I had played the front nine in an hour. The back nine took two and a half.

They were absolutely oblivious to the fact that I was waiting for them on every tee. Or maybe they were well aware of it, and that was the reason for all the representing they were doing.

For a while, I thought about skipping a hole and jumping in front of them. But the course layout really didn’t offer any realistic chances of doing so.

In the end, I decided to turn my outing into a practice round. I played five, maybe six balls off the each tee, then played the worst shot as my second. Even with all of those shots, and gathering the balls, I still found myself waiting.

I really wish that my local courses had rangers who were good for something other than fishing for lost balls in the woods and ponds.

With the temperature at a humid 96 degrees today I went to play at a riding-only course. I have wanted to try that particular one for some time, but like to save those tracks for just such a day—preferring to walk at all other times.

One of the reasons I hate playing cart golf is that I always seem to get a buggy that refuses to cooperate. Today, when I really could have used a bit of a breeze from a zippy cart, I had one that couldn’t outrun the two mosquitoes that buzzed my head for three holes. 

It’s not an exaggeration to say that I could have walked faster. If I’d had a partner, I would have walked to my ball and waited for him to catch up in the cart.

Unfortunately, I didn’t fully appreciate how underpowered the thing was until I hit the first hill—on the third hole. I barely made it to the top. The cart struggled so much that I was afraid it would start rolling backward, forcing me to bail out. I couldn’t go back—there were a couple of groups behind me, so I resolved to swap carts when I made the turn.

I should have paid closer attention to the course map in the clubhouse. The layout doesn’t return to the clubhouse at the nine. It wraps around a large lake, and each hole just seems to go further out. Indeed, I didn’t see the clubhouse again until I was on the seventeenth tee.  Worse, it got more and more hilly as I drove on.

After hole ten, I tried to use my cell phone to call the clubhouse and ask them to send out a new one. But I couldn’t get a signal. So I soldiered on.

The only saving grace was that the pace of play generally was slow. There a couple of twosomes ahead of me that were playing at a glacial pace.

Of course, none of this had a positive effect on my play. When I walk, my game gets stronger as the round wears on. Far from fatigue, I actually hit it longer and more accurately. When riding on a balky cart, I just get more frustrated, and that frustration leaks into my ball striking.

When I got home, Mrs. Golfblogger asked how it went. My usual answer on a bad day is that it at least was a good walk.

Today, I couldn’t even say it was a good ride.