This was his first of many breaches of the marking, lifting and replacing procedure. HOLE 2: When Mike reached the green, he marked his ball to the side, then 'replaced' it on the other side. He picked up the extra chips, then marked his ball, cleaned it, replaced it, flipped the coin away, then touched and rotated the ball. He dropped an extra ball and chipped it, then chipped another. Sam, short of the green in two, hit a bad chip shot. When he got to it, he reached down and without announcing, marking or allowing observation, lifted it, identified it as his, and replaced it. Steve hit his tee shot into the right rough. (As the British would say, 'That's not a mulligan that's 3.') But let's waive this one on tradition. HOLE 1: To start things off, Matt heeled his tee shot nearly OB, asked for and got a mulligan. They were just out having a good time playing a game that is akin to golf, but as the old Hertz commercial put it, 'Not exactly. (Indeed, the bottle of booze may well have been won by the wrong guy.) As it was, Steve and Sam were disqualified five times apiece and Matt and Mike incurred 15 loss-of-hole penalties over the 18 holes. If Matt and Mike had been playing stroke play (making all of their loss-of-hole penalties two strokes), and if Steve and Sam had corrected their disqualification penalties (changing them back to only two strokes) the group's tally would have come to about 100 penalty strokes. The most common infractions involved advice, improper marking and replacing on the green, practice during play of a hole and failure to hole out. In all, 15 of golf's 34 Rules were violated, some many times. They wondered why I was around I told them I was taking notes on course-maintenance problems. The group played 18 holes in four hours and fifteen minutes. Steve and Sam were playing for fun and bragging rights (stroke play). Matt and Mike (all names have been changed) were playing a match for a bottle of Crown Royal. All have played golf for much of their adult lives. Our guinea pigs were a representative foursome of public golfers: four males, ranging from their early 30s to late 60s, with handicaps from 12 to 23.

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