GOUGE: I like K.J. Choi. I really do. He's humble, speaking reverentially to Jack Nicklaus, embarrassed even that the great man of golf is shaking this lowly former powerlifter's hand. And I smile almost with the hint of a tear as I see how much his son loves him and greets him like a hero when he walks off the 18th green, and how he returns the love in kind with a squeeze of the shoulder right out of the Howard and Richie Cunningham “Happy Days” playbook. And I would suspect that I would like Nicole Castrale, too. Her quiet resolve and her I-got-you-babe husband/caddie are a Lifetime movie of the week in waiting. The way her friends on tour rush out and douse her with champagne when she gets her first win is High School Musical for grownups. She is sweet and tough, a retro Juli Inkster in the making, as it were. But both of them, K.J. and Nicole, are, I'm afraid, the devil's spawn. That's right, straight from the mouth of Mephistopheles comes these two winners over the weekend.
It pains me to come to this conclusion, not unlike the feeling Chris McNeil (Ellen Burstyn) had when her daughter Regan (Linda Blair) started projectile vomiting and growling like a dog, but I'm resigned to it. The use of a driver the size of second base by a PGA Tour player is to me the equivalent of green throwup shooting across the room, and the use of a putter wedged into a gut of a player of any kind is like so many bouncing beds. I'm not saying K.J. Choi hits it farther or straighter because he uses a titanium microwave as his driver (a 281-yard driving distance average for the week isn't going to obsolete any course, and while he did hit 84 percent of the fairways last week, he hit 57 percent with the same driver at the Players Championship two weeks ago). I'm saying a tour player using a driver with training wheels is just wrong. I'm not saying Nicole Castrale made an unfair number of putts with that heavy-handed, stomach-staple pitchfork of a putter she uses (did you see the woefully short effort on the 72nd hole?). I'm saying a professional athlete who doesn't have enough courage to hold a putter the way it was intended to be used should be as shocking to all of us as a 12-year-old girl's head rotating 360 degrees. The USGA seems to have long ago given up on the idea of plain in shape, for fear that some renegade will point to "prior art" as an example of why their driver or putter should be approved. Sometimes you just have to resort to an exorcism. Let's ban belly putters, at the very least, and when it comes right down to it, do we really need square drivers? Where for the love of Old Tom Morris is Max Von Sydow when we need him?
BOMB: No wonder you’re the Gouge of this operation. Maybe your game would get a little better if you came into the 21st century and used one of these puppies. But nooooooooooooo. Instead you’d rather have me pat you on the back, tell you it’ll get better and hand you a Lifesaver like the “Happy Days” moment you referred to.
Granted, when your putter is the club you use to take relief from a hazard, it gets a little uncomfortable—not to mention those suckers are darn near impossible to stuff into a travel cover. But just because a putter or a driver is as unsightly as Britany Spears with no hair doesn’t mean we should banish them to their own island as you have previously suggested. I’m a big believer of playing by the rules. And if you ban these, what’s next? Rolling back the ball? (Go ahead and take your shot, Geoff S.)
As with forward tees and extra loft, some people just need a bit more help to get around the golf course. Sure, K.J. Choi and Nicole Castrale do not fit that category. But the clubs are there, so why not take advantage if you think it will help? Besides, I did some statistical research a couple of years ago on players that went back and forth between the belly and conventional putter and there was no real change in their putting stats. So they’re not cheating and they’re not ruining the game. You might think they look stupid out there, but Choi and Castrale laughed all the way to the bank this weekend with a total deposit between the two that you and I probably don’t make between us in five years.
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