An earlier post (here) explored the sad loss of the stymie in the modern game, along with the move of professional golf towards an almost pure diet of 72 hole strokeplay (yawn), but there remains an element of match play golf in most clubs, and so one of the other charming remnants of a bygone age is still with us, the wonderfully named gimme.
For those well versed in the history of golf, the politics around the gimme are well understood, and while our individual tastes in terms of how and when a concession is made tend to vary a little, we know the parameters outside of which we will be judged as overly tight, but for the newcomer to the game (and we are all meant to be encouraging participation, right?), it is a delicate area in which to tread.
If I have an objective here, besides the enjoyment of thinking and writing about the way this plays out with that dwindling group of contacts who can bear my company for three hours, it is to perhaps provide some guidance to that new player, who may be quietly wondering why no one has explained this strange and confusing custom, and whether he or she is even allowed to engage in the mental jostling that surrounds gimmes. “What are the rules of engagement?”, I can imagine them asking.
For there is honour at stake when the previous stroke leaves the ball near enough that all chatter drops away, and the player’s step slows ever so slightly, their expression trying hard to not convey that the remaining 18 inches of travel still required to drop that obstinate sphere beneath the surface of the green might as well be a mile. This change of pace is barely perceptible, but it has an unintended effect, besides giving the opponent the chance to bestow that most sporting of expressions: “that’s good”.
The additional fragments of time through which the terrified golfer travels on approach to the hole gives them time to look, sometimes with the faintest hint of an almost quizzical smirk, at the tiny, borderline insulting bit of admin they might yet have to face, and by the time they get near the ball, the cup looks like it could take a marble, perhaps even a ping pong ball, but never something 1.68 inches in diameter.
By this point, everyone knows that if they are made to hole out, they will miss, and as the player fumbles around for a ball-mark - hoping that by slowing down further to prepare to mark and clean the ball, their hopes might at last be answered - those present are dancing on a precipice beneath which lies that central constituent of the golfing experience, the sense of courtesy.
You can be competitive, sure, but the bit that sometimes catches out the less experienced player, is that if you cross this imaginary line, you are insulting your opponent, and when they subsequently fail to even touch the hole, not only are you proved to have been right in theory, but you become an unimaginable swine in their eyes. Working in golf, it is not infrequent to hear someone complain that another player failed to concede a couple of short ones. The aggrieved party has almost always missed, but much of that is to do with what they are thinking over the ball rather than their actual, normal skill level, assessed during peacetime. It’s delicate, to say the least.
Some golfers like to measure to see if a ball is “within the leather” - i.e. if the putter head is placed inside the cup and the tacky rubber handle (as by now, we’ve all missed so many that we had no choice but to buy a modern putter, sans leather, the cost of which if anything exacerbates the feeling of abject misery when the putt still slips unapologetically past) extends beyond the ball, it should be a gimme.
But this is overly simplistic, and on some greens, you would never give a short one due to the contours. Plus, putters vary in length, so while I understand the novice’s concern that this mysterious and apparently ungoverned practice might expose them, it is a dilution of the glory of the gimme to rely on such measurements.
On other occasions, you might give a couple of early ones, thereby both building an expectation of later generosity and starving the oppo of the chance to warm up for the ones that really matter, at the bitter end of the match. They all count as one shot, of course, but no one remembers the earlier miss. The lasting damage can only be inflicted down the stretch, and it is hard to hurt someone as effectively as you can with a lethal, endless silence as a tight contest draws to a close.
There is sometimes cause to look away, stare into the distance, and as the great universal quiet descends, the player will no doubt be flashing regular attempts at eye contact your way as they walk, ever more slowly, towards the hole. People say all sorts of stupid things, but the one about body language being by far the most important means of communication seems about right here.
The look in the pleader’s eyes will probably start like that of a doe-eyed, hopeful puppy, searching for some confirmation of their worth in the world, or for your love and kindness. It may then move through an expression of surprise, heading in the direction of self-righteous indignation, and, if you’ve previously stayed quiet for a couple of other tiddlers, you might even see a flicker of anger. Whatever the eyes betray, the end result will be the same, a miss, a hard-to-ignore sense of entitlement, and a thirst for a bloody revenge, served cold if need be.
It sounds like this is a minefield for the uninitiated, and perhaps that is right, but what I mustn’t forget to mention is that in this peculiar dance lies a microcosm of all that is special about golf. The game retains a rare code of honour that must have seemed a more common way of operating a century or two ago - when duels with guns took place, for example - and this snapshot of true sporting conduct, of genuine competitiveness with a nod to both gamesmanship and friendship, is for me a sacred part of the joy of the game.
For in those magnificent silences, time will stand still, and we are given a chance to breathe in the glory of the pause between the notes, with magic in the air. One close friend, with whom I’ve shared golf, claret and gimmes on both sides of the Atlantic, will often wait until the backstroke has actually started to concede a putt, well aware that the hairs on my head are growing rapidly greyer in those tiny slices of time.
Flip the roles, though, and he will probe long and hard for eye contact, and when eventually standing over the ball, will perhaps ask if I have “lost your tongue?” It is glorious, this humour, and adds to the splendour of match play - the only form of the game I play, where scorecards are redundant and we travel through the course trying to beat each other not only with our golf, but with our wits.
So, golfing newcomer, what have you learned here? You have learned that if you think there is a chance the opponent will miss, and you let them take that chance, they will miss. And thus, they will at once both prove you right and hate you. You are here to win the match, but “not like that”. Stay silent too often, or too early, and you will be quietly, privately regarded as vulgar in the corridors of the golf club. People will start to cross the car park to avoid you, pre-rollup.
Some will base a sweeping judgment around your moral character and intellect on this single point, given the chance, despite the obvious argument that as they missed, you were right all along. But sometimes you have to do the right thing, rather than always be right. Because here, in the shady world of the gimme, you can be right and wrong at the same time, and it is not a good look. I imagine this is what some of the Koans in Zen Buddhism are like; complex, non-thinking riddles that cannot be understood with the logical mind, but which require deep, contemplative study, and direct experience.
So follow the rules carefully on all this, for your own good, but remember that the rules are not written down anywhere. As they don’t exist. But you need to know them anyway. And you must not break them for fear of losing your privileges.
Good luck out there. Be kind…
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