GOLFWEEK MAY 16, 1998
By James Achebach

THE MAN WHO HATES YARDAGE PLATES
Golf is a straightforward game. No puzzles to decipher. No cards to Shuffle. No dice to roll. The every-man explanation of golf might be this one: Just aim every shot at the hole and wait for one to fall in.

Or, in the immortal words of Steve Ballesteros, “ I miss, I miss, I miss, I make.” Ballesteros, the wittiest player ever in golf was being cute when he described a four-putt green, but golf in its simplest form is a game of 50 to 100 misses and 18 makes.

I scoff at players who haven’t figured out the difference between the practice range and the course. Good practicers are a nickel a dozen. Good players are a fraternity of the few. Getting the ball into the cup is an exercised skill, vision, creativity, determination and patience.

I have always wanted to witness a big-money showdown in which the world’s best golfers, their caddies banished to the barn, handle their own clubs and make their own decisions. Just like the rest of us.

I wouldn’t mind placing these golfers on an unfamiliar course and removing all yardage markers. In other words, force them to play with instinct and courage.

It amazes me that so many American golfers want everything laid out for them – visible hazards, accessible pins and, of course, an abundance of yardage markers. I wish an eye-opening trip to Scotland, Ireland, and England on all of them. The hazards often are hidden, the yardage markers often are nonexistent. This is an adventure found.

There is nothing in golf that irritates me more than a player who insists on knowing a precise yardage for every shot. Some golfers pace around incessantly looking for yardage plates. This is sanity lost. I call them the walking dead. Or about to be dead. “It’s 170 yards, so I’ll hit a smooth 7-iron.” Sure thing. Yardage is both their pacifier and their demon, for most in an elephant’s age dial in the prescribed yardage.

I came here to denounce yardage markers. I came here to the headquarters of the yardage cult, the Kirby Marker System, to be as honest as I can be: “I’m sick and tired of yardage cheat sheets in the ground, and I’m not going to take it any more.”

Did I ever tell you about the country club I used to belong to, before they tossed me out for irrational comments?

What I encounter at Kirby, though, is the intelligent response of Buster Newton, director of Sales and Marketing. These yardage guys, they’re cool. They’ve seen it all – plates abused and cracked, plates obscured with grass, plates as a testimony to man’s unyielding capacity to destroy anything.

With the Kirby Marker System, a plastic plate is installed into the ground every 25 yards – on both sides of the fairway. Plates start at 250 or 225 yards from the center of the green and go 200- 175- 150- 125- 100- 75.

These combat ready plates contain a collapsible, spring-loaded centerpiece, so they are depressed by the weight of the mowers and thus don’t break. I’m depressed, just thinking how many yardage markers are out there. Kirby has outfitted more than 1,200 courses, including some in Scotland and Ireland (say it isn’t so).

“Is there any place in this Universe you haven’t sold these?” I ask Newton, mostly as a joke expecting him to say Mars. “Yes,” he replies Oklahoma and Louisiana.”

I knew it had to be way out there in the solar system.

A complete Kirby Marker system costs about $8,000. It is money well spent, I suppose, for those who want to know their yardage ever step of the way, every minute of the day. Newton claims it is a bargain. Why? One reason, he says, is that it speeds up play. Now he launches into his soapbox routine: “Ninety percent of the slow play issue is a management decision. It’s their fault if golfers take 5 hours to play. Why do they play in 3 hours and fifteen minutes in Scotland and Ireland? Because they are expected to. So the obvious solution is to create an expectation of pace.”

According to the Law of Newton (that’s Buster, not Isaac), golfers must be told emphatically what their pace should be. Mostly, he says, they police themselves. Regardless, they are continually marshaled to make sure they don’t fall behind. Marshals are gruff. Rather they try to help the players – looking for lost balls, raking bunkers, politely informing them they are X number of minutes off their pace.

“Golfers buy into that,” Newton asserts. “Nobody likes slow play.” And, of course, nobody likes being adrift in a yardless world, so Kirby Markers make the experience predictable and swift.

Golf remains a straightforward game. Find your plate, hit your ball.