Michigan Course Involved in NAIA Championship Controversy

According to reports (and scuttlebutt I’ve heard among locals) the person responsible for the greens misread the diagrams and cut the fifth hole three yards from its intended location. The result was chaos.

A hundred and fifty six players were in the field. On that Tuesday, ninety made a score of double or worse. The scoring average on that Par 5 was 6.97. It took players so long to finsh the hole that six teams couldn’t finish their rounds for the day.

This isn’t the first time a women’s golf tournament has had this issue. Two years ago, the DIII women’s golf championship had to cancel the third round because of an unplayable hole.

In both instances, I’m surprised that the mistake was not caught. The local greenskeeper absolutely knows which locations are unplayable. Even an average golfer will look at a green and say: “Wow. If they put the hole over there, people will be five putting.”

If you’re responsible for cutting a hole, and it looked like a pending disaster, it would take no effort at all to make a call to the committee chair and say “are you sure about this?”

At that point, someone could drive a cart out to confirm.

Also, why didn’t the tournaments have someone drive around before the round to double check holes and tees? I’ve seen people from our state golf association do that in juniors tournaments.

I’m putting it down to the sort of casual (or even active) neglect that women’s sports receive. Unequal treatment in the NCAA Womens’ Basketball Championship has been a major topic of discussion in recent years. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that women’s collegiate tournaments have fewer staff and fewer volunteers.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Women are 51% of the population and 20% of the golfers. The sport we all love will be healthier in the long run if more women are encourged to play. That’s not going to happen if they get careless treatment at the higher levels of competition.