God bless the leaf rule

        Connecticut golf courses are lovely but treacherous this time of year.  The cool autumn nights keep the grasses lush and green, and all the reds, oranges and burnt sienna leaves make it feel as if you are playing through an Impressionist painting.  In the fall, green superintendents are also more aggressive in shaving putting surfaces down to double digits on the stimpmeter because they don’t have to worry about withering heat.  Finally, after a summer of putting through mohair, public golfers get a chance to putt greens that rival some of the better private golf courses in the state.

        But beautiful autumns in New England can be cruel jokes as well.  If putting is half a golf round, then cleaning up fallen leaves (and the occasional acorn) takes up half your time on the greens of New England in autumn.  By the time you are ready to putt, you are exhausted or distracted or both.

        But at least you can’t lose your ball on a green.  Yesterday, I lost a ball in plain site.  I pushed it to the right off the tee but short of a pond on the otherwise easy and short par 4 dogleg right 5^th hole at Fairview Farms, a public golf course in Harwinton, CT.  The grove of trees at the edge of the fairway had dropped all its leaves exactly where my ball wound up.

        Rather than spend five fruitless minutes shuffling my feet through a patch of leaves about 20 yards by 30 yards, I invoked the “leaf rule.”  Long ago my golf buddies and I agreed that a ball that otherwise reasonably could be located in fairway or rough if it were not for a covering of leaves could be dropped, without penalty, nearest the area everyone agreed the ball would have come to rest.  “Everyone” in the case of yesterday’s round was me and another single I was matched with who knows Fairview Farms well and, when he watched my tee shot, said, “That will be fine there.  Short way home.”

         That was good enough for me.  I took a favorable drop, then lofted a six-iron over the pond to the fringe of the green, chipped close and made my four-foot putt for par.  Autumn golf in New England is indeed a beautiful thing.

In autumn, holes in New England like the par 3 4th at Fairview Farms are framed beautifully by richly colored leaves...that eventually fall and litter the fairways and greens.