Golf Rules

Who's afraid of trade globalization? That's easy: everybody.

Workers in the US broke up a meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle recently. Angry demonstrators proclaimed that free trade would flood America with cheap goods from Asian sweatshops; and Americans would lose their jobs when the companies employing them folded up from lack of business. In the Philippines, on the other hand, we're afraid superior products from the West would kill the demand for our native goods; and Filipino manufacturers would go bankrupt, throwing people out of work.

Every country, it seems, wants trade barriers down when exporting to others, but insists on blocking the free flow of goods from outside.

Well, I've got news for everyone: globalization is here. And no one can stop it. Why? Because consumers will always want the best products and services at the lowest possible price; and advances in communication and transportation have made that feasible - also inevitable.

* In Laoag, my brother Pompey needed a new radiator for his old Honda Civic. He went on the Internet, checked specs and prices, and ordered the part from California. Despite paying airfreight and taxes, it cost him almost 4,000 pesos less than he would have paid if he bought the radiator from a Honda dealer in the Philippines.

* My niece Lala and her husband Jess won a free trip to Bangkok, in a Jollibee promo; they decided they might as well extend their sojourn to Europe. They, too, went online to obtain the best deals in tickets, hotels, etc. You guessed it - they saved precious dollars.

* Filmmaker Butch Perez, my sailing partner, wanted to read about long-distance ocean racing on high-tech sailboats. He himself bought the hardcover editions of these books on the worldwide web, for local bookshops do not normally stock these and it would have cost him more if they made a special order for him.

* Steve Jenkins, my old motorcycling buddy in Illinois, doesn't have a computer; nevertheless he stays in touch with me by e-mail - using his TV set.

Steve's e-mail connection, let me point out, is one of the early fruits of convergence, which simply means that TV sets, cell phones, computers, refrigerators, car radios, even wristwatches, will eventually become multifunctional hybrids with which you'll be able to buy, and pay for, a myriad of things electronically. (That $350 billion mother of all mergers - combining America Online and Time Warner - is just the beginning, folks.)

But, clearly, free trade is not altogether a Good Thing or a Bad Thing. However, we must deal with it or perish - together with our golf games. I'm not being funny, fellas. It's a rule of thumb that the number of golf courses is linked to a nation's prosperity.

Are we going to be richer and thus have even more players and golf clubs? That depends on whether we have the talent and the political will to overcome the problems of worldwide free trade. Can we offer goods and services that would be coveted by the planet's consumers?

It's as simple as that - and as complex.

Let's not be caught napping ("natutulog sa pancitan" in metaphorical Tagalog).

Q. [from R. P. Sarmiento, [email protected]] The 16th hole of the Cebu Country Club is a par 5 that doglegs slightly to the right. From about 180 yards off the tee and almost up to the green, the right side is bounded by a lateral water hazard and to the right of that water hazard is the out-of-bounds fence. A fellow competitor, Danny Flores, hit his tee shot into that water hazard. He decided to play from there but his ball went out of bounds. What are his options and what would he be playing?

A. Please refer to Rule 26-2b. When his stroke from the lateral water hazard went OB, Flores incurred a one-stroke penalty, after which he would have five options. He could then:

(i) drop a ball as nearly as possible at the spot in the hazard from which the original ball was last played (he would be playing 4); or

(ii) drop a ball outside the lateral water hazard within two club-lengths of the point, not nearer the hole than that point, where the original ball last crossed the hazard's margin before it came to rest in the hazard, adding an additional penalty-stroke (he would be playing 5); or

(iii) tee up another ball anywhere on the teeing ground, adding an additional penalty-stroke (he would be playing 5).

NOTE: With regard to option (ii), if there's space before the OB fence, he may also drop off the right side of the lateral water hazard equidistant from the hole as his dropping area off the left side; or drop behind the hazard, keeping the point at which the original ball last crossed into the hazard directly between the hole and the spot on which the ball is dropped, with no limit to how far behind the hazard the ball may be dropped. He would likewise be playing 5.

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