DR. STEIN RULES GOLF

DR. STEIN RULES GOLF

CONCEPT

The whole idea behind Dr. Stein Rules Golf is to make the game more fun, especially for beginners, occasional players and those players who do not possess the skill to play the game at a serious level where they are trying to shoot a low score and lower their handicap. Again, it is all about making that “walk in the park” and spending quality time with your friends more fun without any frustration and embarrassment from your lack of athletic ability and lack of skill at a very difficult game that very few people play well. It focuses more on the social aspect of the game more than the competitive athletic aspect. It’s about having a good time where you laugh at the bad shots and cheer for the good shots. It’s for those golfers who feel that they had a great day at the golf course with their golf buddies when there are more good jokes than good shots, which most likely be the case if you choose to be playing Dr. Stein Rules Golf.

Dr. Stein Rules Golf rewards the “even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then” good shots and does not punish you for the expected bad shots. It completely levels out the playing field so that you can play a semi-competitive game with your buddies and even have wagering where anyone can have a chance at winning a buck or two.

Dr. Ned Stein, a brilliant urologist and even more brilliant pragmatic sports psychologist, came up with the concept. How brilliant a urologist is he, you ask? This brilliant – once while we were playing tennis outdoors in the middle of the summer in Houston, Texas in the brutal heat in the middle of the day, I asked Dr. Stein if he would know what to do if I collapsed on the court from heat exhaustion. This was his answer – “Sure. I’d rifle your wallet to see if you have a medical insurance card, and if you do, then I would pull down your pants.” You can’t bill for an exam without giving one. How’s that for brilliant?

Dr. Stein is an athlete. He is an incredible skier who has skied on some of the most challenging slopes in the world, jumping out of helicopters to get to the places where chair lifts don’t go. He’s been to racing school. At one time, he could hit tennis balls for hours and move like a cat around the court. He is mobile and agile. And he has great hand eye coordination, something you would want in a surgeon working on your genitals. However, he is not a big guy, and he has small hands, which is a big plus for his patients when he’s giving them a prostate exam, but not an advantage when gripping a golf club. Anyway….

When we started playing golf, he was just taking up the game and really throwing himself into it. He was hitting balls at the driving range every chance he could. He was obsessed with the game at the time and so was I. Our wives were friends and Dr. Stein and I became golf buddies. After weeks of pounding balls, Dr. Stein was itching to see what was going to happen when he took it to the course. And this is when the concept behind Dr. Stein Rules Golf came to light.

This happened the first time we played a round at the golf course. He gets up on the first tee and fires a squibbler slice flush up under a small bush. No way he can hit it back into play where it is. He picks up the ball and tosses it into the fairway. I am a bit taken back thinking that we were trying to play golf by some semblance of the actual rules, so I asked him what he was doing. And this was the Eureka, light bulb goes on moment and the creation of Dr. Stein Rules Golf. Ned reaches into his pocket, pulls out his green fees ticket and says, “I paid for the fairway.” I thought about it for a second or two and realized that he was absolutely right. He did indeed pay for the fairway. And why would a beginner torture himself by playing it where it lies when it lies in place where he can’t really play it from. It all made perfect sense to me. And I replied, “You’re right! And if you want, you can take a mulligan (a do-over shot) whenever you want.” That moment cemented our golf buddy relationship.

One of the best practices when playing golf is to play away from the hazards – the out of bounds, the lakes and streams and sand traps and woods and such. The Dr. Stein Rules completely takes them out of play, which makes the game more fun for those who find themselves in the hazards frequently and have no idea or skill how to extricate themselves from them and lose it if there’s a penalty involved when you are actually keeping a real score. And as an added bonus, Dr. Stein Rules Golf speeds up the game considerably, showing consideration to the other players in the group behind you who have to wait on every shot while you are hacking it around the course from all the wrong places.

So now that we have established how the rules work, let’s apply a scoring system so we can make a game of it.

HOW TO KEEP SCORE PLAYING DR.STEIN RULES GOLF

The scoring system is a points system. It’s very modified Stapleford scoring. n Stableford scoring, points are awarded based on your score on each hole relative to par, with the goal being to accumulate the most points, not the lowest score.

Here's a breakdown of regular Stableford scoring:

Double bogey or worse 0 points

Bogey 1 point

Par 2 points

Birdie 3 points

Eagle 4 points

This is where the Dr. Stein Rules scoring model gets interesting. It gives the player an option to play by the Dr. Stein “I paid for the fairway” way or to try and play the hole “straight” without picking the ball up and improving it from the trouble. If you play the hole “straight” you get bonus points.

If you hit a decent drive and it’s in the fairway or in a good spot not far off the fairway giving you a good second approach shot, you are going to want to give it a go at playing it straight. But if you screw up the approach shot, you can still go to the Dr. Stein Rule, move your ball to a better spot, and your points go back to Dr. Stein points. You don’t get penalized for playing Dr. Stein Rules, however, you can get rewarded if you hit a couple of good shots in a row and play the hole straight.

Here's the breakdown for Dr. Stein Rules scoring:

DSR Double Bogey or worse 0 points

ST Double Bogey 1 point

DSR Bogey 2 points

ST Bogey 3 points

DSR Par 4 points

ST Par 6 points

DSR Birdie 8 points

ST Birdie 10 points

DSR Eagle 12 points

ST Eagle 15 points (like that’s gonna happen!!!!)

These points have been adjusted after a round where there no points awarded for a straight double bogey, however, there were a few holes where a player did not go to Dr. Stein Rules and hacked it around for a straight double and another player on the same hole averted a double by playing Dr. Stein Rules. I decided that if someone is so determined to play it from a non-advantageous position (for some insane unknown reason) and manages to make a double bogey, he at least deserves a patronizing pat-on-the-back point so he doesn’t get discouraged…but, hopefully, the player will figure out that picking the ball up and putting it into a position where they can salvage a DSR bogey or even make a one-putt DSR par is a much better option than struggling to make a double. That’s the whole point of Dr. Stein Rules Golf.

The speeding up the game part worked well as expected. I was able to make a few good shots with my chipping and putting from DSR positions that put points up, so that also worked well. BUT THE MAIN THING IS THAT A GOOD TIME WAS HAD BY ALL!!!