October 31, 2000

Mr. Arnold Palmer
Bay Hill Club
900 Bay Hill Boulevard
Orlando, Florida 32811

Dear Arnold,

My first reaction was disbelief, i.e. that the report was dead wrong. I then that you must have been misquoted. I may be missing something, Arnold. If so, I would be relieved to learn what it is. Absent such revelation, however, the following is my reaction to what somehow you have been persuaded to do and say.

Apparently Ely Callaway perceives a marketing opportunity in clubs which do not conform to the Rules of Golf. While that is Ely's prerogative, it strikes me as akin to marketing balls (aka "hot balls") which do not conform and are sold as going much father than those that do. It is, of course, your prerogative to give Ely's marketing project the credibility that you specially can give it. What I cannot understand, however, is how you, perhaps the most respected, indeed revered, figure in the whole history of the game of golf, could consent to help merchandise a non-conforming club.

A game can only be identified by the rules that define it. The game of golf is defined by the Rules of Golf. A premise for what you and Ely are doing, as I understand it, is that the only people who need the game of golf are professional golfers. The rest of us 25,000,000 golfers, therefore, are left with a choice to play an undefinable game which has no rules.

What happens, in that case, to our handicap system, our $2 Nassaus, our monthly medals, our club championships and our city, state and national championships?

People playing with hot clubs and/or hot balls may have fun, but they are not playing an identifiable defined game. It may qualify as fun to pay megabucks for a club that acts like a slingshot on the ball. As I see it, howeer, the real fun derives from dealing with the challenges that makes the game of golf so enduringly fascinating.

The road on which you have embarked with Ely, Arnold, is one which replaces the game of golf with what in real effect is a non game without rules to identify and define it. That road leads away from a fundamental premise that golf is a definable game and it is, or at least should be, the only game that everyone, professional or amateur, plays whenever and wherever he or she tees it up.

I simply cannot understand how you could have been persuaded to take that road.

Sincerely,

Frank (Sandy) Tatum, Jr.

(Reprinted without permission from A Love Affair with the Game by Frank (Sandy) Tatum, Jr., The American Golfer, 2002.)

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