Stymie – Golf Poetry

STYMIE 

CONVERSATION is vexation
Looking up is bad;
A top from the tee 
Perplexes me, 
But a stymie drives me mad. 

Anonymous.

from Lyrics of the Links, published in 1921.

Modern golfers may not know the term stymie.

Until the rule was abolished in 1952, in match play one player’s ball could block another’s path to the hole. The stymied player would be forced to play around, over, or through the blocking ball. The exception would be if the balls were within six inches of each other.

If the blocking ball was struck, the stymied putting player would have to play from where their ball came to rest. The opponent, whose ball was struck, could either play from the new position, or the original one.

The picture at top shows a stymie situation in an 1882 watercolor by Thomas Hodge.

At the end of this Bobby Jones instructional film, he demonstrates how to pop a ball up and over a stymie.