Match Play Politics

On the cusp of an election, we review the rules of the game...and why they make sense.

Atlanta, GA

November 3, 2024

The last several years, we’ve attended the East Lake Cup. Held at the iconic course where Bobby Jones learned golf, the event features the top four men’s and women’s collegiate teams from the previous season.

It’s an enjoyable few days, starting Saturday evening with the “Party on the Green”…an array of open bars and buffets adorning the clubhouse, enlivening its patio, and distributing their happy beneficiaries across lovely lawns along the lake.

Risky Renovation

We returned early Sunday for the “Am-Am”, in which one of the college players joins three of us hackers for a round of golf. Last year, my wife and son had the pleasure of playing with Luke Clanton, who’s since become the top amateur in the world.

Luke was here again. But this year our foursome included Josiah Gilbert, an Australian native who plays for Auburn. Tho’ my wife and I each have two degrees from Georgia Tech, we also have an affinity for Auburn (from which our elder son graduated earlier this year), so it was a pleasure to have Josiah join us.

For him it was another welcome round of practice on an unfamiliar course, albeit one that’s become more challenging.

East Lake recently re-opened after a year of renovation. I’m always apprehensive when architects tinker with beauty. No one (till recently) would mess with the Mona Lisa or Jupiter Symphony. We’re worried what they’re doing to Notre-Dame (we’ll apparently see the results soon enough).

But the revisions made East Lake even better than it was. A few previously unremarkable holes are now distinctive. Targeted tree-removal opened beautiful vistas. Greens have more character, and new traps offer enhanced aesthetic appeal as consolation for greater difficulty.

Sunrise over East Lake

The tournament began Monday morning. The first round is stroke play, to crown an individual champion and seed teams for the following morning.

The next two days are match play. The objective isn’t to hit the fewest shots, but to win the most holes. This obviously affects how players approach the round.

Regardless how many strokes you have, you do what you can to win (or not lose) each hole. On the par-3 eleventh, we watched one player put his drive a few feet from the pin. His competitor, who’d hit fewer shots during the course of the round, now knew he must take aim at the flag.

He had no choice. His lower score on previous holes didn’t matter. His only goal was to win that one. He came up short, and fell into a trap. But being aggressive was the only option.

Had this been stroke play, he’d have played it safe to not risk too many shots. You set your strategy based on the rules of the game.

A Lopsided Series

Other sports are no different.

In 1960, the New York Yankees played the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. New York outscored Pittsburgh 55-27. It wasn’t even close.

But the Pirates won the ring. They lost three blow-outs while winning four close games. In a seven-game series, that was sufficient.

Those were the rules going in. Both teams knew it, and played accordingly.

Managers juggled line-ups and used (or withheld) pitchers knowing the margin of victory meant nothing in any given game. All that mattered was being the first to win four.

Should baseball amend the Fall Classic so that whoever scores the most runs over seven games captures the crown? Or perhaps just play one 63-inning contest?

Maybe whichever team scores most during the season should be the champ? Perhaps aggregated, undifferentiated piles of runs are all that should matter? Individual elements, distinct events, and human scale could become irrelevant.

A Different Game

Most fans would find that off-putting, if not insane. But apparently many think it makes sense.

The types that do want to eliminate the Electoral College. Like almost every amendment since 1865, this would be a mistake, eroding more remaining morsels of what made the United States unique.

An amorphous “American people” didn’t form the union under the Constitution. “We the people of the united states” did.

Several individual states, not one aggregated “people”, ratified the document that created the central government. It’s reasonable that these entities should select its executive.

The US formed as a collection of different countries…each no different than France or Spain…with their own sovereignty, cultures, priorities, and interests. That’s why they were called “states.” Great Britain acknowledged this at the end of the war, recognizing each one separately in the Treaty of Paris.

These states established a loose confederation reflecting what normal people might call “diversity” (revealingly, it’s now those who most loudly laud “diversity” who adamantly insist every thing, person, and place be the same).

An Agent of the States

Tho’ lines are blurring, local preferences still predominate. Separate societies made a pact for specific purposes. These were intended to be strictly limited, precisely defined, and refreshingly remote from the average person’s daily life.

To most Americans, it shouldn’t matter who the president is, or whether they even know his name. The job was supposed to be a relatively insignificant administrative post. Meet with diplomats, make appointments, negotiate treaties, pardon a few people, and act as commander-in-chief when Congress declares war. That’s about it.

Contrary to Teddy Roosevelt, the president…like the rest of the U.S. government…is supposed to be an agent of the several states, not of one “American people” (which doesn’t exist).

In presidential politics, each state is its own game. That’s how it should be. Not that the bigger ones don’t get an advantage. They should. But they’re not able to run up the score. Every state has a minimal say…and a maximum one.

On rare occasions, they’re exactly the same. In the event no candidate receives an Electoral majority, the House of Representatives picks a president by each state casting a single vote. The candidate receiving more than half (i.e., at least 26) is declared the winner.

The popular vote in a presidential election…like total strokes in match play or total runs in a World Series…is intentionally inconsequential. It shouldn’t even be reported (before 1824, it wasn’t). It’s an irrelevant distraction.

If nothing else, the popular vote would doubtless be different if candidates campaigned knowing they needed to win it. Teams play the game according to the rules that are set. Everyone knows them going in.

After several recent elections, losers complained that the elected presidents didn’t win the “popular vote.” Regardless the rampant whining, that doesn’t mean the victor was “illegitimate”…any more than the Pirates weren’t really champions in 1960. Candidates ran campaigns based on the rules both sides accepted.

In the Plural

In a federal republic, the Electoral College makes sense.

When the states formed their compact, they opted for match play to pick their president. Knowing each state is winner-take-all, few Republicans will waste time campaigning in California, Illinois, New Jersey, or New York. That doubtless costs them some popular votes.

But so what?

Like a given game in the World Series, being blown out in one state is no worse than losing by a whisker. Just as a manager won’t use his best pitcher late in a game when outcome seems assured, it’s idiotic to waste resources if you don’t think a state will be close.

Conversely, if the goal were to win the most accumulated votes from every state, candidates would spend the bulk of their time on Manhattan island, Texas prairies, Florida’s peninsula, and the California coast.

Had they done so, maybe some recent presidents who lost the popular vote would’ve won it. We don’t know. And we don’t care. It doesn’t matter.

The states formed the union for specific purposes. When they did, many of them worried about being bullied by larger partners to the compact, or swallowed by the ravenous monster they reluctantly created. In retrospect, their instincts were correct.

The United States were never intended to be a single “nation.” Few founders thought of the union that way (Jefferson always referred to Virginia as “my country”).

That’s why, until Lincoln’s war, the states were always referenced in the plural. They weren’t the United States, but rather these United States. The United States are, not the United States is.

To many, the Electoral College seems like an “undemocratic” anachronism. In some sense, they’re correct. Yet they manage to make the point while missing it. Democracy was among many scourges the framers tried to tame.

Humble and Healthy

People have greater input closer to home, where they’re intimate with issues, and personally know candidates for office. But as distance rises, knowledge declines. And it does so rapidly.

We barely know (much less understand) what’s happening on the other side of town, never mind events occurring across a continent or around the world. That’s why we govern ourselves locally and within our states, while delegating (or, preferably, ignoring) remote matters far away.

That’s humble, and healthy. Activities overseas and in other states are less pertinent to daily life. Almost by definition, the more distant they are, the less they’re our business.

To the extent we engage with things that shouldn’t concern us, it’s thru representatives able (ostensibly) to make choices based on their particular knowledge of foreign people, places, and policies with whom most of us will never be acquainted.

But during the last century, direct “democracy” and the Administrative State have put chiselers, opportunists, and halfwits in these “deciding” roles. In some sense, that was inevitable.

Game Over

No one can “represent” you who doesn’t even know you. Like a real estate agent, financial planner, or personal lawyer, your representative is obligated to do your bidding…and no one else’s.

Politicians, especially in Congress, clearly don’t meet this basic criteria. The notion that one congressman can “represent” thousands of people with conflicting interests is obviously absurd.

Thinking a president could reflect “the will” of hundreds of millions is asinine, which is why he was never meant to do so. That’s why he’s picked by electoral votes of the several states.

The Electoral College is a wise way of making that choice. It remains among the few surviving vestiges preserving the integrity of federalism and the sovereignty of the states.

These are quaint notions, and probably elusive ones. But without them, it’s game over…and there’s no use having a union at all.

JD