Giving 'Em Fitz: Advances in golf not helping hackers

Join with me, fellow hackers, in an Occupy Magnolia Lane movement.

It's time the 99 percent of golfers more likely to break a club than par demanded change. We want our own set of rules. And our own golf magazines.

Let's face it, for those of us whose handicaps exceed the legal drinking age, the game's arcane rules and Byzantine instructions have as much relevance as the second law of thermodynamics.

Last week, for example, golf officials finally got around to changing Rule 18-2b. Beginning in 2012, if you're standing over a putt and a gust of wind moves your ball, you won't be penalized a stroke.

Oh, good, now I can apply for my Tour card.

That's the thing about golf's rules. They never take into account the average golfer's complete lack of skill and ethics.

I mean if I've just hit three balls into the parking lot and declared them mulligans, why on earth would I penalize myself for a barely perceptible ball movement that wasn't even my fault?

Let's have a show of hands here. How many of you have ever assessed yourself a 1-shot penalty when, just before putting, the wind moved your ball?

Didn't think so.

On the other hand, how many, when finding your ball resting against a tree, have kicked it into the clear, picked it up, cleaned it, returned it to the fluffiest lie possible, yelled "Found it!" to your playing mates, then claimed your initial swing and miss at it was "practice?"

In an equally pointless rules change, golf officials also have decreed that we're now allowed to smooth the sand in a hazard as long as it doesn't improve our lie.

As I've noted, "lie" has an entirely different meaning for me, but why on earth would I bother manicuring the sand if it wasn't going to help me?

Just as useless are the golf magazines, most of which are jammed with tips and devices guaranteed to fix my swing, lower my score, and impoverish my retirement years.

For those of you who haven't witnessed my game - as well as those who have and survived - my swing brings to mind Vicente Padilla wielding a rake with which he's attempting to crush a spider.

Here I am flailing as hard as I possibly can with a bad baseball hack and some Golf magazine instructor is counseling me to "simultaneously push off the ground with your right foot and straighten your left leg, making sure your left leg posts at the exact moment you strike the ball so that your right side can accelerate through and past impact and into the follow-through."

If I incorporated into my pre-swing routine all that and everything else these instructors would like me to, I would very quickly be the best golfer at the sanitarium.

These magazines also want us to believe we can buy our way to better golf.

Here are some of the devices editors insisted would help my game:

A groove sharpener. A backyard putting green. Brush tees. A vacation in Scotland. Distortion-free sunglasses. Tungsten-weighted drivers. Laser range finders. Mouthpieces. A Lincoln SUV. Viagra. Five-layered golf balls. Single-malt Scotch.

I've tried most. Only the last seemed to help - although the sunglasses did keep me from being recognized at courses I'd previously played and scarred.

Anyway, next week I'll be taking my annual golf excursion, this one to North Carolina's Outer Banks.

So if there are any new rules changes that will impact hackers like me - like, say, if they decide it's OK to throw your ball out of a bunker after you haven't improved your lie by smoothing the sand - please let me know.

What they couldn't fit into these actual headlines from the last week:

"Broncos Plan to Stick with Tebow" - Rest of NFL Now Certain They'll Also Stink with Tebow.

"Pistons Wallace Pleads Guilty in Alcohol Case" - How He Squeezed in There Remains Mystery.

"St. John's Basketball Coach to Run NYC Marathon" - Stay Tuned for Further Meaningless News.

"Cards Manager La Russa Retiring" - Marking First and Last Time "La Russa" and "Retiring" Used in Same Sentence.

"Pronger Considers Wearing Visor" - Flyers Star Says Device May Be Improvement on Cane and Guide Dog.

In what is either an example of growing corporate influence in sports, or hockey's demise, the NHL's All-Star Game will be called - we're not making this up - the 2012 Tim Hortons NHL All-Star Game.

The game, as you might have guessed, will be sponsored by the doughnut shops of the same name.

By the way, commissioner Gary Bettman said the name and location of the 2013 All-Star Game will be revealed immediately after the 2012 Moose Vasko Stanley Cup Finals.

CC Sabathia has exercised his option to return to the New York Yankees, which figures to be the last time the behemoth of a pitcher exercises this winter.