Forecaddie: Halve vs. tie and the death of dormie

The Forecaddie has heard your complaints and is here to settle scores over the Halve vs. Tie debate. Viewers of the WGC Dell Technologies Match Play have been livid about Golf Channel’s use of the word “tie” to describe the state of a match or a concluded one. Adding to the first world outrage: the PGA Tour system feeding apps and on-site scoreboards is still using “AS” for matches All Square and “Halve” to describe matches tied after 18 holes.

Under the new rules of golf, television technically is using the proper lingo while the PGA Tour is using the old descriptions. But the explanation in the new rules says “previous terms halved and all square are still part of the rule book and acceptable, if necessary.”

As part of the rules simplification, the USGA and R&A changed the words in an effort to employ “more accessible and commonly used language.”

The Man Out Front asked the top-notch team at the PGA Tour’s ShotLink why it did not adopt the new lingo for this week’s event in Austin. The answer was understandable given all of the confusion over new rules: the team didn’t find out about the preferred new words until Tuesday. For now, they are sticking with the old standbys Halve and All Square, with plans to reevaluate before the next big match play stop when the Presidents Cup heads to Melbourne in December.

While Golfweek told you about these changes on Monday, The Forecaddie has since learned of another casualty of the simplified language: dormie. A word floating around the sport since the days of Mary Queen of Scots and first seen in an 1847 dictionary, dormie has been used to describe an insurmountable lead and was often misunderstood by broadcasters if an event was going extra holes to settle matches.

Sadly, “dormie” has been dropped from the rules of golf, perhaps less due to its lack of accessibility and more to its relative uselessness. But as this week has shown, it’s still acceptable to use the word, if necessary.