In a below post, I talk about golf and politics. (Well, at least golf and political figures: Donald Trump and Bill Clinton. Rodney Dangerfield gets involved too.) I also talk about cheating.

I’d like to add a note here — and I apologize to readers of my column, if they’ve heard this before.

I have a friend who’s a pro golfer and a man of the Right. One of the things he loves about his game is its purity, and its freedom from politics. Also, golf is big on the rule of law. And it is no respecter of persons.

My friend has a riff that goes something like this: If you ground your club in a hazard, it’s a two-stroke penalty. It doesn’t matter whether you meant to. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a good person. It doesn’t matter whether you were bitten by a rattlesnake. It doesn’t matter whether you’re young or old, black or white, male or female. It doesn’t matter whether you got a hot school lunch as a child. It doesn’t matter whether you’re pope, president, or pauper.

If you ground your club in a hazard, it’s a two-stroke penalty. Period.

And that’s one of the things — one of the many things — that are beautiful about golf.