Sometimes, the best golf lessons are off the course

Sometimes you learn more about an athlete or a team in defeat than you ever would in victory.

We learned plenty about a couple of local golf standouts over the weekend, and all of it was good.

Derek Bayley, the former Lakeland High standout, finished second in a 168-man field after losing in the finals to cap a grueling week at the Pacific Northwest Men’s Amateur on Saturday in Creswell, Ore., located just south of Eugene.

The next day, Russell Grove, the North Idaho College men’s and women’s golf coach, lost in a playoff for the Rosauers Open Invitational title, after having a victory negated by a two-stroke penalty enforced after the round for something he was alleged to have done 12 holes earlier.

Both had reason to be down — particularly Grove — but both handled their results with class.

BAYLEY, A rising senior at Washington State, played nine rounds in six days. He easily qualified for the 64-man match play after two days of stroke play as the No. 7 seed, and made it all the way to the finals before losing on the final hole of the 36-hole championship match.

When I spoke to him via telephone Saturday night, he sounded weary, as you might imagine. But he also was happy with his week, and said he would take nothing but positives. He said he played as well as he could considering the meatgrinder of a tourney, and he’ll live with the results.

Can’t blame him, as he’s had a strong — and busy — summer.

He won the Idaho state men’s match-play championship in May, and has done well in several other tournaments around the Northwest. In fact, he would have played in the Rosauers last week had he been eliminated from the Pacific Northwest Men’s Amateur by Thursday. The Rosauers started Friday.

This week, he opened with a 1-over 72 on Tuesday in the first-round of the Pacific Coast Amateur, a 72-hole tournament at Chambers Bay — site of the 2015 U.S. Open.

GROVE, A former Coeur d’Alene High and University of Idaho standout, was two strokes off the pace heading into the final round of the Rosauers at Indian Canyon in Spokane.

But he got hot on Sunday, especially on the back nine, rattling off six birdies and shooting an apparent 63 to win by two strokes.

But one of his playing partners thought Grove had violated a rule, by moving a branch in playing a ball out of a bush on the sixth hole. Not much was said about it until after the round, when players and caddies in the final threesome, as well as tournament officials from the PGA’s Pacific Northwest Section — which oversaw the tourney — trekked back out to the sixth hole to look at the bush in question.

Grove didn’t think he did anything wrong — and said as much afterward — but some others in his playing group did, and tournament officials agreed with the others and assessed Grove a two-stroke penalty. That left him tied for first with Brady Sharp of Walla Walla, who closed with an 11-under-par 60.

Still in a fog from the stunning course of events, Grove parred the first playoff hole but lost when Sharp birdied.

When reached for comment an hour or so after the tournament, Grove was gracious enough to explain what happened — what he thought happened, and what he was ruled to have done.

Instead of sounding angry, he sounded more perplexed — no one seemed to mention the incident at the time. Instead, it wasn’t until Grove had caught the third-round leader, Derek Berk of Sahalee in Sammamish, Wash., after 12 holes that he said Berg mentioned the alleged violation to the rules official. And he said he was told by a section official that everything was OK.

Obviously, it wasn’t.

As Grove said, had he been penalized at the time, he would have played the rest of the round differently — rather than thinking he had tied Sharp for the lead with a birdie on 16, and solidified his victory with birdies on 17 and 18.

The rules of golf leave much to interpretation, and sometimes players are penalized for things that really aren’t their fault — such as the wind moving a ball after a player has addressed it on the green.

Ironically, Grove said his senior project at Coeur d’Alene High was a paper on how goofy some of the rules of golf were. Some of these rules — like the wind moving the ball — have since been changed, or are in the process of being changed.

Afterward, you couldn’t have blamed Grove if — pardon the pun — he had teed off on his playing partners and their caddies, the chapter officials who ultimately penalized him, and anybody else within range of his driver.

Grove, a former assistant pro at Avondale, won the Oregon Open last month and, like Bayley, is having a solid summer.

As coach of the Cardinal golf teams, he is a role model to the players he recruited to play for him.

So in that respect, he likely taught them a lesson they’ll never forget.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.