A trophy is easy to buy. A title is not. The difference is sanction — the quiet endorsement of a governing body that says this result counted, was witnessed, and will be recorded. The Strawgrass Invitational is contested under the sanction of the Wiffle Ball Professional Golfers Association, and we do not treat that lightly.
It means the format is fixed and published in advance, not adjusted to suit the field. It means a rules official is on the property, that disputes are settled by the book rather than by volume, and that the marked ball, the one-club provision, and the boundaries of play are not suggestions. It means that when a team signs an incorrect card, the card stands — as it must, everywhere the game is taken seriously.
The rules are not there to slow the day down. They are there so the result can be believed.
When the champions are announced, their names go on the board under the crest of the Association as well as our own. That is the whole point of a sanction: it borrows the credibility of everyone who has ever played under the same rules, and lends it to the two people standing on the eighteenth green at dusk. A title that anyone could hand out would be worth what it cost. Ours is meant to be worth a great deal more.
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