When I was a boy growing up in central Ohio, my father didn’t join the country club until my senior year of high school. That summer, I was playing Legion baseball when he asked if I wanted to take golf lessons instead. I told him no.
Trying to persuade me, he said, “You can play golf all your life, and there’s an excellent teacher at the club named Walker Inman—his father was Bobby Jones’s roommate and teammate at Georgia Tech. There’s also a teaching pro who comes in the summer named Jack Grout. He’s Jack Nicklaus’s coach.”
I declined; certain baseball was the better use of my summer. In hindsight, that was a mistake.
Thirty years later, driving through Meridian, Idaho, I noticed a construction trailer on a parcel of land destined to become Spur Wing Golf Course. When the trailer door opened, I immediately recognized “Dickey” Grout—Jack Grout’s son—whom I had once babysat in Upper Arlington. Dick was the first club pro at Spur Wing.
I asked Dick to give me a lesson based on the same principles his father had taught Jack Nicklaus. What I remember most wasn’t the swing advice but a story he shared from his childhood.
He told me that when he was about ten, he watched his father give Nicklaus a lesson. Midway through, young Dick realized that Nicklaus wasn’t following his father’s instruction precisely. Still, his ball flight was flawless. Jack Grout said nothing. Later, he explained: “If the result is perfect, you don’t change a thing.”
There are two ways to analyze a golf swing. You can dissect every fundamental—stance, grip, shoulder position, clubface alignment, follow-through—or you can simply look at the shot. If the shot is perfect, don’t meddle. If it’s off, you need adjustments.
That simple truth would serve Idaho’s political leadership well this legislative session. Watching committee hearings, budget meetings, and floor debates, I see lawmakers going through all the motions of governance—but their “shots” are way off target.
The budget-setting process, for example, proceeds without serious inquiry into ongoing waste and mismanagement inside the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, especially within Medicaid. Ignoring these issues doesn’t just make for a poor shot; it ensures a bad round.
We’ve all seen the red flags: the troubled LUMA project, unanswered questions surrounding the Idaho Health Data Exchange (“Where did $125 million go?”), and an estimated billion dollars in potential Medicaid fraud when compared to national benchmarks. If Idaho’s fraud rate is even half the national average, the problem is staggering.
So, when leaders avert their eyes and postpone accountability until after election season, it isn’t ignorance—it’s intention.
As citizens, we don’t need elite policy analysis to judge performance. Just look at the shot. If this year’s budget doesn’t include funding for independent, third-party audits of Medicaid and the Department of Health and Welfare, the results speak for themselves.
At that point, it’s fair to conclude that both Republicans and Democrats have “whiffed.” Either they’re poor stewards of taxpayer money, or they care more about keeping their seats than keeping the state solvent.
If Idaho fails to act, it could soon find itself in the same troubled financial rough as Minnesota and California.
Just like in golf, the fundamentals matter—but only if the shot tells the truth.
