You don't get many draws, or dead heats, in golf. Finish level with somebody in a competitive event and invariably a play-off of some duration or another is involved.
But ties do happen that are accepted as such and the most famous in recent years was in the 2002 Volvo Masters when Bernhard Langer and Colin Montgomerie finished on the same score. There should have been a play-off but daylight was done on the last day and neither player found it convenient to stay over for an extra day.
So the decision, not universally acclaimed, was that they share the spoils.
Another dead heat, at a rather less exalted level, occurred this week.
After the prescribed 54 holes of the English Mid-Amateur Championship at Delamere Forest, two Midlanders, Paul Griffiths, of Sandwell Park and Staffordshire, and Nigel Chesters, of Hawkstone Park and Shropshire, finished level on 212. No problem.
The pair shared the Logan Trophy for which the international field were competing.
It was 41-year-old Griffiths's first triumph in an all-comers' event. He had a 20ft putt to win on the 54th hole and, having ascertained that he would take joint first place if he took two putts, he did just that.
"My game is coming back a bit," he announced. And he was delighted to learn that he now gains automatic entry into next year's Brabazon trophy.
Griffiths has had a chequered golfing career. Having taken up the game at the age of seven, he reached the level where the likes of David Gilford, Paul Broadhurst and Peter Baker were his peers.
Unlike them, he did not harbour thoughts of professionalism. He remained an amateur - a true amateur; he has a full-time job which, after holidays, allows him only ten free days a year for golf - he achieved a handicap of plus-four and, in what is effectively his second golfing life, he is now plus-two.
Griffiths gave up the game when he married some years ago but now, divorced, he has his old enthusiasm back. He is looking forward to such events as the Brabazon but the ambition, simply is . . . "to keep on improving."
With such notable successes as last year's Midland Champion of Champions' title and a top-of-the-pile finish in the Midland Order of Merit, Griffiths is certainly enjoying his game.
He has been a member at Sandwell for six years, has won the club Championship for the last three years in succession (and four times in all). And it is over his home course that his next challenge unfolds. On Sunday he competes in the West Midlands Amateur Championship which he has already won once. As a 17-year-old.
