Did you know that the first known written set of rules for golf (way back in 1744) consisted of just 13 rules? What a wonderfully simple game it must have been. Nearly three centuries on our current Rules of Golf, published and approved by the USGA and the R&A, consist of over 200 pages covering 34 rules in-depth. It’s no wonder so many of us break them. We simply don’t know them all. To make matters worse, they get revised and amended every few years (they’ve just been updated again this month) so the things we thought we knew may have now changed.
I play golf every week with women who are cheating and they don’t even realise. It’s often simple things such as taking a penalty drop in the wrong way, or having a practice swing and accidentally improving the lie before playing the shot. The list is long. Let’s face it, we don’t exactly encourage newcomers to golf to have to learn the rules. There’s no test to pass to show their knowledge before they can play on the course. No requirement to even look at the rules book. How many of you even carry one in your bag? Golf is a self-regulating game, it’s just one of those things that we are expected to learn as we go along. And we certainly don’t want to put beginners off by overwhelming them with the rules before they’ve really got into golf.
I’ve been playing golf for 30 years and was fortunate to have some wonderful rules mentors when I was a junior who kindly pointed out how I should take a drop, mark my ball on the green, attend the flag and avoid doing things that would cause me a penalty shot in strokeplay or a loss of hole in matches. I try to pay this forward any time I can by helping women by showing them the correct way to do things and never chastise or challenge them if they get a rule wrong.
I also had to learn some rules the hard way by being called out for getting them wrong. One nasty opponent claimed a hole from me when I took a penalty drop from a water hazard that she could (after I’d played the next shot) prove, by measuring with her feet, I had played from a point nearer the hole.
Another unfortunate incident happened in a club foursomes match, where my partner and I were one-up on the par 3 18th tee. I hit my shot onto the green near the pin and our opponents asked if they could…
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