Massive overhaul proposed for the Rules of Golf

Bob Weeks

TSN Senior Reporter

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If you’re a golfer and you’ve ever wanted to fix a spike mark on a green, move a stick in a bunker or perhaps keep playing with a damaged club, you may have your wish starting in 2019.

Those are just three of the proposed changes in a massive overhaul of the Rules of Golf announced Wednesday by the United States Golf Association and the Royal & Ancient. According to the decision makers, the reason for proposing the alterations is twofold: The rules today are complicated and they aren’t always clear. They also have limited relevance to many typical golfers. If passed, the new rules would come into effect Jan. 1, 2019.

To that end, the changes go much further than just the actual rules. They also include the language in which they are written, which is an attempt to simplify and modernize the guiding principles of the game while maintaining the integrity of the centuries-old sport.
 
“I think we’re trying to make the rules more relevant to all golfers,” said David Rickman, the R&A’s director of rules and equipment. “Now that’s a big constituency, not just the professionals or the elite amateurs but everybody who plays golf who wants to know how the game should be played. We want these rules to be more easily applicable. We want them to understand not just what the Rules say but try and give a little bit of understanding of what the purpose is.”

Let’s be honest: For many of us, the current rule book is a convoluted tangle of language and seeming contradictions that often lack understandable logic. Why, for instance, can you fix a ball mark on the green but not a spike mark? Or why should you be penalized if the ball moves for some unknown reason? Those were some of the issues the group tried to tackle.
 
“I actually think that most golfers know the basics really well,” Rickman said. “Where it begins to fall apart is when one of these unusual things happens. And I have some sympathy for that. Some of the situations that a golf ball can finish in are truly extraordinary. For me, that’s why it’s so important that the rules are structured in the right way, that the sign-posting is correct, that the language is right, so that someone can find the answer for one and then they can understand what the rule says and then deal with it.”

While professional events have referees on hand to interpret rules, everyday players are left to fend for themselves. They have to find the proper rule and decide how to handle the situation. In some cases, it’s like trying to perform surgery on yourself. Hence the need for the rewrite.

Among the proposed changes are simple ones such as:

- If you putt while on the green and your ball hits the flagstick that your buddy forgot to pull out of the cup, there’s no longer a penalty.

- You can keep using a club if it’s damaged, no matter how it happened, even if you slammed it in anger against your head a la Woody Austin. But, the trade-off is that you can no longer replace the club (unless someone or something else caused the damage).

- All those golfers on who have their caddies stand behind them and line them up? (Hello LPGA Tour). Sorry, that’s no longer allowed.

- Instead of five minutes to look for a lost ball, now you only have three. And if you somehow step on your ball or kick it while looking for it, there’s no longer any penalty. 

- Distance measuring devices are now allowed unless a local rule says they aren’t. Previously it was the other way around. Just don’t expect to see them on the pro tours any time soon. 

- If your ball hits you while it’s in motion, there is no longer a penalty. Remember Jeff Maggert at the 2003 Masters when the ball hit the lip of the bunker and came back to hit him?

- And perhaps as a tribute to Dustin Johnson, you will only be found to have caused your ball to move if it’s known or virtually certain that you were the culprit. The measurement? A 95 per cent margin of certainty.

Rickman was hesitant to call the new rule book a grow-the-game initiative, but having rules that are easier to understand can’t hurt. Also, many of the changes could help speed the game up, which is also a good thing to bring in new players and retain current ones.
 
Overall, this rule book won’t be used to the letter by the casual golfer. Let’s face it – every time a Saturday morning player takes a gimmee, uses a foot wedge from behind a tree or takes a Mulligan off the first tee, that player is breaking the rules. But at least now the rules that are in place are clearer, easier to find and intuitive.
 
To be sure, there are a lot of changes involved in the new edition, but all of them seem to make sense. Now it will be up to golfers everywhere to review the proposed changes, offer up comments to the USGA and the R&A, and then, when everything is finalized, learn the new rules and put them in play starting in 2019.