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TSN Senior Reporter

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I have always wondered who those people who call in rules violations during professional golf tournaments truly are.

Are they sticklers? Insecure power seekers? Lazy couch dwellers? Or do they do it simply because they can?

Callers are usually kept anonymous, but we do know some. When Tiger Woods was penalized for an incorrect drop at the Masters a few years ago, the caller turned out to be Champions Tour golfer David Eger.

A source told me recently that the ‘caller’ is often a person working as part of the television crew. It might be a person with access to video – including rewind and zoom capabilities – of the event who notices what might be an infraction and then informs tournament officials.

Whomever these folks are, and whatever their reason, their days may be coming to an end.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, the United States Golf Association and the Royal & Ancient said that a new standard on a rule is being put in place immediately that will prohibit the use of video review that would reveal a violation the naked eye couldn’t see.

So if you were, say, in a bunker and moved three grains of sand with your club that only a high-definition camera with a zoom lens could see, you likely wouldn’t be penalized.

But if the camera was just showing the action and it happened to show you using a foot wedge to re-position a ball from behind a tree, the footage could be used to enforce a penalty.

It seems like a reasonable addition to the Rules of Golf and one that was a result of the penalty Lexi Thompson suffered during the LPGA Tour’s first major, the ANA.

Cameras caught her re-marking her ball an inch or so away from its original spot. She was docked two strokes for that infraction and, because she’d already signed her scorecard, two more for an incorrect score.

That episode caused such a furor for the LPGA that a meeting was held at the Masters with the game’s major stakeholders including the USGA, R&A, PGA Tour, European Tour and LPGA Tour. According to one source, Mike Whan, the head of the women’s circuit, was quite vehement about the need to deal with video review in some way.

It’s unclear at this point whether the new rule would have saved Thompson. It certainly would have changed things at last year’s U.S. Women’s Open, where Anna Nordqvist was penalized when high- definition cameras showed here club dislodging a grain or two of sand in a bunker. It’s doubtful anyone would have noticed that infraction had the camera not picked it up.

The new standard on the rule, which also applies to things such as determining a point where a ball crossed a hazard line, is a positive step forward.

First, it makes a logical change. Second, and perhaps most important, it is immediate. This marks a second significant mid-stream alteration in less than a year. Last year, the same group came together and decided that the Rules shouldn’t assume a golfer moved a ball on a putting green just because moved. Call that one the Dustin Rule.

We used to have to wait four years before changes to the Rules of Golf were made. That’s the cycle for adopting new rules. Now it can happen when necessary. A major overhaul of the rule book is in mid-course and will go into effect in 2019.

The other interesting part of the release by the governing bodies brings us back to those folks on the phones. The two organizations are going to continue to discuss whether or not to allow outsiders to contact rules officials to point out a possible violation.

There are lots of reasons why this should happen, not the least of which those players on television are held to a higher standard than those who don’t get screen time.

Golf’s rulemakers are also going to look at whether there should be a statute of limitations on scorecards. If a player signs a scorecard and then is informed later of a rule violation, should they get a two-shot penalty, as Thompson did, when they had no knowledge of it? It’s kind of like assessing a tripping penalty in a hockey game the day after it happened.

Changing the Rules of Golf may seem easy, but it’s not. There are so many possibilities and situations that trying to cover all of them all of the time is next to impossible. However, the game would be a better place if those television viewers simply watched the golf rather than got involved.