Which Of The Rules Of Golf Are Most Expendable?

Everyone will have his or her own idea about rules they might consider ‘expendable’ but having written about the Rules of Golf for 16 years or so now, and seen them evolve and progress during that time, I’ve found this brief a little tricky.

Yes, there have been fairly high-profile incidents over that time that have sparked calls for change, and some of these have been heeded and remedied - no longer a penalty for any accidental movement of your ball or ball-marker on the putting green is one example, nor any penalty now for your ball accidentally hitting you or your equipment. And before you ask… no, I don't subscribe to the fairly common opinion that there should be free relief from divots on the fairway, which will no doubt disappoint many.

But after some thought, I have come up with a handful of Rules that I think could change for the better by perhaps making certain elements of them expendable.

Provisional ball wording

Let’s start with the provisional ball Rule (18.3). You have to make it clear that you are playing a provisional ball before doing so, but I think the Rule could be black and white or crystal-clear if it stopped at “the player must use the word ‘provisional’” rather than then going on to say “or otherwise clearly indicate that they are playing the ball provisionally under Rule 18.3”.

It’s completely clear-cut then rather than there being a slightly grey area as to precisely what is acceptable and what isn’t.

Marking ball with clubhead

I’ve always found it a little strange that you are allowed to mark your ball on the green by holding a club next to it, typically the toe of a putter as that is the club you’re most likely to have to hand. The Rules are so precise in so many ways, with some people getting very het up when a player appears to place their ball back down a millimetre out of place. Yet if you’re holding the club at one end and then bending down (not so easy for some with bad backs or reduced flexibility) surely there is scope for the putterhead to twist slightly between picking the ball up and placing It back down, and quite possibly by more than the odd millimetre that causes so much consternation elsewhere?

With regard to the procedure for marking the spot of the ball in Rule 14.1a, I would make the phrase “hold a club on the ground right behind or right next to the ball” expendable and just leave it at “place a ball-marker right behind or right next to the ball”. It would just seem more in keeping with the Rules of Golf’s general quest for precision to me.

Practice swings in different bunkers

Next, we’re on to making practice swings in another bunker to that in which your ball is lying, which is now allowed. Yes, if you’re anywhere else on the course you can make practice swings, so logically why not bunkers? But practising from a “similar hazard” used to be prohibited in Rules gone by and I think this is one change that shouldn’t have been made. Why? Because practising from a bunker has implications for speed of play if you’re having to walk possibly some way to a different bunker to practise and then do all the remedial raking work to restore it for those following.

At a time when pace of play remains a big topic of conversation, that seems slightly perverse to me, especially as at many courses there’s no guarantee that any two bunkers are going to have the same depth of sand and play the same anyway. And if you get drawn with the wrong person…!

Thankfully, I’ve not yet played with anyone who has done this, perhaps because most still think it isn’t allowed. Maybe we should just keep it that way, for this is one where it might be best for all concerned if Rules knowledge never fully catches up. Or we could revert to how it used to be for everyone’s sake?

Possible DQ for playing from outside teeing area

Next up, I’m not fully convinced that the escalation from two shots to disqualification in stroke play for playing from outside the teeing area or the wrong set of tees (Rule 6.1b), and then failing to correct the mistake before teeing off on the next hole, is entirely consistent with the penalty for playing from a wrong place elsewhere on the course.

Elsewhere, the penalty for playing from a wrong place is the general penalty under Rule 14.7b, which only escalates to disqualification if it’s deemed a “serious breach” that you then fail to correct. If you look in Rule 1.3c where it talks about golf’s various penalties, it says disqualification is warranted “for certain actions or Rule breaches involving serious misconduct (see Rule 1.2) or where the potential advantage is too significant for the player’s score to be considered valid”.

I don’t think teeing up a few feet in front of the markers really offers a potentially significant advantage, let alone a mere inch or two, and even if it’s the wrong set of tees some way forward, you’re still being penalised two shots, which is surely enough in nearly all instances? So, I would do away with the escalation to DQ for playing from outside the teeing area and not correcting the error as described in Rule 6.1b in stroke play and just cap the penalty at two shots.

Disqualification for missing tee-time

Finally, I think the penalties for missing your tee-time are too draconian at club level and should perhaps only apply in the elite game. We’re playing the game for fun and if  something goes wrong or something genuinely unforeseen happens that delays us getting to the golf club, is it really necessary that, rather than someone just rejigging the tee-sheet a little, we have to be disqualified from the competition we’ve perhaps been looking forward to all week?

Who really wants to have their golfing day ruined because they got stuck in traffic as a tree had come down or one of their kids had a nosebleed at the wrong moment so they missed their tee-time? Committees do have the power to offer some flexibility in “exceptional circumstances” and I would just like to see that flexibility or discretion broadened out a little in our ever more full-on world and for the Rules to adopt a slightly more accommodating approach to genuine reasons for lateness. Let’s make Rule 5.3a’s ‘five minutes late maximum’ expendable and replace it with something that allows a little more leeway for genuine reasons rather than ‘exceptional’ ones.