Golf finally gets a new rule book, and it took the equivalent of only one year … of a dog’s life.
The U.S. Golf Association and the R&A, golf’s two governing bodies, spent seven years overhauling the game’s rule book. They reviewed feedback from more than 30,000 golfers. It was the most substantial revision in any major sport in recent memory, the sporting equivalent of Obamacare or, for older readers, the Reagan tax cuts.
The new rules took effect Jan. 1. Sniping from the game’s top players soon followed. One rule quickly got revised after the European Tour commissioner and two of the game’s prominent young stars denounced it as “grossly unfair,” “ridiculous,” and “kind of stupid.” But that move came too late for China’s top touring pro, who lost $98,000 because of a two-stroke penalty that, had it happened a week later, probably would have been waved off.
In sports, as in politics, the best intentions often lead to unintended consequences.
It has been nearly two years since USGA and R&A proposed breathtaking reforms intended to make the rules more straightforward and less punitive. The changes reflected the fact that golf’s rule book had become so complicated that recreational players were increasingly ignoring it. There also had been some high-profile rules infractions, most notably two widely criticized rulings that marred the 2016 U.S. Open and 2016 U.S. Women’s Open, that only reinforced the perception that the governing bodies were coldhearted scolds intent on sucking the joy out of the game.
The reset offered the chance for a fresh start. They cut the number of rules from 34 to 24 and eliminated or modified dozens of penalties. The introduction even included a bullet-pointed version and short, user-friendly videos explaining the changes, a sort of CliffsNotes for golf.
For the USGA and R&A, often unfairly caricatured as out-of-touch blue bloods, the move was seen as an effort to make the game simpler, faster, and more fun for the world’s 50 million players. But as R&A chief executive Martin Slumbers said Feb. 26, the rollout “hasn’t gone as smoothly as I would have liked.”
The most significant incident over the first two months involved PGA Tour pro Denny McCarthy, who received a two-stroke penalty at the Phoenix Open because his caddie was deemed to have helped him line up his shot. The USGA and R&A wanted to eliminate the practice, particularly prevalent in women’s professional golf, of caddies standing behind players and helping with their alignment.
The PGA Tour and USGA reviewed the McCarthy incident, determined the caddie had not helped align the player, and made the rare decision a day later to rescind the penalty. But not before Justin Thomas, the world’s third-ranked player, tweeted that the “penalty is mind-blowing … There is nothing about this rule that makes the game better.” Thomas almost received a similar penalty in the same tournament. That decision came too late to help China’s Haotong Li, who got hit with a two-shot penalty for a similar infraction a week earlier.
Other rule changes that seemed innocuous have caused unexpected angst.
The USGA and R&A agreed to let players leave the flag in the hole while putting, a move intended to expedite play, particularly for recreational players. But fifth-ranked Bryson DeChambeau, a data-driven physics major from SMU, ran the numbers and realized leaving in the flagstick could improve his putting, depending on “the coefficient of restitution of the flagstick.” The governing bodies’ intent was not to make putting easier, but that didn’t stop several other players from following DeChambeau’s lead.
Perhaps the most unlikely controversy concerns how players drop the ball when they are taking relief from a penalty area. Previously, players would stand erect, chest out, arm extended at shoulder height and drop the ball. But that often resulted in the ball bouncing away, forcing players to repeat the process. To speed up play, they changed the rule so that players now drop from knee height.
Players griped about the change and had difficulty breaking old habits. After ninth-ranked Rickie Fowler received a one-shot penalty at the WGC-Mexico Championship Feb. 22, he called the rule a “terrible change.”
It’s not clear whether players dislike having to change old habits or rather that the knee-height drop looks, well, somewhat effete.
“Looks very athletic, doesn’t it?” CBS analyst Nick Faldo sniffed when Jordan Spieth took a drop during the third round of the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. Fowler said players “have been making fun of the knee drop … I get to drop from my knee and look stupid.”
As ambitious as golf’s rules overhaul was, familiar bugaboos remain. Golf’s professional tours continue to grapple with “backstopping,” an unspoken pact between players to leave their balls on the green, potentially aiding friendly playing partners.
Nor have the tours mustered the courage to deal with the game’s most systemic problem, which is slow play.
The PGA Tour’s annual mid-February visit to Riviera Country Club, one of its best venues, became a joyless slog paced by notorious turtle J.B. Holmes, who won by, take your pick, either outlasting the field or merely exhausting fellow competitors’ patience. The problem is so prevalent that affable Aussie Adam Scott, who is not one of the culprits, volunteered to take a two-shot penalty to set an example.
Despite seven years of deliberations, the USGA and R&A surely never anticipated this. Perhaps the issue gets addressed when major tournaments are forced to finish on Monday mornings instead of Sunday afternoons.
Martin Kaufmann has covered sports for more than two decades, including the past 16 years as senior editor at Golfweek.
