The Rules of Golf can be complicated and difficult to apply at times, especially in the heat of the moment. Having a rules book in your bag doesn’t mean you are ready to make instantaneous rulings on the course; you have to know how to navigate through it. The USGA Rules of Golf book is 210 pages long, contains over 50 definitions, 34 Rules, Appendices I-IV, and includes the rules of amateur status. All this is sandwiched between a contents section in the front of the book and an index in the back conveniently located and designed to help you find what you are looking for. Of course, the contents and index are 32 pages total, so how confident are you that you can use those 32 pages to guide you through the remaining 168 pages while standing in the fairway with an anxious foursome behind you and three of your playing buddies arguing about whether you get relief? Here are some tips to help you quickly and accurately use your copy of the Rules of Golf.
The first thing you should do before you even open the book is ask a basic few questions: who, what, where, when and why? After answering these questions, you can better use the contents section or index to look up the situation. For practice, we will take a rules situation and use the book to get us to the correct ruling.
“In stroke play, on the 13th hole Eric played a wrong ball from a water hazard onto the green. Eric makes the putt, then tees off on 14. In the 14th fairway, he discovers that he had played a wrong ball from the hazard on 13.” What is the ruling?
Let’s start by asking our questions:
Who is involved? –Eric (aka The Player).
What happed in the situation? –Eric played a wrong ball in stroke play.
Where did this happen? –In a water hazard.
When did the situation occur? –Eric played a wrong ball on the 13th hole, but did not realize it until the fairway on the 14th hole.
Why did this happen? –Because Eric failed to properly identify his golf ball before playing the stray ball.
Now that we have answered the common questions we will use the Index in the back of the Rules of Golf to point us in the right direction to make the correct ruling. The first term we will look up will be ‘Player’, who in this situation is Eric. On page 200 under the ‘Player’ heading, there are some situations listed that deal directly with the player. But none of these get us to the correct answer, so we need to look at a different heading.
Since Eric played a wrong ball, this will be the next key word we will look up. In the index there is a heading titled ‘Wrong Ball’. Under this heading we have a couple of instances when a player makes a stroke at a wrong ball in different forms of play. Because Eric played a wrong ball in stroke play, we can use the heading “Wrong Ball, strokes with in stroke play” and it points us to Rule 15-3b on page 70. (NOTE: If you first look in the contents section you will notice that Rule 15 deals specifically with playing a wrong ball or substituting a ball. While that is a good starting point, the index allowed us to be more specific.)
The index has led us to Rule 15-3b which deals with the situation when a player plays a wrong ball in stroke play. The first sentence states, “If a competitor plays a stroke or strokes at a wrong ball, he incurs a penalty of two strokes.” This is not specific to where on the course the player plays a wrong ball so it is irrelevant that Eric played a wrong ball in a water hazard. But in the second paragraph the rule states that Eric must correct this mistake prior to playing from the next teeing ground or, if it was the last hole of the round, before leaving the putting green. Failure to do this results in disqualification. Eric played a wrong ball at the 13th hole but did not realize this until the 14th fairway, so he is now disqualified for not correcting his error prior to playing from the 14th tee.
By using the rules book we figured out Eric’s situation quickly by answering a few simple questions and using some key words. The best way to learn the Rules of Golf are through real live situations and using the rule book to determine the correct procedure. Start by asking a few questions to identify the keys elements of your situation, then use the contents and index sections to locate these key elements and find which best fit your situation. Knowing how to use the Rules of Golf book is your best route to doing what’s right on the course.
