Bob Austin has scored 100 percent on the PGA/USGA Rules of Golf exam the last three times he’s taken it — and four times overall. He’s answered a question incorrectly on the exam a grand total of three times over the last eight years.
Yet, as much of a rules expert as he’s been, there he was on a beautiful Saturday morning/early afternoon a couple of weeks ago, attending the first of five rules seminars the CGA is conducting this fall.
Why?
Because, as CGA executive director Ed Mate noted early on, seldom in history have the Rules of Golf undergone as significant a chance as they’re currently undergoing. This major “Rules Modernization” will take effect on Jan. 1.
In other words, ready or not, here they come.
People like Austin — and the other 21 people who attended this particular rules seminar on Oct. 20 at Todd Creek Golf Club in Thornton — are doing their best to be proactive, trying to fully memorize and understand the new rules as well as they did the old ones.
And that’s the idea behind a couple of significant projects the CGA has undertaken this fall:
— Mate — who has played a significant role in the impending rules changes, having served on the USGA Rules of Golf Committee for the last three years — and the CGA are putting together a series of “Ready for the 2019 Rules” videos which are being released each Monday for 18 weeks this fall.
— And, complementing the videos, there are five four-hour rules seminars, accompanied by a meal, that are being conducted by the CGA. There was the aforementioned first one at Todd Creek on Oct. 20, one at Lone Tree Golf Club on Oct. 27, and another at Fossil Trace Golf Club in Golden on Saturday. Upcoming are ones at The Club at Flying Horse in Colorado Springs (Dec. 8), and at Ptarmigan Country Club in Fort Collins (Dec. 15).
And at least 10 more CGA rules seminars will be held in the spring, according to CGA director of rules and competition Robert Duke.
To access the CGA’s Ready for the 2019 Rules page, which includes both the videos and the list of seminars, CLICK HERE.
At Todd Creek, the seminar was led by Mate and Duke. With the help of a presentation program and videos, they went one by one through many of the major changes in the rules that will take effect on Jan. 1, took questions and led discussions that came up.
“When the flag went in the hole at the Mid-Am (the final individual CGA championship of 2018) and we started doing the Monday videos, we thought, ‘We ought to pair these with seminars,'” Mate said. “It wasn’t planned, but I’m really glad we did it and I think it’s worked out great.
“Nobody is an expert now. Everybody has to reprove their expertise.”
About 50 people were on hand at Lone Tree, following the 22 at Todd Creek. And there were more than 70 signed up for Fossil Trace this past weekend. Attending are rules officials, various representatives of men’s and women’s clubs, PGA professionals and plenty of others.
“Working on the rules is hard, it’s a process,” noted Austin, who typically serves as a rules official at 8-10 USGA/NCAA tournaments per year. “But even if you’re a beginner or wanted to start officiating, these (the rules seminars) would be a place to start. And I’m sure everyone benefited from listening to the conversations.”
As of Jan. 1, there will be 24 rules in the Rules of Golf, down from 34. Some of the major changes will be:
— When taking a drop, it will be done from knee height rather than shoulder height.
— Players can leave the flagstick in when putting, with no penalty for their ball hitting it.
— The search time for lost balls has been reduced to three minutes from five.
— Most green damage, including spike marks, can be repaired without unduly delaying play.
— A ball unintentionally moved during a search should be replaced with no penalty.
— A ball wedged against the flagstick and the side of the hole is deemed holed.
— It’s not permitted for caddies to line up players before they strike their shot.
— There’s no penalty when a ball unintentionally hits a player or his/her caddie or equipment.
— There’s no penalty for an accidental double hit. Play the ball as it lies.
— An expanded version of water hazards — not including bunkers — are now referred to as penalty areas.
— Loose impediments can be removed in penalty areas and in bunkers.
— Clubs can be grounded in penalty areas.
— A ball — or ball marker — moved accidentally on a putting green should be replaced with no penalty.
— A player may keep using any damaged club, no matter the nature or cause of the damage, even if the player damaged it in anger.
Of course, those are just the highlights. There’s much more to it than that. For a summary the CGA created comparing the current rules to the 2019 rules, CLICK HERE.
“If the facial expression and body language are any indication, (the seminar attendees) really do like (the rules changes),” Mate after the Todd Creek seminar. “I’m not saying they are perfect by any means. Are there still weird things that are head-scratchers? Yes. There’s always going to be nuance, but overall on a scale of 1 to 10 of intuitive, we moved it from a 3 to a 7. It’s a huge improvement. It’s just so much more logical.
“I used to say to people who were not rules experts and would say, ‘I’ve got reasonably good common sense.’ And I’m like, ‘That’s not going to help you'” understand the rules. “It doesn’t help you. There was ‘rules common sense’, and once you became a rules expert and understood the philosophy behind it then common sense in that context would work for you. But unless you understood this, it didn’t help you. Now, if you just have common sense, they make more sense — if that makes sense,” Mate said with a chuckle.
And that’s hopefully the case for people affectionately known as “rules geeks” as well as for relative novices.
Austin definitely falls into the former category. Besides being a prominent national and regional rules official in his own right, he’s married to Christie Austin, the first woman to chair the USGA Rules of Golf Committee.
“I grind on it and work at” being very knowledgeable about the Rules of Golf, Bob Austin said. “My wife says I study more than anybody who she knows. But I really enjoy the academic study of the rules. Most days I spend a half an hour or an hour just reading things, looking at things and just kind of working on it. To do it right, and to do it at a really high level, it takes a lot of work. I love the work, but you need to be diligent about it.
“Christie and I both joke about it. When we’re both studying for rules, we both have decision books on our bedside table. That’s sort of the standard joke with our rules officials. (Christie and I) will talk about situations that come up. She’ll ask me what I learned today. We actually talk about (the rules) a reasonable amount. As a past chairman of the USGA Rules of Golf Committee, she has a great knowledge also. Every time we take the test together, we have a little bit of a friendly (competition). I hope she gets 100, but we certainly have a friendly rivalry about it. She’s academically smarter than I am, and it drives me crazy because I work a lot harder at it that she does. But she can get to the same level as I am in less time. It drives me crazy, but I’m proud of her for it.”
On the other hand, there are plenty of people who want to play by the rules without having to study the topic so intensely.
The key to an effective rules seminar “is being able to give beginning, intermediate and advanced offerings,” Mate noted. “Sandy Schnitzer, who is the co-chair of our Rules Committee, I’ve seen her do rules seminars and she’s so good at teaching to a beginning audience. What we do, as people who live it every day, we hear a question and either we overthink it and try to give a much more detailed answer than is necessary or we underthink it. She’s just so good at getting (what a questioner is asking, no matter at what level).”
As many changes as will take effect on Jan. 1, it’s safe to say that not all will be set in stone. Any long-term student of the game can tell you as much.
“The Rules of Golf are very fluid,” Bob Austin said. “I was surprised by some of the changes, like when you throw a club and damage it, you can continue to play with it. I understood the reason behind each one. But the rules are fluid. And not everything in the rules are going to work out. And the next time they make (a new rules book), there will be tweaks and changes. The USGA and its rulesmakers are going to be watching and looking, and they’ll see what works and what doesn’t work. I certainly trust their judgment.”
