'Hints' to help you play within the rules

By Ed Gowan

Following is a primer for non- Tour players who do care about playing within the rules. These “hints” should make your game a little easier to manage and understand.

1. Everywhere in the new Rules that the word “player” is used, it also refers to a partner. That includes lifting, placing or dropping.

2. The handicap used in a competition is the course handicap and NOT the handicap index (decimal). 3. If a higher handicap is declared and it affects the number of strokes a player either gives or gets, that player is disqualified. what does this mean?

4. Each player in a handicap match is responsible for knowing where strokes are given. If one forgets, once the next hole begins with any stroke, any previous agreement understanding becomes fact.

5. The only excuse for a wrong scorecard is when the player is not aware of a penalty he has incurred. Disqualifications are separate.

6. If, before starting the round, a player realizes he or she has more than 14 clubs, a simple declaration before starting and taking excess club(s) out of play are sufficient to avoid a penalty. The club can be turned upside down, put on the floor of a cart, etc.

7. Players should take no more than 40 seconds to play a stroke. Forget the PGA Tour’s lack of enforcement.

8. If a ball at rest is accidentally moved by anyone or anything, it is always replaced. On the putting green, there is no penalty. Elsewhere, it depends on the circumstances whether a penalty applies.

9. The person attending the flagstick, which may be left in the hole if not attended, may touch the putting green with it to show a line for putting without penalty to the player.

10. A player can fix any new damage on a putting green, but this does not include poor conditioning or aeration holes.

There are a hundred little hints like this in the free USGA/R&A Players Guide, of which AGA has distributed more than 35,000 in the last several months. If your club or course does not have one for you, contact us!

Correction: The February Rules question left out a word that changed the outcome. It should have said that both balls when placed rolled immediately into the penalty area. Then the correct answer is “No penalties.” Taken as written, the answer is one stroke for the penalty area again and two more for wrong place, total of three penalty strokes. This was NOT the Ricky Fowler situation.