How should amateurs play golf?
There's the letter of the law, and then ... there's having fun.
One of the things golf swears by - to a fault, I would argue - is that professional golfers and amateurs all play the same game. We play by the same rules, we can play the same courses, use the same equipment, etc.
But of course, much of this isn’t true.
Many of the courses played on tour are completely inaccessible to mere mortals. (Hello, Augusta National.)
The equipment is often not the same - while the names on the clubs are the same, very often pros are using prototypes or custom clubs made especially for them. Amateurs can buy a similar club and have them custom fitted for them, but it’s not the same equipment. The same, apparently, goes for golf balls.
Even the tees we play are not the same - for good reason, often, but also because courses will put in temporary championship tees to test the pros who hit the ball irrationally far. I remember playing Torrey Pines and making a par on a par-3 and bragging that I’d done better than Tiger Woods who had double bogeyed that hole a few months prior. Then my buddy turned me around and pointed back at the tee Tiger had played from which I could barely SEE from where we were. Different game. The rough is grown out higher and the greens are mowed tighter for pros. It’s just not the same game.
So why do we insist on playing by exactly the same rules? When there’s money or a trophy on the line, I get it. But when you’re just playing with buddies - and even if you are playing a low-stakes gambling game - why make it purposely not fun?
Here’s an example - if a professional hits a ball just off the fairway, there’s an entire gallery watching. Balls just don’t get lost. For you and me? It could be deep in some rough, under some pinestraw or a bunch of leaves — the ball is in play, you just can’t find it. So…we have to take a lost ball penalty? How is that fair?
What about playing in a divot? Yes, pros have to do this in a tournament, but if you’re in the middle of the fairway, how is that any fun?
It turns out Shane Bacon, now a broadcaster but also a former blogger, summed this up pretty well. He came up with the “Rules of Amateur Golf” which are outlined here:
1.) Pull your ball out of a divot if it’s in your fairway, if everyone in the group agrees it is in fact a divot.
This is an important caveat so the Pat Reed in your group doesn’t decide that the one missing blade of grass is a divot and consistently improves his lie.
2.) Clean up any spike mark or imperfection on the green you want.
This is actually now an actual rule.
3.) If you hit it in a bunker and it’s in a footprint or old divot or unraked area, you can move it to a clean position.
Bunkers are a penalty, but you’re supposed to rake after you’re in there…why should I be extra penalized because some doofus left his FootJoy imprint where my ball landed?
4.) No more O.B.; play everything like a lazy lateral.
Many amateurs play this unintentionally, but this is really important for pace-of-play so you don’t consistently have to re-tee and hit over and over. Just drop a ball where you think it went out of bounds and take your penalty stroke.
5.) Mudballs can be cleaned and placed, no penalty.
Anyone who doesn’t agree with this is a psychopath.
6.) If a ball is “lost” in play (under leaves, pinestraw, etc) and the group agrees it was in play and in the general vicinity of where you are looking, a new ball can be put in play free of penalty.
Discussed above.
7.) If someone shows up on the first tee with iron headcovers, you can ask to be moved to another group.
This is the only tongue-in-cheek suggestion here, but let’s run with it.
8.) Full relief from a cart path, no nearer the hole, where you can have a free golf swing … no need to drop on wrong side of the path in desert/trees (Via @gacattak on Twitter)
Again, you COULD hit off a cart path - pros do all the time. And after the round, they can walk into the equipment truck and swap their club out for a brand new one, given that they likely scraped the hell out of it off that path. I can’t do this. And I’m gonna move it to a place where I have about the same shot as I did on the cart path. It’s just common sense.
Golf is fun because it’s competitive, and if you are cheating the rules you are cheating yourself. I get this, and as someone who really is trying to improve I am not trying to bend the rules in order to get an artificially better score or handicap. But … again, I do this for fun. I not only am not getting paid to do this, I end up paying quite a bit myself to do this. If you are playing a course in the fall, littered with leaves, you can stripe drive after drive in the fairway and potentially get 14 penalty strokes. How is that fair or fun?
If you want to be a red-ass and play by the letter of the law to your own demise, please do feel free to proceed that way. But golf for me is foremost about having fun. These rules work.