The Rules of Golf

I recently received a copy of The Rules of Golf in Plain English, written by Jeffrey S. Kuhn and Bryan A. Garner. For all of my lawyer followers, you will recognize Bryan Garner as the author and lecturer who has written numerous books on plain English for legal writing. We send our associates to his lectures and use his materials as excellent examples of legal writing for our internal training programs.

As the authors note in the preface, the original rules of golf written in 1744 included 13 rules and 338 words. Later, the predecessor to the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, printed 17 rules of golf in 541 words. The Rules of Golf in Plain English is 115 pages, including 2 appendices, and approximately 20,000 words!

Rule 1 provides that you must play the ball as it lies except if the rules say otherwise. For the life of me, I never understood the English grammar rule about "lie" and "lay", but I digress! Surprisingly, you cannot agree with your playing partner(s) to ignore a rule or penalty or you will be disqualified. Since it takes at least two people to agree, I assume that "you" means both (or all) players agreeing would be disqualified. Then, I love the legal catch-all, "If any issue is not specifically covered by the rules, the Committee will make a decision based on fairness."

I am dead in the water before teeing off on the first hole! Before sticking my tee in the ground, my first comment on the tee box is "two off of the first tee" and everyone agrees. Disqualified! But ... If we agree that you can hit two shots off of the first tee, but each player hits such a good drive that no one hits a second shot, do you get a pass or is it like a conspiracy where you do not actually have to commit the act, but simply agree to commit the act?

Assuming that I have not yet been disqualified, my ball is in the center of the fairway but it is sitting on a dead patch of grass so I gently roll the ball a few inches (but no closer to the hole) until it is sitting up on a nice tuft of grass. If I do this unseemly act on my own without the agreement of my playing partners, it is a two stroke penalty or a loss of the hole in match play. If my playing partners explicitly or implicitly agree, then we are all disqualified!

I think it is fundamentally unfair that I hit the ball in the fairway and I do not have a pristine lie (or lay), whether because my ball is in a divot, I have an uphill, downhill or side hill lie, or a cat used that portion of the fairway as her personal litter box killing the grass. In those circumstances, the Committee (me, since I would not want to agree with my playing partner and risk disqualification) should employ the "catch-all" and determine based on fundamental fairness that it is permissible to move the ball to an appropriate pristine lie in the fairway (but no closer to the hole)!

After all of that I miss the green and three-putt for a double bogey anyway!