“Play it as it lies” is the rule of golf. The focus is the ball: “as it lies” can determine the success of the next shot. If the previous one has brought that little white object to rest in an awkward place, not the smoothly mown grass of a fairway, the chance of this shot going awry has suddenly increased. As your mother used to say: “If you start with one lie, you will end up with more and more”. Golfers would say:“worse and worse”.
There’s another lie in the game of golf: that of the land. Not an inconsiderable factor when a golf course covers, on average, around 120 acres. Television viewers who are non-golfers see little of this: the professionals they watch rarely depart from the straight and the narrow. Their ball homes in on the fairway and little is seen of what lies around and beyond, the two-thirds of the course in which lurk all sorts of dangers. It goes by the name of “rough” – and it can be very rough. Gnarly bushes, tree thickets, ditches and sandy wastes are there waiting for the errant shot to land and, possibly, be found. With a golf course being so wide-ranging, matched by some of the shots golfers play, it is not unusual for individual players to disappear to various points of the compass on the same hole. What they do as they scour the rough, combing the bushes and poking the grasses in search of their ball is pray for relief.
“For this relief much thanks” – the line from Shakespeare that all golfers know. As thankful as Francisco was when Bernardo took over the midnight’s icy watch on the battlements of Elsinore Castle, so are golfers when afforded relief. Relief allows a player to pick up the ball from where it lies and drop it a certain distance away, in a place where a better shot is possible – and without incurring a one-shot penalty. But relief is only allowed if it complies with the rules.
Sport is a substitute for war, the difference being that it has rules. Rules can differentiate: in rugby, the touchline is out; in soccer it’s in. Rules make contests fair: no marksman may have a telescopic sight if other competitors don’t. Rules prevent injury: cyclists wear helmets, boxers gloves. Most importantly, rules allow for adjudication: not only do they set the goalposts for what constitutes a fair contest but they also rule on where a fair exception to the rule can be allowed.
Golf is an exceptional game. Its handbook (a misnomer) of rules runs to 162 pages, many of which describe situations where exceptions from the Rule 9: “Play it as it lies” are found. This makes sense: it’s not a chessboard out there or a 100 X 50-metre rectangle. Those 120 acres may contain alligators and other types of conditions from which a golfer may consider himself deserving of relief, that penalty-free drop away from the obstruction. In determining the concession, the rules bear in mind that golfers are looking for ways out of the sticky situation their poor shot may have got them into. Which is why Rule 16.2a states that free relief is not allowed from a “dangerous animal condition…when interference exists only because the player chooses a club, type of stance or swing or direction of play that is clearly unreasonable…”. So put away that driver which just might hit the hornets’ nest on the backswing and take the wedge that is best suited for the shot. It’s no wonder that, in major competitions, a rules official accompanies each group of players when they go out on the course. A player who says he knows all the rules cannot be trusted.
The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers of 1744 might have known them all: there were only thirteen. Not that they were entirely honourable. Rule 7 states: “At Holing, you are to play your Ball honestly for the Hole, and not to play upon your Adversary’s Ball, not lying in your way to the Hole.” They did, however, know the “as it lies” principle: Rule 10: “If a ball be stopp’d by any Person, Horse, Dog or anything else, the Ball so stop’d must be play’d where it lyes.” Ever since the movie Lock, Stock and Three Smoking Barrels the rule has had mercy on the unfortunate body on which the ball comes to rest – the player must take relief.
For a game which simply requires an individual player to move a small ball from Point A to Point B, using the fewest number of strokes with an implement designed for that purpose, the sheer number of rules seems absurd. However, rather than diminish the status of golf they secure it for the following reasons: firstly, golf is an individual’s game, each player in tight competition against himself, his opponents and the course. Secondly, each individual is looking for any opportunity to minimise his score and, without very definite and definitive regulation, may bend rules and gain unfair advantage. What is needed is a body of rules which is clear and unambiguous. Making the rules of golf emphatic goes a long way to “keep ‘em honest” so that, when standing in a clump of trees out of sight of other players, the temptation to improve your lie does not even enter your mind.
There are, admittedly, some rules which are rather mystifying: a peg may not be longer than 101.6mm. Seems absurd, but were longer pegs allowed, angry golfers may inflict injury upon opponents or, in extreme cases, fall on it themselves rather than lose the match. Rule 10.1 d Playing Moving Ball – Exception 3 states: “When a ball is moving in temporary water or water in a penalty area, the player may make a stroke at the ball without penalty.” This requires some imagination to envisage, never mind the skill to execute it. But wait, there is more: he is allowed this stroke but “…must not unreasonably delay play to allow the wind or water current to move the ball to a better place.”
Here is evidence of the fine line between looking for an advantage “unreasonably” and having the right to relief. If one is deemed to have hung about overlong, in the hope of the ball reaching the bank and allowing a shot, you will be penalised two strokes.
Another area where time is crucial is when a putt is made, reaches the cup and hangs hero-like to the edge of its precipice. In this case you want your superhero to drop – and you’re allowed 10 seconds before having to perform, very reluctantly, the coup de grâce. But if you prolong your wait, a one-stroke penalty will add insult to injury.
To non-golfers such rules may sound pedantic. But golfers know that the ball is sacro-sanct and all things pertaining to it. If you touch the ball where it lies, add a shot to your score; if your bag knocks it and it moves, another shot. And if your opponent or his caddie knocks your ball, a shot is added to his score, which raises the issue of unfair competitiveness. Golfers are not allowed to inquire of other golfers (except a partner) what club he selected for the shot; furthermore, if you “touch the opponent’s equipment (i.e. having a good squizz at his bag)…to learn information” about what club was used, it will also net you a two-shot penalty.
In case that sounds harsh, there’s more. A player who is nursing some injury may not have tape which, by immobilising a joint, helps him swing at the ball. On a different note, no player may have an audio device which either plays what might help his swing rhythm or provides advice on golf. He may, though, have a device which relays golf-unrelated matters such as news reports or weather forecasts. However, no device which measures wind speed or changes in elevation is allowed. Golf rules take into account both the human inclination to gain unfair advantage and the physical domain of the game.
There are, though, limits to the eagle eye of the rules. Television has recently been declared out of bounds following an incident in which a television viewer notified the rules’ officials that he or she had seen, on the live coverage of the previous day, one of the players slightly misplace her ball on the putting green. After viewing the clip, sent by this individual, the officials informed the player during the final round – she was leading this major championship by two strokes – that she had been penalised four shots. This led to the final result being a tie and, in the ensuing sudden-death play-off, she lost. The rules have since been changed so that armchair viewers can no longer, with the aid of the zoom and playback effects of television, turn into officious officials.
Games are played; then come the rules. Some would say that rules can spoil a game – but that’s until they shout “UNFAIR!” Rules are needed, but some can frustrate and annoy. When such is the case, they need to change, as seen recently when a player, who had marked his ball on the putting green, subsequently replaced it, then watched in horror as a strong gust of wind blew it off the green into a water hazard from which he had to drop, incurring a stroke penalty, and then attempt to land the ball on the green for the second time. Understandably, that as well as some other punitive rules, has been ditched.
Some rules simply confuse…
Rule 14.3 b (3): Ball must be dropped in relief area. The ball must be dropped in the relief area. The player may stand either inside or outside the relief area when dropping the ball.
If a ball is dropped in a wrong way in breach of one or more of these three requirements:
- The player must drop a ball again in the right way, and there is no limit to the number of times the player must do so.
- A ball dropped in the wrong way does not count as one of the two drops required before a ball must be placed under Rule 14.3c (2). (Another three paragraphs follow.)
Though you might not quite understand what’s going on here, at least there’s now an explanation for that golf ball which was found in someone’s metacarpals on the 14th.
In 1744 those gentlemen golfers of Edinburgh had no idea how those original thirteen rules would grow. To them it was a simple game, subject to the elements (Rule 5: “If your ball comes among watter, or any wattery filth…”) and possible dishonesty (“…not to play upon your Adversary’s Ball…”). These domains still pertain to the game, with the rules there to minimise the possibility of conflict and unfairness. Beneath all this, secure in its place “as it lies”, is the sacrosanct ball, without which, for most golfers, life wouldn’t be worth living.
