No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - 1191: Golf Rules Q&A With The USGA’s Craig Winter

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

Soly and Neil caught up a couple of weeks ago with Craig Winter, USGA Sr. Director of the Rules of Golf and Amateur Status, for a Q&A focusing on a variety of topics surrounding the rules and their application. Now, after an eventful Open Championship with notable rulings involving Bryson DeChambeau and Scottie Scheffler, we’re excited to share our chat with Craig which touches on many of the hot button issues in the rules that affect professional tournaments across the globe, plus some common misconceptions that impact everyday recreational golf. Support our Sponsors: Titleist Holderness & Bourne USGA If you enjoyed this episode, consider joining⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Nest⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: No Laying Up’s community of avid golfers. Nest members help us maintain our light commercial interruptions (3 minutes of ads per 90 minutes of content) and receive access to exclusive content, discounts in the pro shop, and an annual member gift. It’s a $90 annual membership, and you can sign up or learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠nolayingup.com/join⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the No Laying Up Newsletter here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://newsletter.nolayingup.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the No Laying Up Podcast channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@NoLayingUpPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Be the right club today. That's better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying Up podcast. Sali here for the AirPods for the intro, traveling a little bit this week. We had an excellent, excellent episode for you today, if I may say.

We sat down with Craig Winter from the USGA. He's a rules official. I brought in our rules expert. Schuster to talk us through this conversation. Important disclaimer here. We recorded this well before the Open Championship. There'll be no discussion here on the Scotty Schaepler situation. It happened on Sunday.

Obviously the Bryson situation happened on Friday. We do talk about the Wyndham Clark situation at Chinatock because that kind of came up with the Bryson stuff as well. But just no, we recorded this before the Open Championship. And I'm really glad this is coming out now because it's an interesting discussion just on the rules of golf. We threw everything we possibly could at him. one rule you're probably all familiar with.

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You can learn the rules anytime, anywhere with Rules 101. It's a free online course from the experts at the USGA. Get started today at usGA.org slash rules 101. Without any further delay, here's our chat with Craig Winter from the USGA. Craig, welcome to the program. It's good to have you. This has been a long time coming for me. I am maybe a recovering rules know it all or thought.

I was. You know, I played Atlanta Junior Golf, had to do the rule seminar. I feel like I have a working knowledge of it. But man, sometimes the ability to interpret the rules under pressure on call can get to you. But before we get into my selfish questions for you, Craig, he drags me down with the big club, Neil. You're part of a big club, Neil. I'm admitting it. I'm waving the white flag here. And that's what we're bringing you. We're bringing in the expert. But give the, give the audience a little background, uh, your role at the USGA and how you got that. So I grew up in Alaska and golf wasn't really a thing for me in my childhood, but certainly became one when I, I'm a duck, go ducks out in Oregon, started playing golf and just sort of fell into a job and internship with the Oregon Golf Association. I was a boat right. I wasn't into the rules back then, but I quickly caught the bug. Like a lot of people hit that first good shot. I kind of had that first epiphany and it just fit with me. And it's the people that I met along the way that kept pulling me in. And 2013, I came on with the USGA right before Marion, last time we were there at the Open,

and went through the rules modernization process. And so kind of being in the room for the last 10 years, whether that's in the governance process or it's at the championship level has seen a lot of things. And that background has really helped kind of guide the way that ultimately the organization currently looks at the rules of golf. And it's different now than it certainly was back in 2013, as we all know, with 2019 modernization. But golf came to me a little later in life, wish I had it younger, but the rules have been really 20 years now that I've been right in the middle of it. So, yeah, and you mentioned 2019,

because I feel like that's when the rules became a little more prevalent mainstream. And what was the, what was the catalyst of 2019? Was there anything, like, why was there all of a sudden, like we need to refresh in a big way the rules of golf? Yeah, the rules have gone through these, these periodic cycles. We look back at time, 1984 was a pretty significant revision. Before that, 1952 was a pretty big revision. And they've kind of rolled almost generationally. We were at a point getting into the, ultimately what led to the 2019 revision with a book that had, there was almost 1,300 different decisions. Now, this is kind of getting into the weeds, but all of those were individual rulings that golfers, administrators needed to know to be able to get it right. And

And that was untenable. We knew we couldn't continue to go down that path. We were trying to get every little answer to the fairest possible outcome. And when you start to do that, they're just too big for anybody. And that was really about deconstructing, taking everything down to the studs, rewriting the rules, and ultimately trying to put together a code. It's not simple, but it's a lot simpler. And the goal was to make them easier to understand and apply.

And we feel like we've done that. We've continued that path in 2023. And now we're at a space where it's, it's more maintenance and just seeing what's happening in the game. And we can make some tweaks when it helps. But generally, they're in a pretty good spot from our perspective. So what would be, give me an example of maybe a rules category that you got that you feel like got simplified. That was, if you can, you know, if maybe it's a penalty area or, you know, take that wherever you want. Yeah, I think, I think the simplest place that the rules now, like they lean on with relief.

It's dropping from knee height, which obviously that's a very visual change, but the main reason we sought to do that was the ball, when you drop it from shoulder height, it bounces and moves, and there's a lot of different things that can happen. There were nine different, I'm not going to go through them, but nine different things that could happen when you drop the ball where you had to redrop it. And now we have this relief area concept. You have a reference point. You measure from that.

You have a relief area, and you just drop in it, and the ball stays there. That's a much simpler thing to explain to somebody. And because of that, people can really just kind of open up and understand the relief rules a little bit better. And there's several examples of peeling out penalties that came about in 2019 that really don't lead to the emotional pain that, whether it's golf administrators or viewers at home, certainly the golfers feel. But simplification was a big part of that. Really, certainly the key to unlock in a lot of what we did. God, that's interesting. I would agree you've simplified the drop stuff.

I still managed to mess it up at cost of compo in January. So, but I think sometimes I get stuck between like I have the old rules that I learned, you know, in junior golf and like, am I dropping it two times or three? You know, like these little changes have that's, I think, what's messed me up a little bit. Yeah, that's not going to help it too much. I would agree. It's simple, but I have to, I have to unlearn the old stuff. So, sorry. So, sorry.

Well, no, this is, it makes me laugh because in the middle of like getting a rule explained to him, Neil will interject and say, see, I thought it was, no, it's not. It used to be that. That's fine that you think that, but that's not what it is. Like, that's not, you don't have to, he doesn't really even argue it with it. It's like, no, see, I thought lateral meant this. It's like, okay, well, it doesn't.

Let's ignore that. But I actually, so just, I had a question on, on drops in, and as we, you know, I was going to work this in later, but this came from our message board. Smorgas board asked this. Would rules officials ever consider changing the rules, rules on drops to stop players from gaming drops so they can eventually place the ball, right? Because it's, it still happens relatively frequently, right? And I kind of felt like this rule change was supposed to kind of address that. And I'm curious if you, if you have feedback

on whether you think it's addressed it to a sufficient level. Yeah, Sally, we, we spent a lot of time, even in getting into the 2019 rules, we had a almost a two-year period of getting feedback. Part of what that feedback was was dropping the ball from any height. So the very first version of the rules that we released getting into 2019 said, you drop the ball from any height, and you need to drop the ball in the relief area, and it has to stay. No drop, drop, drop, it has to stay. And golfers, as they do, they went in every single direction and every hypothetical. And this idea that you'd run into a bunch of situations where you couldn't get the ball to stay.

Pictures were coming in. Well, I couldn't get it to stay here. How am I supposed to make this rule work? and candidly like everybody that thought they could sort of broke that part of what we were trying to do. And how did we back out of that? Well, we raised the height to knee height and we said, look, this is going to be simpler, it's going to be faster. Can players still get to placing? Yeah, they can.

We knew that was going to be the case. But trying to find an alternative to that, which we could get into placing if you'll want, it's just really not quite tenable because we lose the randomness. and pace of play would be a huge challenge for us. But this knee height drop gives us kind of this sweet spot between the ball's not going to roll too far. But yeah, players still can drop on the edge sometimes and be able to place. We don't love that, but there's really not an easy way around that. Another specific question that with the 2019 changes, it feels like the idea of intent was introduced in certain parts of the game.

So you think about, you know, Zach Johnson and Augusta, he hits. the T marker by accident. Like, go ahead and, you know, reload, brother. But then you see Cam, in the Tien area. Yeah. Yeah. And but then you see Cam Young at Cadillac. And it's like his ball, you know, he didn't intend. There was no intent to move it, but he, you know, he caused it to move. And then if you get to the green, I feel like it's different there. So I'm just wondering, is, is that intentional that intent is almost like interpreted different at different parts of the course? Or am I getting that all wrong? Yeah, this is a tough one to unpack.

Intent is all through the rules. It wasn't first introduced in 2019. There's standards all through the rules. Some of them have intent. Some of them don't. You hit your ball into a penalty area. No one or virtually certain is the standard that's used. There's no intent in that.

Making a stroke, there's intent. That's kind of where it fits in with Zach Johnson. You know, his ball was in the teen area. The key thing there is is actually not in play yet. He hasn't started the hole. So he hasn't really kind of. activated his golf ball yet. It's sitting in the tea, sitting on the tea. If you accidentally hit it, you haven't made a stroke and you've moved a ball that's not in play. So there's no penalty.

When you get to Cam Young, which is a really a very different situation, he's in the fairway. He's hit yet another awesome drive. And he's addressing his ball. And the question there is, did he cause it to move? It's not about intent at all. It's whether or not his ball in play was moved by him or by something else. And ultimately the causation, which is also known or virtually certain, he put his club down right next to it and it moved right away. The way that standard would apply, those two things add up to that's on cam. Unfortunately, that's the one stroke penalty, he puts it back.

That happens on the green. There's no penalty now. And so there's a lot of things that you're kind of putting together in that same question about like how does intent fit in? Green reading materials, what you see on tour, kind of jump. into another space of intent. There are the restrictions that we have at the highest level of the game. They have these approved books. They can put notes in them. They can only put notes in based on ultimately what they see and what they feel. There's a lot of integrity built into that

and how the game works is all, it's really through standards. That's the way the rules are trying to put things together. Intent is certainly prevalent in a lot of other areas, but specifically for that case, it's really more about understanding ball and play in areas of the course where your ball is. The green you're safe, the T you're safe, everywhere else you've got some risk there. The came on explanation and the Zach Johnson.

So what, but was the intent on the green? Explain that to me. And you said that was changed in 2019 or updated? So when we, when we go to whether it's accidental movement of the ball on the green, take us all the way back to 2016 in Oakmont. DJ was kind of the beginning of that. I'm going to call it House of Cards falling,

or us continuing to move in the direction of less penalties for ball movement, all the way into the current with Shane Lowry, what happened at the Open Championship of Port Rush. Now there's yet another exception to balls moving and getting penalties. Well, on the putting green, it doesn't matter if you move your ball by accident. The only thing you can't do is move your ball deliberately without first, marking it. Every other situation, you're not going to get a penalty. And that makes the green much simpler. No question. We also let you have a repair damage on the green now as well. So greens are

kind of a safe space where before, back in pre-2019 times, referees would actually have kind of like this, oh, the players on the green now, there's all these things I have to look at. These players aim pointing, oh my gosh, are they touching their line? What did they just fix? Was that a ballmark or was that something else? We're much more relaxed now with referees because there are less penalty situations. But ultimately the intent side of how everything fits in the game of golf, anytime you see the player does something to do something, which could also be improving, that's kind of code for intent in the rules. And it candidly is everywhere. There is a misconception that there's a lot more intent in the rules from 2019 on. That's really not the case. We

use it when it makes sense. We have some black and white, very just sort of matter-fact based standards, but there are intent-based standards as well. And I think the best example, that's probably improving your conditions. That's probably the easiest way to explain intent and why we have it there philosophically. So a question I would have is, you know, we see a lot of reading the lie going on with out of the rough, you know, pro game, but, you know, any, any golfer, you know, guys taking a club to, you know, hey, I'm going to, maybe I'll hit a seven wood here. And then they go back and hit, you know, six iron. Like what, that's one where I, you know, I'm like, man, that feels in, I don't know.

What, what's the, what's the, what's the policy there? On top of that too, like just, I'm curious on that same kind of category is like guys that when they get in thick fescue, I remember Wyndham Clark doing this at the U.S. Open, like going around to different parts of it and feeling what the club was doing in different parts of the rough. Don't know if that's a violate, I don't think it was, but didn't feel right to me. And I'm curious as it relates to what you know asked as well. Yeah. let me check off that one first, Sully, because I think it's an easier one to speak to. The other one, Neil makes me wiggle a little bit, so I'll get to it. Hot seat, let's go.

So when we see, it's the typical situation where there's something that shows up on social media, remember that golf has been much different about watching video. Candidly, like Dustin caught us in a space where, go back to 2016, we didn't have sophisticated video, whether it was us or really any other organizer to be able to quickly address those types of things. We've gone so far past that now where we have referees watching video in real time. Something that happens like what Wyndham, for your viewers or listeners at home, that he was on the ninth green. He did a lot of practice swings. He just does that everywhere. It's not just at Chinnecock. It wasn't just on that hole. He's trying to find the feel, right?

And so he did something that looked to a lot of people like he stepped, you know, as it was said, like deliberately behind his ball and he improved it. Well, we have plenty of camera angles that we can look at. The perception that you see and you guys do so much video, when you have those zoom lenses, everything gets smushed. If you look at that video, it looks like people are walking five feet behind him as well, and they're 100 yards back. So everything was compressed. And yes, he stepped close to his ball, but he stepped well behind it. So he wasn't stepping down behind it. And ultimately the practice swings were way right of it.

So he wasn't improving his cats for that shot. That's more of the video perception. Neil, to your question. Sorry, Craig. I just want to fall up on that super quick. I saw that. I totally agree with what you said. I was more curious of him hitting different parts of the rough of the fescue

to kind of see how the club would react to it. Seemed gray area to me of like testing the lie and the surface of the rough or the thickness of the rough, that's where I know how that rule actually works. Yeah, so there's no restriction on testing. When you're dealing with grass or other natural conditions, testing and trying to find a good space or a good feel, kind of trying to simulate what you're going to have,

the only thing that you have to be concerned about when you're doing that is actually improving your conditions affecting your stroke. So lie, stance, swing, line of play. If you're not affecting right around your ball or where you're going to swing through it or where your ball is going to go, you don't have to worry about any of that. So find a spot, and that's ultimately what Wyndham's doing. He's like looking for a grass that's similar,

and he's like a pretty twitchy guy, so he does a lot more that looks erratic than what other, like a Scotty would do, right? When you get into, and this ties directly into conditions affecting your stroke, with Neil's question, when players are in thick rough and they happen to still have the driver in their hand and they put the driver behind their ball.

We'll give him a break. Maybe it's seven one, But it might be from like 170, you know. Yeah. And I said truly, like, it makes me wiggle. It's like, why, why did you just do that? What we're looking at is whether or not there was improvement for one. You know, if the grass gets compressed, there is space in the rules for you to address the ball.

So you can put your club down behind it. You can, what's called just ground your club lightly. And all that means is you're using the weight of the club. You're not pressing. Whatever the club weighs, you just, you're basically letting you. it go. That improvement is, in fact, allowed. It's not a clean line from, I'm using my seven wood when I am really thinking about using my six iron. The players that do that, that are kind of the bowl in the china shop, those are uncomfortable to watch on TV. There are a lot of different times

when you're looking at videos saying, did that actually improve? Very rarely is it ever a case of improvement? Behind the scenes, there have been players that have been talked to about that, haven't led two penalties, but, you know, we might see something in the future where it's just so clear that that player did beyond what ultimately they're allowed to do in the rules where it does turn into what this would be a two-stroke penalty. There's some checks and balances, though. So that's a two-stroke penalty, not just the not just one. Yeah, it'd be improvement if what happened was a breach, if they went beyond what is lightly grounding their club. And they're allowed to improve by lightly grounding, but if they do something more than that and they

actually improve, they would get the two-stroke penalty. This is one of those cases where there's not kind of gradated penalties for different acts, but if a player improves by doing something, they're not allowed to this in case their lie or their swing, there isn't like the one stroke for small axe, two strokes for two-ax. Playing the courses, you find it, which is really what this is based off of, is so fundamental of the game, that it's just, it's the general penalty. strokes and stroke play, it would be the loss of whole of match play. And we don't have the gradiated or escalating penalties that we might see in other areas. Okay, so zooming out a little bit. I was playing in mensly last night and I with a couple

guys that were, you know, candidly not very good. Newer golfers. Let me put it that way. Great guys. And they, I asked, I was like, hey, I'm doing this podcast tomorrow. And and they were like, can you almost zoom out what for a more novice golfer? What is the difference or the point of having red and yellow penalty areas. Like when you talk about simplifying the game, and I think that's, you know, I've had beginners ask me that. Like, what's, what's the difference? I know you get a little bit more options, but almost philosophically, like, why, why are there red versus yellow? I want to start like super, like, you know, I'm in fifth grade learning the game. You did not need to preface this with the novice question because you and I messed

this up a few months ago. Oh, I know, but I'm more curious about going back and understanding, Like the, you know, we skip over that part, Sally. Like what was the, you know, the thesis behind having red and yellow and different options? Yeah. Yellow has, yellow has less options. Red. The only thing that's different about red is it has the lateral relief option, has everything else that the yellow has. And so when you hit into a penalty area, you can take stroke and distance.

You can take what's called back on the line relief. It's not line of flight. It's the point that you last entered and you line it up with the hole. and you just create a straight line, you go and drop behind the penalty area on that line. And then you have lateral relief, which is two club lengths. All those are one-stroke penalties. But the fundamental, like, kind of, this kind of philosophy,

why are there two different versions of that? The easiest hole is probably talking about Pebble's eighth hole. Most of golf knows that hole, right? That second shot into the green, what's the difference if you were to mark that entire penalty area, you're red and somebody hits it, you know, they're the right of the green. They cross up over the land near the putting green area to the right of it. And then they go in down onto the beach in the Pacific Ocean. Dropping, if that was red, dropping two club lengths from where it last

crossed and shipping up, you know, maybe they make, maybe they make par, right? And that's a, that's a pretty significant relief procedure to be able to drop and make a par. It's a great par. but that hole's traditionally marked yellow. The reason for that, as the rules speak to, is you're protecting the integrity of the hole. If you mark that hole yellow, which the eighth hole will typically almost always be marked yellow, and there's normally a drop zone

that's back across the other side of the canyon. And what that's doing is it's saying that if a player hits it up and they just flash it straight out right or they hit it short and it just goes down into the beach short of the hole, or they hit that shot that kind of crosses land up by the green and then it goes into the ocean. They're all being treated the same. They didn't navigate the challenge on that hole, which is to hit it straight enough and far enough over that canyon to be able to get it to stay up on land.

And when they don't do that, if you don't mark it red, they don't have the two club length option and the back-on-the-line option is going to put them, you know, Japan or somewhere quite far afield. And so then they're probably going to be either taking stroke and distance or the drop zone because back on the line really isn't an option for them and so philosophically what's that what's that distinction doing well it's it's intended to to allow the hole to play as it's intended down where you all are you know sawgrass the 17th imagine that hole red like that would just be such a different experience for golf and how do we protect the integrity of that hole well you mark

the island yellow and now golfers can't drop when they you know they air mail they one skip off the green They hit something that spins back off the front. They can't drop right where it went in. They have to drop under the yellow options, which doesn't include the two club length. And so that's really what that's about. It's both the architect designing holes and then ultimately those that run competitions at that golf course or the committee that just sets it up. They're trying to preserve what that hole's all about. So you'd market yellow.

It's interesting that you mentioned TBC sawgrass there because that's right where my mind went. But I was thinking more along the lines of the 18th hole, the 16th hole. we tend to see drop controversies at TPC sawgrass with the way the water works into the fairways on a lot of those holes. And as you're describing it that way, my question would be like, why wouldn't 18 that water all down the left also be Markyellow?

We typically see that as red. We see difficult conversations happening, really difficult to track, especially at the highest level of the game with a lot of money involved of, did that ball cross? Did it not cross based on, you know, based off just,

gut and eye test that as you described it that way, I'm like, well, that just seems like it should be yellow and you didn't navigate the water. What would constitute a red there, basically, compared to what you just, the example you gave about 8 and 17? Yeah, you know, if you think of, if you think of 18, sawgrass or even going back to Pebble, pretty famous hole we'll be at next year with the U.S. Open. Those holes, you're not kind of hitting to an area that's sort of the safe haven. You have everywhere in the world to bail out right. And if you overhook it, you end up getting into the penalty area. There's a difference between trying to determine where the ball last crossed into the penalty area, which is the controversies that you're speaking

to, these challenges of like, did it cross here or there? You know, that's not about protecting the integrity of the whole. That's just kind of a rules question that's trying to be answered. I wouldn't say that the 18th at Sawgrass is about trying to somehow navigate that penalty area in a way that you've crossed it. You're trying to keep the ball right enough that you don't get wet. And when you do go into that, dropping just right outside laterally is a, it's certainly a sufficient option to be able to give the one-stroke penalty and then play your next shot. Quite a bit different than trying to hit to the 17th, the island green. The test there is very different for a golfer. Could a committee mark that yellow?

They could. But what that would be doing, Sali, is it would basically mean every player is hitting stroke and distance. Because when you line the hole up with where that hole is, because it has the bend in it, every time you go back on the line, you're either ending up at the T or maybe even left of it. So forcing stroke and distance, you're almost saying, like, let's just mark it out of bounds left. And that's certainly not the intent of that golf hole. Follow up on drop zones. Are those only associated with yellow?

There are a drop zone be with red too? Yeah, it could be with red. I mean, there are even, there are some cases where drop zones are even used for like unplayable situations. Yeah. And certainly free relief uses drop zones as well. So they're, they're an extra relief option for rules that would have the player taking relief.

When a committee sees that, you know, it's not the best option that we have based on what the rule is giving. then that dropsoe might be put in as an extra option for the player sometimes with penalty sometimes for free okay and a follow-up on on red maybe a unique example but i remember we played at colonial 10th hole there's a creek up the right side kind of on your approach and then over then the 11th hole goes out to the right and so if you hit it over that creek you know there's there it's in play on the other side of that creek if i was to hit it into it's a red and it's marked red if i was to hit hit it into that penalty area.

Is there an option to drop on the backside of a red? Like, I feel like that was an option maybe before 2019, or am I completely making that up? Yeah, back to the junior golf days. The opposite edge drop was part of the rules before 2019. This is going to kind of get into some of the red and yellow discussion as well. A lot of golf courses mark a whole lot more red than. than they do yellow. They've done that for a long time, well before the 2019 rules.

And what happened in the 2019 rules is we intuitively feel like golfers understand two club length dropping better than back on the line for sure and stroke and distance. The reason that marking red used to be restricted was because of the opposite edge situation. And I'm going to take a slightly different hole. We'll get back to Colonial. but think of the old course's first hole. St. Andrews is the old course. You've got the creek running right in front of it, the burn,

and you hit your ball and you hit a great drive or a second, and it rolls into the burn. If you go to the opposite side, you go in your 25 yards from the hole, and you go to the opposite side, 25 yards from the hole, you're putting. That's what the opposite edge would give you. that's been removed from the rules entirely.

Now, I'm not saying that San Andreas is going to have the Swickenburn marked red, but what taking away that opposite edge as a default, it can still be added as a local rule, but taking away as a default means that you can mark a whole lot of other areas red without the fear that players are going to be negotiating the penalty area with a drop. That's what this, ultimately, this is taken away. You can't just take a penalty stroke and get over it. you have to negotiate it with your stroke.

So when you think of a colonial or if I could, because I think viewers, like the 13th at Augusta is a really good example of this, when you hit two, when you hit on a hole where it does make sense where players are going to be, they're going to be in a, if you, if you, those think about 13th.

A lot of balls go left into that penalty area. And players dropping up on the hillside, pretty difficult. How well, we, Yeah, how time? Well, we see a lot of players drop in the fairway, right? You clearly see their ball going to the left side, but then they drop on the fairway within two club lengths. That's because that local rule is put in effect for the masters and for general play at Augusta National, where players on hole 13, they can drop on the opposite edge.

Players are not going to be dropping into the left side when they go on the right, but it's really almost entirely from the left. When they go in on the left side of that, up on the hillside, they then drop on the right side at the same distance from the hole. Colonials 10th, the 11th pole, perhaps that would be helpful. The angle kind of fits in some places with the trees, but using the opposite edge is something that is a local rule-only option, that you have to have the committee put into effect.

And I, you know, how do rules get confusing? Oftentimes it's because you see something that happens in a golf tournament. Well, they do this on tour. It gets explained as an opposite edge, and this is how it works, and then okay, well, this is what I'm going to do too. And that might not be an option at your golf course. So when you see your buddy that wants to take a half an hour to walk across the pond to go over there to play because you saw it on tour, it's like, no, no, no, no,

we don't, that's not an option for the red drop. You just drop right here. This is comforting for me. I'm like, all right, it wasn't crazy. That was, you know, or if it's a local, it was an option and it still can be if it's implemented. So total vindication is not it. Indeed.

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And you often see us wearing these polos because they're fantastic. Work with them for over a decade. NLU10, HBgolf.com. Back to the button. You mentioned something back there. I want to circle back on. You mentioned something back on the greens a while ago about Aimpoint. I mentioned something about any point.

Yeah. I just will throw this at you. I look at it. It doesn't feel right with the game of golf. It feels like, and the hypothetical rule I've made up in my head is you should not be able to straddle your line of play to get a feel of the earth slope to inform your decision on how much a putt breaks would be like how I would propose something. I've thought about that for 0.8 seconds. Don't know the process of changing a rule or any of that.

How does what I just said work with the spirit of the game that you, you know, you're in charge. of in some capacity with the USGA of writing and creating the rules and also enforcing them and the challenge that comes with enforcing them. If I was to say something like that, what kind of challenges come up with maybe creating a rule around something like that?

Yeah, we in some ways we have, you could say we've done this to ourselves. We we've talked about that Sully. We've we've talked, chatted about this idea

of getting an understanding of what your putt's going to do, there's no question we have been very clear that we believe fundamental to the game of golf is a golfer being able to read the line of play on the putting green with their feet, their eyes, their feel. A skill, as we believe it right now, is being able to determine the slope. We currently see that as a skill

that some golfers have and others don't. Aim point and putting systems in general, they're very sophisticated. There's no question that they help golfers understand break and speed and slope. And you take someone like Bryson, who is who is kind of even taken that further than most golfers have any idea of. And ultimately where, how did we get here and where are we going?

We continue to have that conversation. But the changes that happened in 2022 with the green reading books, local rule that really took green reading books out of the professional game, there's not a lot of golfers that look at books anymore. And so we do feel like we've taken away the answer key. So not everybody has that information. But there is certainly a set of golfers that are very reliant on their feel, and whether it is the systems that you see, you know, that the Adam Scots of the world that we're doing any point well, well before the Greens books were ultimately removed via local rule. There's so many more players now that are really quite good at estimating slope, even to the half a

percent. That currently for us is looked at as a skill. Do we like seeing it on TV just as much as any other golfer when it seems like it's taking too much time? No, we don't. But there are pace of play rules that can address how much time golfers take on the greens. And at this point, we feel like we're at a pretty good place of getting the answer key out of their hands at the highest level of the game. They don't have access to all the detail that is basically given to them that they can read and figure out. It's really just a function of time. And there's, there are so many things that are happening with pace of play with ultimately with the data available that is helping to address players that are particularly slow. We don't love to see it.

And then just as much in this conversation is putting your marker down and getting your ball perfectly lined up with exactly where ultimately you think this put's going to break. That whole process of precision on the putting greens is, is, is, is, still something that we talk about in every single Rules of Golf Committee meeting. We're in a better place than we were when the answer key was in their hands. Are we in the perfect spot? Probably not, but getting rid of aim point or the ability to even measure slope, straddling the line, we were kind of in that space even pre-2019 when we said you couldn't actually step on your line of play. And so where was the line of play? You'd see that happening. That was kind of when I was

speaking to referees, pre-2019, having this like, oh, my gosh, the players are on the green, and now I have to be super attentive and hope they don't break rules. We would get right back into that again. And part of rulemaking is about just the practical governance effect that happens in the game. And I'm not sure that something like what you've suggested in eight seconds of thought would really work in the game of golf, whether it's at the highest level or at the club level. And those are the things we have to balance when we're thinking about what would work and ultimately what wouldn't to try to get to ultimately where we want to be.

Yeah, I definitely understand like the almost like court of law lawyer argument of, you know, what is straddling the line? You know, what happens if you're, you know, you're jumping across your line to avoid stepping in somebody else? You know, they get, you know, I see the bumpers on a lot of this stuff and how challenging a lot of these are. But you let us write in a pace of play here, which a lot of, a lot of questions about this. I think, zooming all the way back, as I've researched and learned more about pace of play,

I've developed some theories on it. And a theory of mine is let it's what happens in the process of holling out, especially at the highest levels of professional golf, the process of holding out is what causes a lot of the backups, pace of play, you know, issues that come up. What, zooming out from your guys' perspective, what are you guys studied about pace of play? What have you learned? And is that, you know, is that an assertion that you would, you would agree with, I guess,

as to where a lot of pace of play issues come with. And then we can get into enforcement and how you build rules around that stuff. Are you advocating for gimmies? Is that what? I like, you just, you just went straight there. You went straight there. So like putting all of it. It's things slow down on the putting green.

Is that kind of what you're speaking to? It things slowed down the putting green one. And the, the, the analogy I was use is, The whole is the toll booth, right? And three cars got to go through one toll booth to get onto the next part of the highway. And when you can't all go at once and you got to go, you know, and then the faster the greens get, the more the harder the three and a half footer is, the longer that process takes.

And it snakes its way back through the golf course is kind of what I would assert to, you know, which leads us into like, why is this guy taking three minutes over this shot? Well, it doesn't matter. They're not out of position. Bubble. That's where I'm kind of leading to. But I want to at least understand if is that how you guys, view where pace of play issues come from in golf because to me it's just not people taking too long

on the t-box yeah yeah it's it's it's not anyone part of the game but the greens you have tricky whole locations and fast greens and take us back to shenacock wind uh that that is that is a recipe for slower rounds than than really any other you know you get you get deep rough uh searching for balls can certainly contribute to that but when guys have to hack out or hit it up they're They're not taking as much time as really grinding over. They just missed another short putt. They missed another short put. And that adds quite a bit of time to it.

So greens can have an outsized effect on how long a round takes. But I think the whole, the idea of pace of play, it is there's so many things that play into that. How much space you have, how many players you have in your field, what the weather looks like. Course setup certainly affects it. It's completely disconnected from the recreational game, what people see at home and they're daily play versus what they see at the tour level or at a championship that we run. It's hard to even compare the two. But yeah, a lot of different things playing at a pace of play for sure.

Well, I'd say one other thing that plays in is, you know, I'm playing MGA events or New Jersey Golf Association is lost balls, you know, looking for balls, but also like, you know, failure to hit a provisional. But I've got a specific example, kind of a provision. provisional question here because this happened on a trip we just took to we were playing at burkdale it happened on a trip in michigan where there's a penalty area and then there's you know forest or maybe ob but like lost ball potential and you can't really tell where the penalty area ends and i'm i'm i've gotten stuck in between on like are you allowed to hit a provisional

or does that become a stroke and distance do you know like the pay it's like oh man i got do i have to go all the way up, identify that it's a lost ball, and then go back and hit stroke and distance? I'm not really explaining the question well, but you get stuck between like, am I, am I, am I recusing my rights to the penalty area, the lateral relief if I hit that provisional and it ends up in the penalty area? Generally, generally, yes, you are. But there's provisional balls that it's just a complicated rule. in general. If a golfer believes their ball might be lost outside of a penalty area or it might be out of bounds,

they're allowed to play a provisional ball. That provisional ball is, it is stroke and distance just in case I need to come back and play under stroke of distance. That's the purpose of it. So if you've hit a ball into an area, you know, it's a new course you're not familiar with and you're like, I might not find that. as long as you're not playing it because the only reason you think you might not find it is it's in a penalty area, then you're allowed to play a provisional.

You think it might be lost outside of a penalty area or it might be out of bounds. You could walk up there and be like, oh my gosh, this entire area is a penalty area. I didn't know that. Well, you didn't know that. So you were allowed to play a provisional ball when you did because that was in your mind. Because I've run into that in an event where like someone in my group is like, am I allowed to play a provision? and you just get a little bit. I'm like, man, I don't know.

We don't know where that penalty area ends. And so because I think that's a pace thing, too. That's why I brought it up now is that that, that horrible feeling of let me run back to the T, you know, while a group's, you know, on the T and you're, you got to hit a quick one. Things start moving really quick. At least that's. Yeah. Yeah.

No, that's, if you, if you take your, if you kind of take, take this, let this, let us play out of if your ball is outside the penalty area and it's lost or you're not able to tell that it's in the penalty area and you lose it. Where do you go? You go back to the T. Yeah. So the provisional ball rule is it's fully like everything about it is about saving time or trying to. So being able to play a provisional ball before you go forward is is what ultimately means you don't have to run all the way back. You go to where your provisional is and you play that. Now, if you do find that your ball is, in fact, in a penalty area, or you can't find it, but you know, or you're virtually certain it's in it, you can take penaltyary relief at that point. Okay. So that, yeah, that's my question. It's like,

now I can, now, like, that provisional, I can pick that up and I could do lateral or, you know, my other option. Yeah. In fact, you have to get rid of your provisional at that point. And and then you have your penalty area relief options. And provisional is tricky because you end up with like the DQs happen because you've got two balls and you can only use one typically. And I wish it was simpler, but it's not. Yeah. The hard, the hard situation here is like, let's say it's a, you know, a big hazard.

Sorry, not hazard. No, I can't use that word anymore. Come on. A big penalty area, you know, either color, you know, that you got to drive over in some way. and you got really close to clearing it and it might be outside of water but in grass, but is it playable? But it didn't clear anything.

And your option's like, I might be able to get up there. I might be able to play it if I can find it. It's in some heathery stuff near there. And then you get up there and it's not playable. Then you have to go back. Like if you didn't clear,

that's the part that feels like you should be able to be like, well, in case I can't play it? Can I hit a provisional? And what I would do with a buddy. So that provisional can't then be the provisional you use for the penalty area. You almost have to start. Yeah, you can't use a provisional for a penalty area.

Like that, that's the, that's the, that's the point. To Craig's point is like, I didn't know this was penalty area. I hit a provisional not knowing that. I'm in the clear. But it's not in that situation, correct me if I'm wrong, Craig, if you get up there and you find your ball is in the penalty area, you don't get to play the provisional. No. Right.

Like it wasn't a penalty to have hit a provisional, but you don't get to play. Yeah. If you, if you've determined, you hit the ball. And then you have to go back and hit a third ball as a stroke. In Niel's scenario, in Niel's scenario, you can take penalty area relief. You cannot play your provisional. Solly, in your case, you are not sure if you carried the penalty area, but you're not worried about your ball being lost outside of it. There's no provisional option there.

Correct. That's a situation where you do, unfortunately, need to go up and check. I can't play it. I now need to go back. Water hazard carries are, they're challenging under the rules just generally. The player has other options, and the reason provisional ball doesn't fit well into that case is because it is designed to say the only option you have, if one of the eventualities, you don't find your ball outside a penalty area, hit it out of bounds, the only rules

option you have is stroke and distance. Sully, the example you're giving, there's penalty area options there still. So it doesn't fit nicely into that, and that is a pace of the way. of play challenge for sure. Yeah. That one's not solvable. You see that come up enough when it's like, well, the only, the last point of that I cleared is like 30 yards in front of the T-box anyways.

I'd rather re-tee here. You know what I mean? That's the part that gets kind of tricky. But yeah, definitely can lead to some pace of play issues. But so back to back to pace of play just kind of at the highest level of what we see. We see guys take over 40 seconds to hit a shot quite frequently. can you explain why that's not a penalty and just kind of the general philosophy

of what leads to penalty, what leads to enforcement of pace of play, and why things are the way they are in terms of how the rules are written and enforced. Because I think the thought out there is that the government, you know, USGA and other tours made a rule and nobody ever enforces the rule.

They just, I test it and say like, oh, that's not a penalty because we don't feel like stroking this guy, but I have a feeling it's a little bit different from a structure standpoint. Yeah, nobody cares about pace to play and professional golf, I promise you. No, it is, it's largely it's it's what the rules committee is doing all tournament. That's that's the main focus. Yes, there's some rulings that are given and pretty much, pretty much a golf tournament is getting the golf course set up in the morning and

then and then monitoring pace to play the rest of the day. There's, there's some things that do happen that that kind of deviate from this. And I can speak even to the end of Shinnecock and to the senior open at Siodo that we just had. Both of those kind of went with different examples here. But largely what pace of play is about is the policy that the respective organization has an effect. So when you look at the rules of golf, it says the language there is that golfers should generally play their shots in 40 seconds or less, right? that's a recommendation that's in the rules and hopefully most golfers follow that.

When you look at the policies that are in effect at the highest level, there are times that are in there, 40 seconds, 50 seconds if you're first to play in several different situations. The LPGA has kind of a cumulative per hole timing. Committees can do what they feel is best to ultimately get players around the golf course. But there's a lot of things that are happening that are outside of that. So most pace of play policies have a time per hole, which kind of aggregates over the round. And they also have something that is respective to the group in front of you, this kind of position concept. And so when you think of a tour model, you have players that are in starting times.

And when groups, and this is generally true, most groups will eventually fall behind the time that the committee is allotted. when a group is both behind the time the committee is allotted, which you could see that between a threesome, a easier course, faster course to play will be in like the 430 range. And for golfers at home, that would be like, gosh, that's so long. Well, there's just so much more happening to a tour event and the course is quite a bit harder. On a really difficult course, you'd see that almost up into like the 450, sometimes a little bit even higher than that. And once golfers go over that time, they're now susceptible to this other part of their

policies, which is the position. How are you in relation to the group in front of you? And there's a definition for that largely how most of golf works is that if you step on to a par four or par five T and the hole clears before you get your T shots off, all three of them, you're going to be out of position. And now that does vary by some tours, but that's mostly what you see in men's professional golf. Par three is they're a little bit different. But if you're in that position, so over time and out of position, most policies will have, okay, we have a warning. And that's not always given. Most of the time it is, you just kind of get the warnings out of the way. If you get past that warning and you're still out of position,

you could be put on the clock. And those types of decisions are kind of where I think most of the public doesn't really see how it all fits together. If you think of a typical tour event, you have spacing in groups. How long does it take to play up? par four, it's normally like 14, 15 minutes to play it. Par three's, you play them much quicker. And when you start to have gaps in the groups, what you end up with is backups on T's. Is there a par five in the world that most male professional golfers can't get two and two? Not many. And so you start to see backups on par fives. If you've been to some tournaments, you might see two groups on the T. You'll see a group in the fairway. You'll see a group on the

green. There is something that's happened during that round where things have really backed up. That might be a lost ball. That might be a difficult ruling. We're going to Burkdale here pretty soon. Jordan Speath showed up and we had something fun to happen. And so when you start to get those backups on the golf course, while somebody might be taking a long time on the seventh hole and you're like, man, why aren't they getting after this player?

It's because on the ninth hole, there's a weight. We know there's a wait. There's a five-minute wait on the T. And there's just no value in putting that player on the clock or that group on the clock at that point and then timing them right up into now they're going to wait. And so those things are happening in real time. And that's why the committee is, you see them on radio all the time. They're talking.

Electronics now show where groups are on the golf course. There's pretty good tracking of that the way the systems fit together. You know, the PGA Tour Shotlink system is really quite capable and trying to figure some of that out too. So it is a system pace of play more than it is. We're looking at one specific player and we have an issue with them. Golf is much better at the highest level of identifying the problem play. players and they get quite a bit more attention than others, even as much as like they can be timed completely outside of the typical you're warned, now you're on the clock, they can be

timed at any time because those specific players are kind of put on notice, right? You've been a problem for so long. You're so far outside the norm that there could be situations where you're just playing a shot over in the rough and you know there's a way of the next T, well, you just took three minutes to play that shot and there's going to be consequences for it. So Pace of Play is something that organizations, you look back at articles from the 1900s and Pace of Play is a problem. And it always has been in the game of golf. It's a sport unlike any other where I think you're right to say it's like a toll booth on the green. You can't just go around people and pass easily in golf. You're stuck within, largely, certainly in tournament golf,

within the order that you're in. And there are crashes, there are rulings. The rules obviously have an impact when people don't always run back to the T. They end up kind of slow, slow back to the T. But all of that stuff is kind of in concert with why pace of play, individual players doing things look like they're causing problems, but they aren't. And I think one other thing I'll say, if you think about what happens towards the end of Saturday or Sunday.

Golf is a production. It's on TV. There is an entertainment value to it. And there are TV windows. And we are managing to a TV window as well. And when golfers go out and shockingly, they play fast, we're like, why are you guys playing so fast today? You've been slow all week and now you're suddenly fast.

And so we're like, is there any way we can slow these people down? They're going to finish so far in front of the window. And obviously the other side happens when you overshoot the window. So some of the broadcast complications can fit into that as well where you feel like you're going so fast that you don't want to be warning or trying to move a group forward because you know you're going to blow your TV window. And then you get down to the end and it's like, do we really want to time a group? If you saw this at Sioda, there was just over a whole gap. So they were out of position, not by much. This is like a half a stroke out of position.

but putting a group on the clock right there as they're coming up towards the end when we already know we're going to beat our TV window also doesn't really make sense in the scope of the competition itself so all of that stuff fits together in a whole and you have an organization whether it's the PGA tour the LPGA one of the governing bodies you know, Birkdale next week you're trying to manage the golf to be able to finish the competition in time and largely on Thursday and Friday that means just trying to get the golf done Saturday and Sunday there's that different element of we're actually trying to fit this in within the window of time that we have, that we've promised our partners in TV to try to ultimately have that last butt hit. So a lot of stuff going on that people won't see up ahead of them or behind them. I do think golf has gotten so much better at the highest level with data and technology to be able to identify the really slow players though.

And that's been a big part of some of the changes that you've seen. it's not going to make grounds four hours, but it certainly does stop the individual players from really just being cataclysmic to the pace of play. I had a conversation with somebody from the USDA several years ago now at this point about just studies the USAJ had done on pace of play because a lot of this stuff applies way beyond just competitive golf in general as well. And the conclusion didn't make sense to me at the time,

but overtime has made more sense of a big part of it, being tea time spacing and which which makes sense and you see but you see tournaments that had the luxury like augusta of you know a smaller cut you know a smaller field to start with and a smaller cut they will build in gaps in their tea times they will have you know on week on Saturday and Sunday and maybe even the first two days I don't know we'll have a open space maybe an 18 minute gap or a 20 minute gap between tea times and that can have a tremendous effect on pace of play with the, you know, otherwise, one ruling in one place that takes a long time is going to snake all the way back through the golf course.

And when you get threesomes on both sides of the golf course and the circles that go around that, it just creates a whole different set of challenges. And that's where like your local muni, if they are spacing out T-times with four people, eight or nine minutes apart, you have no shot, no shot and a constant pace of play. Six, some of them. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, space is the biggest fix, no question. And that, I think you see that, you see that in the signature events are smaller fields on the PGA tour and pace the place so much better at those than it, than it ever is in the full field events.

US Open, 156 is tough. It's hard to get that many players around the golf course in two ways. We have the luxury of daylight, but we put them on a pretty difficult golf course with a tough setup. up and yeah, trying to finish golf on Friday and Saturday. We're patting ourselves on the back when we get them all done in those two days. Craig, another pro golf topic that, you know, I think about a lot, TIO relief and the free line of sight relief. It feels personally, it feels wrong to me that a guy can, in some ways, the course can

play easier than it would for us mere mortals. And if you can blow it off the planet behind grandstands, you can just get kind of a free drop. And I'm wondering if there's, if the committee's looked into that at all and just thoughts. I understand, you know, you got to keep fans,

patrons safe, but it just doesn't feel right. And sometimes it's like your way, you're getting TIO relief from the, you know, shot link tower like, you know, on another,

like something that's like, man, that feels like we're stretching the, uh, isn't an obstruction type of thing. So just, just wanted to throw that out as a topic that, that we've talked about a good amount.

Yeah, some of the greatest moments ever in golf entertainment, or Jordan speak, and TIOs. So let me just throw that in there. We would lose all of that. Which is great. But I do, look, TIOs, there is much an ops rules conversation that happens before the competition as they are anything else. philosophically, that wouldn't have been there when this player hit that shot.

So the weekend golfer wouldn't have had this in their way either, whether it's a grandstander or shotling tower. Shotling towers are particularly noteworthy because they are all over the golf course, right? They provided some awesome benefits. Obviously the vision that you have of what's happened on a tour event when you're not there, that comes from those towers. So the rules are designed to swing a player out so that they have what is ultimately relief from that object being on their line of sight, plus just a one-club-length corridor. There are some incredibly fortuitous relief situations. I do recall one that we saw as well as you all saw at Pinehurst at the open with Bryson on the fifth hole.

swinging out and having a clear shot at the green. There are objects to get placed on golf course when the circus comes to town, and there's not really a good way to treat them differently. We did change that rule in 2019 to provide. It really doesn't change what you're speaking to necessarily, but it does give the player the option to drop from it like another building or like a cart path where they can just take physical relief like we all do day-to-day. but the concept of line of sight,

we need to keep that in there because the player that ends up behind something when they wouldn't otherwise be, we don't want them hitting over the grandstand. What other relief option would they have to get back around and inside is probably just stroking distance? So what relief makes sense and how does it work?

Players sometimes hit it off the planet and that seems like they're getting great relief. That's really just part of the package that comes with tournament golf and all the infrastructure that we bring in. And there are times when, you know, in our Rules Committee, we'll speak about things like, can we untether some of this stuff with the way that we look at relief and should players not be able to get relief in some of the situations that we do?

But these come in all different shapes and sizes and situations. And right now we feel like the rule is in pretty good shape. The fortuitous examples are also buffered by players not getting relief. And that does happen pretty frequently as well. they get in the way and they hit it so far afield they sometimes do play over grandstands because we say no to relief so trying to find the right balance is really why i speak to the the value that you know the the tour and the pGA tour and the lpGA they go to sites year after year and and us now going to anchor sites it has been so beneficial for us because when we see those issues come up

it ends up being pinehurst it ends up being chinnecock this year we have the ability to move some of that infrastructure so we can try to avoid that in years to come. That's really where that starts is that connection between the ops team, which is a whole different challenging set of circumstances they're dealing with. It's amazing what they do to get tournament golf going. I feel like we have the easy job. But to be able to show, hey, can we move this thing next time because it's really kind of getting in the way? We moved to Crane at Sioda on Wednesday night. And it's probably the biggest favor I've ever asked of a broadcast partner in our ops team, fencing and every everything else. It was behind a building and ultimately the player would have got relief from the

building too. And that felt incorrect because that building's always there. So they went out and it was kind of hot, 110 degree heat, but they moved a crane about 15 feet and we actually had a couple situations where players would have ended up getting relief from the building because of the crane. So thankfully, that did happen because the ask, it was a big ask for them to be able to get the entire crew out there to move it, but it paid off in the end. I got a quick half-baked idea. You can run this up the chain if you'd like, but a quick half-baked idea, when in doubt on a shot link tower, it's like, is that in the way or is it not in the way?

And you're leaning towards giving them relief, just say, no, you know what? Hit it. And if you hit the tower, we'll go, we'll revisit it. You get to replay it and you get a drop. But otherwise, hit it. Like, all right, just hit the ball. It's a very thin wire there. I bet you don't hit it.

And if you do, we'll give you relief. I don't think that's a serious solution, but it kind of could work. I don't know if draft kings might go out. Solly, what do you think about that? All right, a couple, a couple kind of quick hitter for the weekend warrior. So I was playing in an event a month ago, and I was taking relief from ground under repair. And there happened to be a rules official nearby, so I just confirmed with him. I was like, hey, is it one club length or two?

And he hit me with a phrase that I loved, but I don't know if it's true. he said if it's free it's one and if you're paying it's two does that line up like is that because I love stuff like that just to help people help myself remember these things you know if it's if it's free you get one club length if you're paying you get two what how does that how's that stack up uh well there's two two relief options in the rules lateral relief for penalty areas lateral relief for ball and play well that's it okay uh Everything else is one now, whether there's penalty or not. So there was more truth to that pre-2019.

Okay, so it's mixing this guy up too, Sali? Yeah. Now, I think you probably do yourself a disservice using that. Because I think the one example I would share is stroke and distance. You play from a tough spot. You kind of maybe have a tree in the way and you hit this shot that doesn't quite turn the way you thought. And you end up taking stroke and distance. You have a club length from where you lost played.

So that's a penalty relief situation where you get one. And that's the significant departure is in relief where we have relief areas now. You never drop on a spot like what happened pre-2019 and several different relief procedures, even embedded ball. You get a club length from where your ball was embedded. And so it's one for all situations except for lateral where it's two. That's probably better as a, as a, um, uh, a phrase to remember.

So it's safe to assume one other than lateral, but then I'm thinking about the two and two rule around the greens with a you got a sprinkler in your way. That would be, is that two? That's a different horrid. That's one. That's a lot. Right.

So yeah, you're determining where, whether you get inter, whether you get relief from with the two and two rule. Your ball is within two of the obstruction. And the obstruction is when two of the putting green, if that local. rules and effect, you then get relief, but what you do is you find the nearest point where it's not in your line of play, and you would then drop one club length from there. It's the one club length relief area concept. One caveat to, there just seems like there's always exceptions, back on the

line relief is dropping on the line, but then it can roll up to a club length. So that's still a one club length drop, but you're dropping on the line. And if we go back to, I think it was out in California, you were already had a drop where he dropped off the line, 2021 or 2022 and he ended, or it was more recent than that, four or five where he ended up with a two-stroke penalty for not dropping on the line when he was taking back on the line relief. That one,

you have to still drop it on the line. And then it could have one. This is so helpful. So one and two and simple. No, we, that's unfortunately. Okay. Well, I like that guy's frame. It may be.

It's close. It's pretty close. But that's why I'm confirming it. And he's, you know, rules official so but i yeah i think it's almost just safe like unless it's red i'm i'm just gonna because we're unplayable if you do say again unplayable is two shots as well yeah that's lateral relief though right yeah yeah correct yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah one one one one thing that always puts my brain in a pretzel let's say uh my golf ball comes to rest on the cart path and let's say it

is like just barely on the right side of it. Like, you know, 55th percentile in terms of the width, but I'm a right-handed golfer. So finding my nearest point of relief, like the nearest point of relief would be, if I went right of the path, needs to be my feet clearing the path as well,

which might, even though my ball is technically closer to the right edge of the cart path, my nearest point of relief in that situation would probably be left of the path because it could drop closer to the path, and I wouldn't need to include my stance in that. Does that question make sense?

Do I interpret that part correctly? Because I never see people measure that. I'm following you, whether your listeners or viewers follow you. I'm not sure exactly. That tracks me too, snelly. Yeah, it's nearest point of relief is something that we tried to figure out if we could make it simpler, but this kind of perfect geometry that it requires, when your ball is in the middle of the path

and you have this cart path running down a hole, you know, it's kind of just running down the right side of a hole, left side of a hole, you're generally going to be dropping on the side that gets your club closest to the path. And the thing the golfer needs to remember is there's a lot of different ways. And Neil, this kind of gets back to what the volunteer,

the referee had shared. There's not really any shortcut to saying it's like ball and stance. How do you find relief from an obstruction to cart path? You need to find the nearest point where you don't have lie, stance, or swing interference. And that's really what you're speaking to, So, Lee, if you put your stance clear of the interference on the right side and then your club down, where would the ball be? Well, it would be, you know, to two feet, two and a half feet from the right side of the path. But if you put it down on the left side, your feet would be well clear. your club would be right near the path, right?

And so that's going to be closer to where the ball came to rest. That's then the nearest point of complete relief because you don't have lie stance or swing interference. That becomes your reference point. And then you get a club length from there to drop away from the path. Got it. Yeah. Okay.

Confirm. I just, yeah, I see people make that mistake, I guess. Like if your ball, you know, if it's slightly farther on the right, you know, it's like, oh, my relief must be on the right, when in reality your closest point of relief might. be in a different location. Another one, random one that came up during the U.S. Open and tell me if this is different than like a normal round of golf. But I think we see, when we watch golf, when we watch match play, a whole ends, it's not uncommon for us to see a player hit a practice putt. You can hit

practice putts on the green after that. It sounded like from what I heard on the broadcast that also, I don't know if this is USGA competition to whatever, but as long as you're not holding up the group behind you, you could technically hit a practice stroke on a green after you've completed the hole. Is that accurate? Yeah, it is. That's the rule of golf lets you practice, chipping or putting on or around the putting green you last played. Nobody ever does that. That's crazy. Really. Yeah, once you, once you complete a hole before you start the next hole,

you can practice putter chip on or around that green, provided you're not holding up play. And there is a local rule that is used almost, for every single professional competition on the planet. We don't use it. We just never have where that's not permitted. You know, if you've seen our setup teams, pictures of them, there's tape measures and everything else out on the green when we're setting up the golf course.

We don't put paint dots down. That is something that will happen, you know, certainly at a local level. You might have the pro go out and like dot greens to make sure that the next day's locations are in place. That local rule makes a lot of sense when you're moving through things and it's a convenience, right?

No need to practice put on the green afterwards. But when that local rule is not in effect, which is probably true for most of golf that gets played, except at the highest level, you are allowed to practice putt. It doesn't happen so much anymore, but our phone lines used to absolutely light up when a certain golfer Tiger Woods would, he did that quite a bit.

He would practice put after he had just hold out. And yeah, everybody on the planet I thought he was breaching the rules. So they'd let us know. But we don't have that local rule in effect. So it's just fine. How about that? That's crazy to me.

Like I don't think anybody, even 150, guys at the U.S. Open, you just don't see guys do it or take advantage of it. You think they're just not aware of it? Or, you know, like, that's. Yeah, I think it has more to do with they're just so used to not being able to do it

because, you know, they play on tour weekend and week out, and it's not permitted, right? So golfers at home think it's also not okay. that that's the kind of the tour rules then transferring to the average golfer yeah i learned this that you can't practice but right you're you're not allowed to do that well the when that gets shared on tour it's probably not every time shared is that's a local rule it's a local rule we have that doesn't prevent it most people think it's the rule of golf question about dangerous dangerous animal relief uh insects i i living versus dead insect loophole first living living living insect is an outside

influence, but if it's if they're dead, they're loose impediments. So so dead ones can be moved. Living ones, you got to like kind of let them be. Is that, am I on the right track there? Like, or if they move your ball, you know what, like walk me through the insect situation here. Yeah. Yeah. So a living insect, um, a living insect is, uh, is a loose impediment. A dead insect is also a loose impediment. Okay. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not quite sure exactly where we're, where we're going with. Well, my question is like if a live, if a live bug, like, lands on your ball while it's in a bunker or penalty area, you can't touch it or blow it away. Okay.

You're going back to junior golf days. So that, that's, that's no longer, yeah. He doesn't, I listened in the seminar. No, no, this is good. So, seriously. Loose impediments can be moved anywhere on the golf course now, whether you're in a bunker or, penalty area, fairways greens, you can move loose impediments. So insects are loose impediments and living or dead. They're

impediments. Yeah, yeah, they are. Just natural objects. Lose impediments is an exception. Insects is an exception where they fit into the loose impediment category because they're just tiny little they have little critters. They can be moved and there's there's no restrictions on where they can be moved on the golf course. You do need to be cautious though about moving your ball. The, the jet jeopardy applies when you're in a bunker, a penalty area, or in the general area. So really everywhere, but on a putting green. So the caution there is, you know, don't, don't move your ball when you're moving them. But whether they're live or not, you can, you can go ahead and move them off your ball or out of the way if they're near your ball. And then how, as far as dangerous animal relief or another related question, so I'm talking fire ants or poison ivy. If I think my ball is in poison ivy, am I entitled to free relief from that? Not for poison ivy. Animit is really where the rules draw the line.

So the lions and tigers and bears and the venomous snakes, fire ants. Those are conditions that are considered dangerous animal conditions. When you get into poison ivy, it's, you know, you might get a rash, but you're not getting relief from it from dangerous animal condition rule. Clarifying there. Ants versus fire ants. Is that a different ruling? Yeah, it is.

That's great. Like, I don't know that. It's hard to tell the difference. Yeah, you all live in an area of the world where there's more fire ants. But, you know, the antenna that radios have, every time that I've been on a course that has fire ants, I work RSM often. And there are some fire ants down in that area. And when you stick the antenna in the ground where fire ants are or some other object, they just you know they it's it's it's fighting time um that's a pretty easy way to figure that out

when you're when you're dealing at that level tour level uh you know the course is you're you're connected to to the maintenance staff and and they'll tell you that they're there um so it's often a check with players you're trying to see if ultimately that's what that is if it's not there's there's no relief still weighs on my conscience and a qualifier a long time ago i i asked a rules official if a daddy long legs that was on my ball uh constituted dangerous animal relief you know, I didn't push it hard when he denied it. But I was like, you know, that was probably the scubbiest ruling I ever aimed for. But I would, I did not.

He asked me, he's like, do you feel in danger? And I was like, I do not. All right. This is my last one, Craig. This happened three, three weeks ago. And I'm going to call it a ball in motion situation. This is a new one for me. So I'm planning on the course in New Jersey, the greens were turned up to a million where balls

were degreening. I think nine times between the three of us in my group. the ball, you know, put it up near the hole and it rolled back off the green. So set up was a little outrageous. So another player of my group, he's putting from about 60 feet away from the front of the green up to the back, puts it all the way up, almost gets about heavy eight feet short of the hole and then it rolls, starts rolling slowly all the way back. While it's making its way back slowly, and we're feeling a little bit of pressure from the group behind us. The other guy in my group is he's addressing, like, he's chipping from just off the green.

This first player had putt from just off the green. And he gets up and he didn't hit the ball before, like I was kind of the, you know, in the middle. He hit his ball, like, just as the other one had come to rest. The first player brought up that, hey, I think it might be a penalty if you had hit. I confirmed that he didn't hit before the ball came to rest, but he's like, I think it's a penalty if you hit while a ball is in motion. I had never heard that rule and I wanted to check with you. I wrote this down once we had this podcast schedule.

I was like, I did never, I don't, maybe bad etiquette, but is, can, you know, is there a ball in motion rule like that? There, they're junior golf days. There used to be kind of a perfect storm rule when, when there were two balls on the putting green. And that, that was all the way up into, to pre-2019. That's not a penalty what you're describing. It wasn't back then either. It was this was about playing player plays from the putting green and someone who it's not their turn to play plays while that ball's in motion. It doesn't exist anymore though.

So no no penalty in that case. Hopefully. Well, you confirmed it didn't happen. So that's great. Well, I did first off, like, I am confident that it didn't happen. It was close. But I was like, I also was like, man, I don't, again, I think maybe, you know, don't play out of turn. But unless it's match play, I feel like there.

I was like, I've never heard of that being a. penalty just maybe like bad form. So just Kappa Loua like 18 that gets hard because balls roll forever and in guys, you know, I've hit well, like balls are still in motion. So yeah. Yeah. And that course setup story, it makes me that that that sounds challenging. I'm sorry. I got I got one more for you. I do have a question about substances on club faces. Like, you know, I see it in the rain a lot. Like, so water's not considered an outside substance when or, uh, or spit like, you know, like you can't put like lip balm on your driver or some type of substance, but where does that,

you know, but yeah, it's saliva. Okay. Yeah, this is, this is an important tension. If you're trying to clean it, it's okay, but cleaning with lip balm is not going to really pass the test. You're, you're, you're certainly allowed to clean your golf club. you're allowed to clean your golf ball, but putting something on your club face or the ball to influence its performance is not allowed.

So, yeah, the lip balm is a pretty vassaline. Those types of things are pretty clear cases. Soap, you see that, obviously, like ball washers that you see on teas. Some carps have that installed. Those things that are intended to clean are fine. Yeah, the solvents are fine. Yeah. And follow up question of that.

In 2019, I had a very stupid idea in my younger years to put, I put a piece of tape on the top of my driver with a mantra. And the mantra was effing tempo. You know, I was trying to remind myself over the golf ball to swing with tempo. Is that, is that legal? Was it, was it a bad idea because it didn't work? Is that? Well, it didn't really work. But I think Sali was like, I think that might be a penalty.

And we never really got to the bottom of it. Yeah. Solly was right on that one. Um, really. Yeah. Yeah, that, that, that is, that gets into the external attachments and it's, it's actually the equipment rules. So, um, I'm a bit outside of my swim lane here, but, uh, don't, don't, don't, don't do that,

uh, those of you've had homeless and thinking it, that is a good idea. Uh, external attachments on clubs. How about you see people put, maybe I'm wrong here, but like lead tape. Yeah, lead tape's an exception. Yeah. Lead tape is a specific. Because I think that's what I said. I put lead, lead tape on it.

I would. So could you. well could you draw with a sharp on top of your driver not on the face but on top to remind yourself to have a tempo you could you could do a sharpie uh yeah sharpie reminder to yourself that would be okay okay but you can't draw in the face you can't like that's what had Decki got penalized for right was well um kind of sort of uh working on that working on that more to come okay okay okay i think i have that caused my whole career into question i i i you know god the paper man, that's tough for me.

I think I have some quick hitters here as my final questions. Dead Man asked this on the, on our message board. Is there a universe where the USDA would allow players to move their ball out of a divot in the fairway? No. I'm with you on this one. I love that.

Yeah. I mean, there's a long answer, but no, philosophically and practically there, it's, yeah, the answer is no. It's one of those cheap social media engagement things I see. Should you get free relief out of a div in the fairway?

Never going to happen. It never going to happen. Way too hard to enforce would be number one. And number two, flies completely in the face of play it as it lies. So I'm with you on that one. Maybe a question not very well built. This one is,

rec hockey said, has there been any thought to placing some restrictions on free relief? There's been instances where a player's in the rough gets relief from a sprinkler head or drain, but is close enough they're able to take their drop in the fairway. Basically, can you do anything to mandate free relief that might be taken in the same cut as the original lie? Yeah, there's not momentum towards that right now.

That's really just kind of the understanding that there's an area of the course. It's large. It's called the general area. It's everything but, you know, bunkers, penalty areas in the putting green. And that's the player's good fortune. It happens at times. but there are great shots that end up in bad lies and there are bad shots that end up in great lies

and that's good fortune of golf way the ball bounces and sometimes relief ends up in those fortuitous cases as well. So no plans to try to remove that or say you have to be in the same cut. That almost presents more complexity than really makes sense. Yeah, tour courses, it's pretty easy to tell the rough from the fairway in most cases, but when you think of where most of golf is played,

They're like, where's the sand? Pinehurst, you end up with just a lot of a lot of gray area. Not considered a problem right now, so probably not looking to change things there. Makes sense. All right. Last one. Then this one is the one I think is probably not directed, shouldn't be directed at you because USGA famously does not do ball in hand for closely moan areas.

But a change that I was screaming about that BJTor made is going away from one club length of relief to scorecard length. of relief. Yeah, I guess the rule's already been changed. So I don't know why I'm still upset about this, but I never understood why you would ever, you know, I'm seeing guys get their driver out around the greens and still then, even for that rule, why wouldn't it just be placed the ball back where you, where you, where you marked it? Like, we marked the ball on the greens. Why would you even get a scorecard length of relief for a ball in hand situation? Yeah, so there's, there's a lot going on here. I will say that you, you may,

see at a USGA qualifier. I know both you try to try to get after it on occasion, cleaning ball used at qualifiers. And kudos to certainly Florida State Golf Association for encouraging us to think outside the box on that. That is the lift, clean and replace option, Sully. So it is in the book. It's a model local rule that really lets the player do what they do on the putting green It's about cleaning, though. And the preferred lies option is really designed not just for cleaning, but for other conditions. And I will say that the tours, or ultimately professional golf largely, has used preferred lies. It's not just about mud balls.

Part of that is that they can play deeper into windows when there's poor weather and then come out of them quicker. And that does help certainly with the windows and broadcast time. and moving on to the next stop. Scorecard length, I think, is part of their attempts, both to align with what is happening mostly in the rest of golf. The DP World Tour has used scorecard length for some time. It's what most of the rest of the world uses. And so that's getting closer to replacing,

but ultimately isn't replacing. And look, these guys, you guys go to enough tour events, they hit it so high and so far. And the pitch marks that are created, when golf courses get soft, they end up being in and around, maybe not even in the pitch mark, but they're in and around so many of them. The tour has for a long time felt like that's a, it's a vehicle, it's a mechanism, and I don't want to speak for them, but it does let them play deeper into and come out quicker from situations that ultimately allow them to keep on schedule.

And I think the other true, I mean, that candidly were a little worried about it at our qualifiers, players see this, I can lift it, and they think they can then place it somewhere else. And the concern that they would get it wrong, players would be getting two-stroke penalties left and right because they're so used to putting it somewhere else and not putting it back on the same spot. So even though there may be some interest in replacing, you're not changing the angles of shots,

especially around greens. There's some value to that. That's a desire, but it's also an education and a learning curve. And there's a risk there going to replacing only. You don't want them having the junior golf rules seminar. See, I thought it was like this. Like it used to be like this, you know, I just didn't get the memo.

We just had posted a video last night where Neil double hit a chip and he was like, oh, that's two strokes. You count both the strokes. Which I actually feel really good about that. Like I'm playing the game the right way. All right. I hit it twice. All right. I think it was two strokes in like 2000 and then it and then it was one stroke from that on to 19.

And now it's now it's no strokes. but kind or gentler. We're getting there slowly. I just remember that so well because club pro guy was like, oh, God, it's going to save me three strokes around. And I was like, that's like, oh,

it's not a penalty more. That's how I remember that rule. So Craig, we're going to let you go. We held you longer than we thought. But let me say, you are so good at this. This was super intuitive.

And we will just keep, if you'll allow us, we're just going to keep a running list whenever we run into these situations and we'll have you back on for a part two into the future. But it is great to get some answers on these. and just don't ever give us your phone number. I think I have your phone number, but don't give it to us because we'll probably be calling you mid-round way too often.

But thank you for your help and expertise today. And I know our listeners probably get a lot of this as well. So thank you. Both of you. Thank you. Appreciate being on. Great job. Love what you do.

Thanks. Thank you.