As we near the USGA and R&A rolling out their extensive, exciting and bold simplification of the 2019 Rules of Golf, Ryan Herrington at Golf World makes a shrewd point worth checking out: be careful what you wish for elite players.
After all, simpler rules mean you better know them!
With so many sections and subsections and sub-subsections, if you broke a Rule because you didn’t know it was a Rule to begin with, you often were forgiven for making an honest mistake. With a modernized Rules book, that defense becomes far more flimsy.
Indeed, if the Rules are going to be easier to understand, then golfers are going to be expected to genuinely understand them. In particular, golfers who make a living playing the game.
In that respect, the modernized Rules may well present a new set of challenges when they finally go online on New Year’s Day 2019.