Evolution of the Golf Rules

MILESTONES IN THE EVOLUTION OF THE GOLF RULES.

By Ergio Guitian

September 2018

As of January 1, 2019, the new modifications to the rules of golf, known as "rules modernization," approved by the USGA and the R & A after a long and protracted discussion involving thousands of experts on rules and players, will come into force. Here we present a brief historical review of the evolution of the rules of golf.

Chronology.

1744à “The Gentlemen Golfers of Leith,” later as “The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers,” wrote the “Articles & Laws in Playing at Golf” (known today as the "13 articles")

1809à “The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers,” established the procedure for dropping the ball: face the hole and drop the ball over the head.

1825à ”The company of Perth golfers” modified the dropping procedure in the following way: face the hole and drop the ball over the shoulder.

1875à Seven more articles were added to the "Articles & Laws in Playing at Golf.”

1885à  The golf clubs established in the United Kingdom decided to choose “The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews” (R&A) as the central institution to govern golf.

1888à the R & A sent a complete regulation to all known clubs of golfers.

1891à The R&A was recognized as the regulatory authority.

1893à The R&A made a considerable reform of the regulation which included 40 rules and 14 special provisions, as well as 10 articles on the golf etiquette.

1894à The United States Golf Association (USGA) was created to govern golf in the United States and Mexico. The USGA established a Golf Rules Committee making its own interpretation of the rules, so that the USGA regulations began to diverge significantly from the Rules of Golf established by the R&A.

1897à The R&A established its Golf Rules Committee, which resulted in the first consolidated code. This regulation also had new and important provisions, such as a stroke penalty (in stroke play only) if a ball was played within 20 yards of the hole without the flagstick having been removed and the first definition of "out of bounds" (followed three years later by the first rule that allows the game of a provisional ball).

1908à The R&A published the first official “decisions book.”

1909à The rule book was modified by adding headings for each section, and detailed clarifications to some rules based on more than 230 decisions made in the last 10 years.

1910 a 1930à During those years the focus was on the golf equipment and the balls to establish the regulations in those aspects.

1927à The USGA published its own “decisions book.”

1930à The R&A created an Advisory Council of rules including the golf associations of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; the Ladies' Golf Union; and the golf associations of Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.

1934à The R&A’s Rules of Golf Committee conducted an important review of the R&A and USGA regulations. There were no major changes, but the Rules of Golf were reorganized and rewritten to clarify their meaning and defining elements of the game.

1938à The USGA adopted a limit of 14 clubs; The R&A did the same one year later.

1946à the USGA revised and reordered its rules book and made several changes, such as the adoption of a distance-only penalty (without a stroke penalty) when a ball ended up out of bounds. This rule was revoked years later, to establish the stroke-distance penalization.

1950à The R&A issued a new code, with an experimental review of two years, that restructured the golf rules in a completely different way to the USGA and, among other things, applied the distance penalty only to any lost, out of bound or unplayable ball.

1952à The R&A and the USGA united to issue the first truly unified golf rule book. The code was completely reorganized (making sure to cover the "stroke play" and "match play" modalities), and dozens of differences were reconciled between the USGA and the R&A books. The new rules book restored the traditional penalties of stroke and distance, and adopted many other important changes, such as:

•         Expand the circumstances in which a ball could be lifted and cleaned, and establish the concept of a lateral water hazard in which relief must be taken within two clubs of distance from where the ball entered the hazard.

1956à In this new revision there were only writing and style changes to facilitate uniformity throughout the English-speaking world.

1960à The main change of this edition was to allow players to mark, lift, clean, and replace a ball on the green.

1968à This edition prohibited the use of "croquet style" on the green and adopted the first general restriction on the use of artificial devices to help a player. He also reconciled the remaining significant differences in the rules of the USGA and the R&A except for some technical differences, such as the size of the ball.

1980à The USGA and the R&A began a project to reorganize the rules book to make it more logical and intuitive. The draft was widely distributed to golf associations and individual golfers for review.

1984à The USGA and the R&A published the new structure reorganized and revised; That included some modifications such as:

•         New drop procedure: the player must stand erect by extending the arm and holding the ball at shoulder height to allow it to fall freely.

•         The prohibition of making practice strokes between two holes during the game is extended.

•         The waiting time for a ball stopped at the edge of the hole to fall was limited to 10 seconds.

•         Eliminating relief without penalty from an immovable obstruction or burrowing animal hole in a water hazard.

1988à The first unified decision book was published, organizing it thematically. Since then, the decision book has become an important instrument of the regulatory process.

Also, since that year a committee of experts, composed of members of the R & A and the USGA, reviews the rules every four years.

1992à It was established that there is no penalty if a player touches the ground or loose impediments in a hazard if he is falling or to avoid a fall.

1996à The committees were authorized to establish patterns of the pace of play and apply them, even penalizing their infringement with strokes.

Since that year, several important Local Rules were authorized, such as allowing the Committees to designate environmentally sensitive areas where play is prohibited (1996) and allowing the use of distance-measuring devices (2008).

2000à The caddy was forbidden to stand on the line behind the player while he executes the stroke.

2008à Players were allowed to share information about distances by excluding it from the “prohibited advice.”

The penalty was reduced to one stroke if a player, his caddy, partner or equipment accidentally deflect his ball in motion, both in "stroke play" and in "match play."

2016à The anchored strokes were prohibited. It was also established that a player will not be disqualified for returning his scorecard with a score lower than the real for a hole if the reason was that the player did not include a penalty that he did not know about.

2019à An important revision known as "Modernization of Rules" will be applied as of January 1.

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(Source of information: www.randa.org)