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.
To learn more about the modernization of the
rules click on this link https://gotoinorlando.blogspot.com/
(Source of information: www.randa.org)
