You Have Some Rights Under The Rules, Too

The mail brings a number of odd questions about the Rules of Golf to the United States Golf Association's headquarters in Golf House, New York. This unusual one came in recently:

"We have lots of rainy days, but we hold our tournaments regardless of the weather. When playing on a rainy and wet course, is it legal for a player to go barefooted?"

The writer was not Sam Snead or Dynamite Goodloe. His name is Al Kobata, and he lives in Hawaii.

Can there be more to the question than the question itself? Does it imply that many golfers have a rather fearful view of the Rules of Golf? Do they think the code is a jumble of don'ts and can'ts and prohibitions and technicalities?

Sadly enough, this is a fairly common estimate of the Rules. But there is another side, a positive side. The Rules carry many legitimate, sporting advantages for the knowing golfer. In a cursory exploration of the Rules book recently I found more than 75 examples of rights, of positive privileges, as distinguished from negative can't-do-thats.

Suppose you get one safely off the tee right down the middle of the fairway. But the night before some young hot rodders had taken their souped-up auto on that fairway and tested its brakes. Your drive comes to rest in a deeply rutted bare patch, made overnight, right in the fairway, and the ball is practically unplayable. Are you stuck with your lie?

In a tournament you could appeal to the committee to declare the rutted area to be ground under repair. Ideally, ground under repair should be marked in advance; but here is an emergency case. The definition of ground under repair covers it: it is any portion of the course so marked by the committee or "so declared by its authorized representative." A referee or a committee may classify serious fresh damage to the course as ground under repair. But note that an official must make the decision; if every player decided it for himself, things could be chaotic.

A commonplace but important point about rights in the Rules, concerning the five-minute time limit on looking for a lost ball, was made during the fourth round of the 1956 Amateur championship at Knollwood, near Chicago. Here Arnold Blum and Charlie Harrison were all even after 17 holes. On the 18th Blum knocked his tee shot into the rough. After a lengthy search Arnold announced that he was ready to give up looking for the ball, but Clarence W. Benedict, a USGA official who had been timing the search, informed him that he still had 45 seconds left. The ball was found by a spectator a few seconds later, and Blum subsequently won the match, reached the quarterfinals and was named to the 1957 Walker Cup team.

You can't always rely on officials to be as efficient as Mr. Benedict was. In point of fact, sometimes you have to know the Rules just to protect yourself from officials.

Arnold Palmer's knowledge of his rights was a key point in his victory in the Masters tournament at the Augusta National last year.