OK, I know that this may not sound like the most exciting or interesting of ideas, but knowing the rules of golf will truly help your game and help to reduce scores and stress when playing. As a coach, I ran a successful junior golf program, with over 85 kids attending lessons on a weekly basis. One of the key fundamentals of the golf school was to educate young golfers on how to integrate and behave on the golf courses, and this of course meant understanding the rules of golf. Many of the adults that played the course believed to themselves to have a good understanding of the rules with a couple suggesting that junior golfers most certainly didn´t. So, I arranged a golf rules quiz, between the adult members of the club and the golf school. 10 members against 10 juniors, 4 of which had never been on a golf course due to not achieving a handicap at the time. The juniors had a far better understanding of the rules, which to the dismay of the members was graciously accepted.
If you are to play any game knowing the rules, especially the basic rules is an absolute must, I mean how could you attempt to play snooker, tennis or darts if you had no understanding of the rules?
Knowing the rules in golf can help you, they are not there to just punish golfers. An example, and a rule that is widely misunderstood is the free relief from immovable obstructions or abnormal ground conditions. Many of you would have experienced a ball coming to rest on a cart path, from which you are entitle free relief. What the children understood, was that you have to take the relief at the nearest point where the immovable obstruction (the path) does not interfere with your stance or swing. So, if you are right-handed and the path was a meter wide, with the ball in the middle of the path, your nearest point of relief (no nearer the hole) is actually on the left side. Most golfers would drop to the side that offered the best lie, which is wrong.
Another is the penalty area rule, which includes both red and yellow penalty areas, where the dropping options are different, not knowing them could lead to you being disqualified from a competition, even if your playing partners advised you incorrectly.
Understanding the rules, and what you are allowed to do and not, will help you to improve as a golfer, it may seem like a boring way to spend your time, but it will be an education and you will benefit from it in the long term.
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