Rules of Golf

Draft. Not adopted. Proposed for adoption as a Standing Rule under Article VII of the Bylaws, which commits the conduct of play to the Club and requires a majority of the Members in Good Standing at any meeting. Until that vote these rules govern nothing.

The modern code is written for a competitor being watched — by a field, a committee, a camera. It is long because it is trying to be fair to a stranger playing a course you will never see, for money. The 1744 Articles are two pages long because they were written by a few men who played together and had to agree only with each other. This code is written for the second case: two friends walking, one hole at a time, settling it between them.

So it takes the older codes’ brevity and their assumption that the game is a match, and the modern code’s genuine kindnesses — the ones that removed a penalty without removing a problem. It keeps nothing that exists to protect a scorecard from a stranger.

Read it once, in full, and carry it in your head. Where it is silent, the last rule says what to do.

The Match

1. The Form. Golf is played by two sides, one hole at a time. A side is one player or two. Strokes are counted only to decide the hole, and the hole is the unit of the game.
2. The Hole. The side holing in fewer strokes wins the hole. Equal strokes halve it, and a halved hole is a real result, not a failure to produce one.
3. The Match. A match is won when a side leads by more holes than remain. All square after the last hole is a halved match; the Club requires no extra holes unless both sides want them.
4. Order of Play. Play when you are ready and it is safe, as Ready Play requires. The honor — the invitation to the side that won the last hole to play first — survives as a courtesy on the tee, freely offered and freely declined. No stroke is ever recalled for being played out of turn; the old power to recall belongs to a game played against strangers.
5. Concession. At any time you may concede a stroke, a hole, or the match. A concession cannot be refused or withdrawn. Concede generously and without theater.
6. Information. Tell your opponent your stroke count truthfully whenever asked. Wrong information that changes how they play costs the hole, unless you correct it before they play again.
7. Advice. Ask your partner anything. Ask your opponent anything, too — this Club would rather you learned the shot than lost the hole for wanting to. What you may not do is ask and then dispute the answer.
8. Strokes. Any strokes given are agreed on the first tee, before the first stroke, and are not revisited afterward. The Club keeps no index and appoints no committee; two players who know each other can settle this in a sentence.

Playing the Ball

9. Play It as It Lies. Play the ball as it lies and the ground as you find it. Do not improve your lie, your stance, your swing, or your line. Standing Rule 5 has already said why, and said it better. Everything below is either an application of it or an admitted exception to it.
10. Fairly Struck. A stroke is the forward movement of the club made with the intention of striking the ball. Strike at the ball; do not push, scrape, or spoon it.
11. Your Own Ball. Play your own ball from the tee to the hole, and mark it so that you can say it is yours. Playing a wrong ball costs the hole — unless both sides did it, in which case neither is penalized and the hole is played out with the balls as exchanged.
12. One Ball to the Hole. The ball you play from the tee is the ball you hole, which is the third of the thirteen Articles and has never needed amending. If it cracks or splits, say so, and change it.
13. Loose Impediments. Move any loose natural thing, anywhere on the course, including in a bunker and on the green — stone, leaf, twig, worm cast, the whole ancient list of break-clubs. If the ball moves because you moved one, replace it, without penalty. 1744 forbade it and the modern code allows it, and the game loses nothing by that.
14. Movable Obstructions. A rake, a bottle, a sign, a forgotten headcover: move it. If the ball moves, replace it, without penalty.
15. Rub of the Green. If anything or anyone stops or deflects your ball — an animal, a rake, your opponent, yourself — play it where it lies, without penalty, and say nothing more about it.
16. A Ball That Moves. If wind, water, or gravity moves your ball at rest, play it from where it now lies. If you or your side moved it, replace it, without penalty, unless you meant to.
17. Mishits. A double-hit is one stroke. A swing that misses is a stroke; a practice swing is not. A club that breaks on the way down has still made a stroke.
18. In a Bunker. Do not ground your club or test the sand before the stroke. You may move loose impediments, place your feet, and touch the sand incidentally. A bunker is a hazard for what it asks of the stroke. The clubhead rule is only housekeeping.

Trouble

19. Lost Ball. Look for it. A Reasonable Search is what the Standing Rules say it is — the modern three minutes is a fair measure. Then drop a ball where the two of you agree it was lost, no nearer the hole, and play on without penalty, as Lost Ball Protocol provides.
20. Out of Bounds. Treated as a lost ball, under Rule 19. A stake at the edge of someone’s yard is not a hazard the architect put there.
21. Unplayable. You alone judge your ball unplayable, and you may do so anywhere. For one stroke, choose: play again from where you played the last stroke; drop within two club-lengths of the ball, no nearer the hole; or drop anywhere on the line back from the hole through where the ball lay, as far back as you like.
22. Water. Play it as it lies, or, for one stroke, drop behind the water on the line back from the hole through the point where the ball last crossed the margin — as far back as you like. This is the 1744 relief, in modern geometry.
23. Abnormal Ground. Casual water, ground under repair, an animal hole, a cart path, a sprinkler: free relief. Find the nearest point where the condition no longer interferes, no nearer the hole, and drop within a club-length of it. In a bunker, take the relief in the bunker, or go back on the line under Rule 21 for one stroke.
24. How to Drop. Drop from knee height. If the ball rolls outside its relief area or nearer the hole, drop again; if it does so twice, place it where it second struck the ground. The old codes had you face the hole and drop the ball over your shoulder — picturesque, and the reason they needed so many rules about where it ended up.

The Green

25. The Green. Mark, lift, and clean your ball whenever you wish. Repair anything — pitch marks, spike marks, animal damage, a footprint. Touch your line if you like.
26. The Flagstick. Leave it in, take it out, or have it tended, as you please, and putt from anywhere. No result depends on which you choose.
27. No Stymie. A ball on the green that interferes with your play may be marked and lifted at the request of either player. The stymie asked for a shot no one now practices and a tolerance for bad luck no one now has; the Club counts it its fondest casualty and does not restore it.
28. Holing Out. You never have to hole out. Pick up when the hole is conceded or lost, and walk to the next tee.

Playing the Colonel

29. The Bogey Competition. In the Club’s official format the opponent is the card, and Colonel Bogey makes bogey on every hole. The rules above that need a living opponent fall away: there are no concessions, no questions of information or order, and no recall. Play the ball as it lies, keep your own count honestly, pick up once the hole is lost, and record the margin.
30. Your Own Referee. Playing alone, you are the whole committee. Rule the doubt against yourself, and then forget it; nobody at the Club will ever check.

Penalty, Dispute, Equity

31. The General Penalty Is Loss of the Hole. Where a rule above names no penalty, breaching it costs the hole. There is no two-stroke penalty in this code, and no disqualification, because the hole is the only currency, and a bad one has already paid for itself.
32. What Costs Nothing. A deflection, an accident, a ball moved by nature, a ball moved while clearing something loose, a double-hit, a lost ball, a ball out of bounds, a cracked ball changed openly, a question asked of anyone. None of these is an offense against anyone.
33. Settle It Before the Next Tee. Raise a doubt before either side plays from the next tee — on the last hole, before you shake hands. After that the hole stands as played.
34. Equity. Where this code is silent, and it is silent about a great deal, decide it between you in equity: the outcome two people who would rather play than argue can both accept. If you cannot agree, halve the hole and let it lie. A rule you have to look up has already cost more than the shot was worth.

It’s not about the score you post but the stories you tell.
—C&RBGC Philosophy

Questions Reserved for the Vote

This section is part of the proposal, not of the code. Strike it on adoption.

1. The lost ball, and out of bounds. Rules 19 and 20 carry forward the adopted Lost Ball Protocol — drop and play on, no penalty. Every historical code charged stroke and distance, and 1891 charged the hole outright. The draft follows the Standing Rule rather than amending it by implication. If the Club would rather pay a stroke, amend the Standing Rule and Rule 19 together.
2. The honor. Rule 4 keeps the honor as a courtesy and abolishes the recall, because Ready Play is already adopted and the two cannot both be binding. The alternative is to restore order of play as a rule and make ready play the exception.
3. The stymie. Rule 27 abolishes it. The Club’s own notes mourn it, and a case can be made that it is precisely the kind of arbitrary difficulty this Club exists to defend. It is left out because “friendly” and “the stymie” pull against each other, and friendly won. Reverse it by striking Rule 27.
4. The cart path. Rule 23 gives free relief from a cart path, which is the modern kindness. The 1891 and 1925 codes made paths and roads hazards outright — you played it off the road, and the Road Hole is what that produced. The Club’s own complaint against the cart makes this the one place the draft takes the modern side against its own argument. Striking “a cart path” from Rule 23 is the whole amendment.