Your ball is touching an out-of-bounds stake. Is it in bounds or OB? Part of your ball is resting on red paint marking a penalty area. Again, in or out? How about a ball that is partially on the green ...

Ask golfers how the Rules of Golf impact their round, and almost all will say that they add strokes to their score. It’s not an unreasonable perspective. We are conditioned, especially in sports, to ...

What you might still be wondering is where do you draw the line? In other words, when does "fairly taking a stance" become "building" one? For example, what happens when someone gets a little ...

You don't have to dig very far into the Rules of Golf to find out that golfers who are competing can't agree to ignore any rules when they play. In fact, Rule 1.3b(1) says that if two or more players ...

Golf usually speaks in absolutes. Players, commentators, and officials talk as if the rules are universally understood. But in reality, the golf community is often submerged in confusion. Back in June ...

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Did you know the USGA Rules team fields nearly 20,000 questions a year from golfers via phone, email, and the USGA Rules of Golf mobile app? The “hotline” is free and open to anyone, and we allow ...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — They drive professional golfers up the wall. They’re highly unpredictable — unfair, depending on who you ask. You never know when you’re going to get one or how bad it’s going to be.

Call it the Paul Mitzel update. Or the Akshay Bhatia one. Or the Korn Ferry sixsome update. Any of those could work. Each refers to incidents in which a player or the player’s caddie claimed to have ...

Not knowing the basic rules of golf will hurt you sooner or later. I learnt the hard way when playing in a tournament on a rainy, very wet, day after finding my drive stuck in the fairway, and being ...

There is a term in the Rules of Golf that might seem self-explanatory, but when you read the fine print, it comes with some latitude in how it's applied. The term is "fairly taking a stance." Astute ...