[TEPaul]

What if Rule 13-4 was removed from golf?

Would it be heresy or would it ultimately be benefical, perhaps even massively benefical to golf and particularly to the future of golf architecture?

For those who don't instantly recognize it, it is the prohibition against touching the ground in a hazard. A hazard includes a bunker.

Did you know there once was a time in early golf when there was no such prohibition? The lie of the ball ANYWHERE on a golf course was protected under the simple rule that one could not improve one's lie, period. But this never meant one could not touch the ground in various places. Rule 13-2 is sufficient to protect the lie of the ball anywhere on a golf course!

Once you begin to ponder this and what it has apparently wrought over the years, including what it has ultimately done via the maintenance practices of golf course architecture, I think you will begin to realize what the extent of the removal of Rule 13-4 could mean to the future of golf and architecture, including mainteanance practices. For starters can you imagine the amount of money it might save? Can you imagine the philosophical seachange it might create in golf itself?

I doubt the Rules makers would ever deign to even consider such a thing simply because they view Rule 13-4 as so traditional that at this point it must be fundamental to the game.

Is it though? I think if they were very honest about its history and bothered to go all the way back and look seriously at why it REALLY came into the game in the first place they might be truly surprised!

By the way, Max Behr referred to those days before this type of prohibition as 'the halcyon days of golf'. In his mind apparently that time was before the Rules makers of golf began to excessively moralize over the game and its rules and prohibitions.

[Mark_Fine]

Tom,
You make a good point and Forrest and I cover this in our hazards book.  Many superintendents have been sharing this with their green committees (as Bill Spence at The Country Club calls it - "Part of the education process").  Did you ever pick up a copy?
Mark

[Tom_Doak]

Tom:

I wish they would change that provision.  As you know, some of the hazards I build make it hard to determine exactly where the bunker stops and the native begins ... and instead of thinking that is good, the rules people give us a bunch of crap about it.

However, I don't know if it's going to change.  You are right that Rule 13-2 would still prevent someone from improving their lie in the sand, but it becomes a judgment call instead of a clear-cut question of whether you touched the sand or not, and it might well lead to some arguments in tournament play.

[Willie_Dow]

Tom and Mark that is a great observation, and I agree very strongly that grounding the club in a bunker would cause little change in the outcome of scoring.
Anything we can do to reduce the number of Rules of Golf is the best direction the game can take, IMHO.

[Tom_Doak]

By the way, I suggested the USGA should just call ALL the bunkers "through the green" for the Curtis Cup so they didn't have to make rulings on whether someone was in a bunker or not ... but they didn't take the bait, they decided to say that the ones which provided rakes were bunkers and the rest were not.

[Tom Roewer]

Definition:




DEFINITION

Bunker
A "bunker is a hazard consisting of a prepared area of ground, often a hollow, from which turf or soil has been removed and replaced with sand or the like.

Doesn't say anything about its location on the course or whether there is a rake available.

DEFINITIONS are the foundation of The Rules of Golf so obviously the rule is stretched when an area that does not fit this description is then deemed to be one.  I would think that when possible the architect could be consulted with.

[JohnV]

There are too many Tom's involved in this discussion.

Tom Paul,

I believe I sent you an analysis of what the effect of removing bunkers from the rules would be a couple of years ago.  I have it at home and will try to post it tonight.

To both Tom Paul and Tom Doak, while Rule 13-2 does prohibit improving your lie and would protect from most egregious acts, there are exceptions that would allow some improvements.

The first is that you can ground your club lightly in sandy areas that are through the green.  Probably not a big improvement from that.  The second is that in making the back swing for a stroke the player could knock over a pile of sand that was blocking his forward stroke.  This could make a pretty big difference for some shots.

I believe that declaring areas that meet the definition of a bunker as through the green actually waives a rule of golf and is therefore not allowed.  They could have more easily taken the opposite tack and declared all sandy areas as bunkers.

Tom Roewer, while the definition of a bunker doesn't include the word rake, the phrase "a prepared area of ground" implies that it was the intention of the the architect or the superintendent that the area be a bunker when they designed or prepared it as such.  Therefore, if an area has been raked or otherwise manicured, it should be considered a bunker.

At Sea Island for the 2004 US Mid-Amateur, we said that if an area had been raked it was a bunker.  If not, it wasn't.  There were many areas where an area had been raked and connected to areas that hadn't and there were no rules incidents with regards to confusion.  In general, we told the players that they should always use caution and act as if the area was a bunker.

Probably the biggest problem area at Pacific Dunes is the hillside to the right of the 13th green.  As I recall, the flat area at the bottom is raked and maintained as a bunker, while the rest isn't.  It shouldn't be too hard to determine where one starts and the other ends.

[Peter Pallotta]

edit:

A general question: is it more likely that the USGA will "cherry-pick" individual rules/rule changes, or that instead they will undertake something like a "comprehensive review" of all the rules, perhaps timed to co-incide with some important anniversary in their history?  

Peter

[JohnV]

Peter,

The USGA and R&A work together to update the rules every 4 years, with 2008 being the next update.

At any time, there are ongoing discussions about many proposed rules changes.  Major changes tend to happen slowly as they try to make sure that all the consequences are understood.  Even then, they do make changes that turn out to have bad consequences and have to be rolled back.

One such change occurred in 2004 with the new definition of when a ball is lost.  The basically rolled that back in 2006 by changing some decisions and will change the rule back (or to something else) in 2008.

I doubt that a change as radical as removing Rule 13-4 would happen, but if it did, it would probably require many years of discussion and analysis by the joint Rules Committee.

There have been significant rewritings and restructurings of the rules in the past, but they usually take a huge effort and many years of thought.  I've heard of no rumors of such an effort at this point, but they certainly don't tell me what they are doing.

Ran's brother John is the point man for the USGA in the dealings with the R&A.

[TEPaul]

Mark:

I think if anyone thought about this for ten minutes in this particular way they would begin to realize why bunkers have become so "maintained" over the years and that this will never change as long as Rule 13-4 is part of the Rules of Golf.

Tom Doak said:

"However, I don't know if it's going to change.  You are right that Rule 13-2 would still prevent someone from improving their lie in the sand, but it becomes a judgment call instead of a clear-cut question of whether you touched the sand or not, and it might well lead to some arguments in tournament play."

TomD:

I certainly don't think any of us should hold our breath waiting for that Rule to change. I doubt the Rules-makers would ever even consider such a thing simply because they probably do view it as fundamental to the playing of the game now. And you are surely right that the abolition of Rule 13-4 would cause many more arguments, at least for a time. There is probably little question that it is far harder to determine if a lie has been improved in sand than with turf.

I only post this thread so that we may consider what might happen with maintenance and architecture if somehow they did make the change.

But did you know that originally in golf in Scotland, particularly at St Andrew, it was assumed with very little question that the penalty for improving one's like would only be called by the player himself? This was essentially what the "spirit" of the game was all about and obviously why it became known as "a gentleman's game"----eg all golfers at that time had a mind-set (the "spirit of the game") where they could trust one another to do the right thing.  

[Peter Pallotta]

John
it sounds a bit like the Vatican, except the Vatican rules go back a little further, they have ex-communication instead of a 1-shot penalty, and they consult with me on the rule changes not at all  

Thank you for the detailed answer.

Peter  

[TEPaul]

"By the way, I suggested the USGA should just call ALL the bunkers "through the green" for the Curtis Cup so they didn't have to make rulings on whether someone was in a bunker or not ... but they didn't take the bait, they decided to say that the ones which provided rakes were bunkers and the rest were not."

Tom Doak:

Did they really say that to you or anyone else seriously? If so, my friend, you just may have them on the run, at least in a philosophical way if not literally. Why don't you just call their bluff by telling them you are going to take all the rakes off the golf course and see how they respond to them apples?  

[Mark_Fine]

Tom R,
We give an example in our book about Pete Dye's Whistling Straits course in WI.  No one really knows how many bunkers are there including Pete.  We talk about Stuart Appleby being caught removing a piece of grass and grounding his club within one of these bunkers on #16 "because he didn't think it was a bunker."  Frankly, Pete doesn't care what is a bunker and what is not.  His opinion is that they are all a form of a hazard and meant to make the golfer think.  
Mark

[TEPaul]

The increased prevalence of the so-called "waste bunker" or "waste area" is another good reason why the removal of Rule 13-4 would be an improvement, at least regarding clarity within the Rules of Golf. For starters any confusion of when you can touch the ground and when you can't would be instantly removed.

The fact is the R&A/USGA do not seem to be inclined to  address the confusion created by this modern phenomenon of the "waste bunker" or "waste area" by even mentioning the existence of a waste bunker or waste area in the Rules of Golf. If enough of these areas appear on golf courses around the world this would seem to be somewhat unrealisitic if one of the intentions of the Rules of Golf is to create and promote clarity in play.

[Wayne_Kozun]

When you are playing a course that has both "waste areas" and bunkers how do you know which is which?   Do rakes signify a bunker?   That seems kind of arbitrary - if someone stole a rake from a bunker all of a sudden it becomes a waste area?

[JMorgan]

Tom Paul, IMO add 13-1 to that list.

[Tim Gavrich]

I remember that when I played Tobacco Road some years ago, my father and I were told on the first tee that all areas of the course not marked with hazard stakes or paint were considered "through the green."

I have never thought about this, but it makes a lot of sense.  In fact, I think that with the abolition of that rule, an even stronger case could be made for not raking bunkers so meticulously (or at all).

[JSlonis]

Why would this rule change have any effect on maintenance?

If golfers were now allowed to ground their club in a bunker, why would courses maintain them differently?  

Most guys I know would much rather have a raked bunker that you can't ground your club in, as opposed to one that is unkempt but you can ground your club.

I don't see how allowing someone to ground their club in a bunker would have any positive results.  It is too easy to improve your lie in a bunker by simply grounding your club, and it would lead to too much speculation between players.  It would become a very slippery subjective slope.

[JohnV]

Wayne,

See my reply about how things were done at Sea Island for the US Mid-Amateur.  It is usually fairly obvious if an area has been maintained or is just left in a natural state.  But, the player should always use caution.

Off the top of my head, the only time I can think of that a player would get in trouble assuming a ball was in a bunker when it was through the green was if he played a wrong ball.

Mark,

What happened to Stuart Appleby was his own fault as he didn't bother to read the notification that was given to every player stating that every sandy area was a bunker for the PGA Championship.

[TEPaul]

"Tom Paul, IMO add 13-1 to that list."

James:

There are certainly lots of Rules "purists" who feel the same way. If Rule 13-1 was abolished, however, it would do away in one fell swoop with almost all the "relief" options in golf. That would be a bit more complex than doing away with Rule 13-4.  

WayneK:

Almost always the only real way a golfer can tell the difference between a "waste area" and a bunker on a golf course is because "waste areas" are generally designated on the back of a golf course's scorecard. Isn't it interesting that the R&A/USGA Rules of Golf don't exactly recognize this distinction or designation on the back of a growing number of course scorecards?

To them it's simple a hazard (bunker) or "Through the Green". The only problem is a whole lot of those waste areas or waste bunkers out there look like bunkers, feel like bunkers, act like bunkers and smell like bunkers.

It's confusing to the one person the Rules of Golf should not be confusing to----the golfer.  

[JohnV]

Tom/James,

Most rules purists realize that being allowed to lift your ball has been in the rules since the first 13 rules were published for the Leith Golf Club in 1744.  Notice Rule 13 from those rules:

13.  Neither Trench, Ditch or Dyke, made for the preservation of the Links, nor the Scholar's Holes, or the Soldier's Lines, Shall be accounted a Hazard; But the Ball is to be taken out Teed and play’d with any Iron Club.

Those who think that there was a time when you could never touch your ball live under a misconception.

[JohnV]

As for maintenance, there is no reason that all sandy areas on a golf course couldn't be considered bunkers whether they were raked or not.  The choice to maintain them is strictly a choice made by the club owners or members.

Obviously Pine Valley does not maintain their sandy areas.  Do they consider them bunkers or through the green?

[John_Cullum]

Once you begin to ponder this and what it has apparently wrought over the years, including what it has ultimately done via the maintenance practices of golf course architecture, I think you will begin to realize what the extent of the removal of Rule 13-4 could mean to the future of golf and architecture, including mainteanance practices. For starters can you imagine the amount of money it might save? Can you imagine the philosophical seachange it might create in golf itself?

I don't follow this. Merely grounding the club in a bunker is not going to save a club on bunker maintenance as I see it.

[JSlonis]

As for maintenance, there is no reason that all sandy areas on a golf course couldn't be considered bunkers whether they were raked or not.  The choice to maintain them is strictly a choice made by the club owners or members.

Obviously Pine Valley does not maintain their sandy areas.  Do they consider them bunkers or through the green?

John,

Pine Valley plays all the sandy areas and bunkers as hazards.  They do occasionally maintain the large sandy waste areas with a "SandPro".  I actually think this makes some of the large areas more difficult.  

[Mark_Fine]

John,
As we both know from being there and playing the course, every sandy area at WS does not necessarily look like a bunker.  I hear what you are saying but at the same time, you can see why someone like Appleby might be on a sandy patch of turf not shaped anything like a bunker and think he can ground his club.  He should have asked but he didn't.

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