What is up with this persistent desire some of you have to get away with everything you can get away with by conjuring up all these cock-a-mayme schemes to try to push the envelope and bend, if not outright break, the rules?
Shivas,
That's exactly why I brought up the single dot and all the other stuff (V's, arrows, dots, shapes, etc.) -- the argument is that regulating the use of ID marks and how player place the ball on the green is impractical (and apparently the USGA agrees for now), and reasons for this may include:
(i) that there indeed will be all these "cock-a-mayme" schemes, some of which will be difficult to detect, if people want to break the rule,
but just as importantly,
(ii) even if players aren't trying to break the rule, there are all sorts of ways that players can place their ball so that the ball actually does indicate the line for putting.
Remember that "intent" doesn't really matter when it comes to rules situations. For example, it doesn't matter whether a player "intends" to tee off in front of the tee markers or not--he incurs a penalty. But here's the key difference:
The guideline for determining if a player tees off in front of the markers is crystal clear--draw a line connecting the front of each tee marker, and if the entire ball is in front of that line, he incurs a penalty.
But what is the crystal clear guideline for determining if a mark on a ball indicates a line for putting? I mean, look at this thread--you and Patrick Mucci don't think that a single dot can indicate a line while Michael and I do. Patrick doesn't think someone can use the Titleist logo to align the ball (and hasn't seen it in 50 years of competing) and then 2 people come out and say they've done it for years? Even if you place a ball so that it appears randomly placed (say, with the trademark at a 45 degree angle from the line of the putt), who's to say that if a player practices night and day using that same orientation, that soon that orientation won't begin to indicate the line of putting for him?
Again, I don't use a cheater line or any other mark when I putt, so I don't have a personal stake in this, and yes, I think that your argument has a lot of merit and in an ideal world would carry the day (maybe some day it will). But I think the arguments that many of us have brought up on this thread illustrate that enforcing a "cheater line Rule" would be more difficult than you think.