JES II,
Once you remove the linear nature of the ID dots, your issue evaporates.
I believe that Chris Brauner and I are in harmony on this issue.
Sorry Patrick--we may be in harmony on a lot of things but not this one.
I also don't oppose any effort to ban the cheater line or any other mark on the ball used to indicate a line for putting, but I just don't think it will be so easy to regulate and enforce.
I believe that shapes, trademarks, words and even a single dot on a golf ball can indicate a line for putting. The fact that using these other types of marks would be inferior to using a line doesn't matter w.r.t. the rules; if it can be done, the rules would have to deal with it.
That's why I think that, while a ban on using ID marks on golf balls to indicate the line for putting would seem to be called for, it would be harder than people think to regulate and enforce. How do you come up with a clear guideline to determine if one mark indicates the line for putting while another does not?
Patrick, I'm only guessing here but I believe you would have that guideline read something like "a mark on the ball is deemed to indicate a line for putting if it is linear in nature (be it continuous or segmented) and if the ball is oriented such that the configuration of the mark is parallel to the putting line".
In my view, the problem with such a guideline is that players would then attempt to use all of these other kinds of marks--shapes, trademarks, words and even a single dot--to get around the new guideline, and then you're stuck with the same slow play considerations and the same violations of the spirit if not letter of the rule.
Rules officials everywhere will have to use the same guideline to determine if a mark on the golf ball indicates the line or not.
Consider the following ID marks (and these are the easy cases):
What is the guideline that should be written to clearly determine that these marks, as well as the cheater line and other more obvious lines, indicate a line for putting? A guideline written so that every rules official everywhere uses the same judgment to determine if a rules violation has occurred?
And we haven't even discussed logoed golf balls yet. What's the guideline that a rules official would have to use to determine if these logoes determine a line for putting?
Is the word "Steelers" long enough to indicate the line? Are the tips of Bevo's horns or ears "linear"? How about the Merrill Lynch bull's hooves or horns? Are the stripes in the American flag too wavy to indicate a line for putting?
These are the kinds of things that the rules and rules officials may have to answer if they are to regulate and enforce a ban on marks to indicate a line for putting, and I just don't know if that's a path they want to take.
Again, I would fully support such a ban if it can be done, but I sense that the USGA may feel it impractical to do so (see the response that TEPaul posted a few pages back), and if so then this may be part of the reason why.
Of course I don't know for sure, and until the USGA clarifies its position on this issue, we're left to guess and present all sorts of hypothetical ball markings like those above (I'm impartial to Bevo myself)