Opinion: Time to reverse these recent Rules of Golf changes

When the USGA and R&A made significant updates to the Rules of Golf in 2019, the organizations that administer the competitive game worldwide had clear goals in mind - namely, simplifying the Rules by making them more consistent and easier to understand, with a secondary aim to help speed up play as a result.

In my opinion, they overwhelmingly succeeded in most of their efforts. Limiting lost-ball search time to three minutes, eliminating the penalty for accidental double-hits or deflections and the accidental moving of a ball on the putting green are all excellent changes that I have seen benefit golfers including myself in the more than five years since their institution. While I was skeptical about the change from shoulder- to knee-high drops at first, I have fully come around on it and like it as well.

That said, since 2019, three new Rules and aspects of the Rules of Golf continue to stand out as having fallen short of their intended goals. In all of these cases, the USGA and R&A's hearts were in the right place, but in practice, they haven't worked as well as intended, and in some cases have led to awkward and even borderline-unethical behavior by players, including top professionals.

After more than five years and hundreds of rounds, I've seen enough: the flagstick rule needs to be changed back to pre-2018.

This change was #4 out of 31 on USGA's official list of major changes and explanations (read the very handy PDF here), which speaks to its perceived importance and potential influence on the general procedures and flow of a round. In short, it removed the old two-stroke penalty against a player whose ball strikes the flagstick after being hit from the Putting Green. As a result, golfers became free to choose whether they wanted to leave the flagstick in the hole or take it out when they putt.

This is where the trouble started, and hasn't abated. While this amendment aligns with many of the other 2019 Rules Changes by eliminating a penalty for an illicit act deemed relatively mild or arbitrary, and the overall instinct was a good one, it has significantly gummed up the process of putting by giving golfers a choice that can briefly paralyze a group on every single hole.

In the hundreds of rounds - especially competitive ones (from tournaments to a $2 Nassau) - that I have played since the beginning of 2019, many fellow golfers remain adamant about either leaving the flagstick in at all times - even if, as the USGA predicted and subsequent tests have suggested, "it is expected that there should be no advantage in being able to putt with the unattended flagstick in the hole." Try telling this to golfers, who are stubborn and superstitious, or to greenkeepers, who have noticed cup edges have become more ragged because of golfers' hands smashing into them while they attempt to pluck their ball from the cup with the stick still in it.

Ultimately, golfers' neurotic and rigid putting preferences have caused several situations where one golfer hits a putt with the flag out, then replaces it for another who wants it in, before removing it again for another who prefers it out. It's an excruciating process that is entirely new because of this change. I hope I live long enough to see it reverted to the pre-2019 Rule that required the flagstick removed or tended on every putt. It will make the on-green portion of every hole run smoothly, just like it used to.

Whenever whiny golfers moan that they shouldn't have to play shots from divots, I like to refer them to golf's Golden Rule, which remains the very first one in the book because it is absolutely fundamental to the spirit of the game:

Nothing could be simpler. Golf is an outdoor game; that fact means the playing field will not always be perfect. Part of the point of golf is to overcome adversity, and the vast majority of natural blemishes to a course are simply part of the list of obstacles that stand in the way of the scores we hope to shoot.

Number 20 of 31 major changes and explanations published by the USGA modified and, ultimately, greatly expanded the status of the Putting Green as an exceptional part of any golf course. It has long been the only place where a golfer can lift and clean his or her ball, and it is also the only place where one can fix certain imperfections. But prior to 2019, this list was limited to "any old hole plug or ball-mark" - two relatively obvious types of imperfection. In 2019, however, the USGA and R&A expanded the language of the Rule to declare "almost any damage on the green...such as ball-marks, shoe damage, indentations from a club or flagstick, animal damage, etc."

Once again, greater freedom and less paranoia is a win for golfers, isn't it? Not so fast. Unfortunately, loosening definitions has created a vast grey area that opens the door for both unintended and outright nefarious behavior. Watch a televised professional or amateur golf event and you will see players aggressively tapping down multiple spots along their putting lines every single time. Are these all spike marks? Who can possibly know?

Sometimes, the tapping almost looks like mashing, as if a player is trying to create a subtle channel for the ball to roll through on its way to the cup. When this gardening goes too far, it raises questions about the integrity of the game where few arose before.

The knowledge that one can tap down spike marks has also encouraged players to traipse around the green more than before, which slows down play and adds stress to the grass. The AimPoint green-reading process practically relies on this Rules change, with its practitioners generating countless extra spike-scars on greens by shuffling back and forth, straddling their lines, occasionally even standing in others' lines while assessing the slope of a green not with their eyes but with their feet.

Years of watching players abuse greens and manipulate their putting lines makes it seem that in hindsight, the narrower list of acceptable putting surface fixes was more sensible. Although perhaps this Rules change opens up the potential for another one, which I would not oppose: the elimination of golf-specific spikes altogether.

I worry about words for a living, so I fully admit that I am more sensitive than most to largely unnecessary changes to the way we communicate. I find most "corporate-speak" to be dehumanizing, and I look at 2019's semantic shift away from "(water) hazard" to "penalty area" as an example of golf-flavored corporate-speak.

Not only is the term "hazard" backed by decades of tradition, it functions elegantly on its own. A hazard is inherently understood to be a place a golfer should not venture into, so the fact that a penalty is incurred from venturing there makes sense. "Penalty area" accomplishes a similar semantic task, but it lacks the simplicity of "hazard" as part of the dialect of the game. The fact that golfers speak articulate certain concepts in ways that are unique to the game is a feature, not a bug. The same goes for match-play terms like "all square" and "halve," which tie golf to its centuries of history in a way that invites people to form community around coded language.

Quirkiness of language is part of the charm of golf. Sanding it off makes the game less special.