“This is outrageous”, said Matt Fitzpatrick, and many observers felt he had a point. There are golf rules that, however well intentioned, just feel wrong when they are used in the heat of tournament battle. This was one of them.
It was the 8th hole of the final round of the BMW Championship at Colorado’s Castle Pines in August 2024. Fitzpatrick noticed a crack in his driver on the tee and called in a rules official.
The referee confirmed a minor crack was visible on the face, but the former US Open winner was not able to replace his damaged club – even though he had a couple of replacement heads sitting in his clubhouse locker.
Why? It was because the tournament, like many high-profile events on the various tours, was using a Model Local Rule. It was G-9 to reveal its full title.
Rule 4.1a (2) allows players to repair or replace a club that is damaged during a round, except when it happens through abuse. Think smacking your club in fury against a tree, for example.
But the Local Rule allowed competition organisers to restrict that replacement to cases “where the club is broken or significantly damaged”. That did not “include a club that is cracked”.
The clubhead or club face impact area had to be “visibly deformed” and not only cracked. The issue with Fitzpatrick’s driver didn’t meet the threshold, PGA Tour Chief Referee Stephen Cox said.
Fitzpatrick was none too pleased as you might expect, arguing it would cause a defect to the ball flight. He then snap-hooked his next tee shot with the faulty club into the rough.
But what no one watching could seem to work out – threshold met or not – was why a crack wasn’t deemed significant damage, particularly given the ultra-thin materials manufacturers use these days to produce golf clubs.
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Now things have changed.
Broken golf club? Cracked driver? The rules have changed
Although big changes to the Rules of Golf are announced every four years, the last of those being at the start of 2023, the R&A and USGA rules teams regularly review and announce clarifications where they think they’re needed. They implement these on a quarterly basis.
There was a sizable alteration to Model Local Rule G-9 at the start of 2025 and it has been revised again in the newest set of changes, which came into effect on January 1, 2026.
It says a club “may only be replaced if the damage was not caused by abuse and if the club is broken or the damage is significant”.
It classes that as when the “shaft is in pieces, or it is bent, dented, kinked or splintered” or if the “grip or part of it is loose”.
On the clubhead, it includes when it is “visibly cracked or substantially deformed (but not when it is only scratched, chipped or has a minor dent)”, if it is “loose or no longer attached to the shaft”, or if a part inside the clubhead is loose – “such as when there is an audible rattle”.
And for the clubface, it includes if it is visibly cracked or deformed “including when it has a chip or minor dent but not when it is only scratched”.
The revised Local Rule also says the replacement club “must fill the gap created when the player took the broken or damaged club out of play” to “ensure the progression of the set is maintained”.
What does it mean? We’re going to see far more instances of players on tour being able to switch out damaged clubs in the next few years.
And there won’t be many arguments about the change.
Now have your say
What do think of the changes to this broken golf club rule and cracked driver rule? Is it just common sense, or should the old provisions have stayed in place? Let us know your thoughts by leaving us a comment on X.
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