Want to play in club competitions? You should be made to pass an exam first

I have seen things on a golf course that have made me cringe. Like the player who, when coming across his ball in the rough, spread open the leaves like Moses. He really thought he could do it.

I’ve had to walk veteran golfers – these are people who have been members most of their lives – through the simplest of stuff.

We’re not talking complex sub-sections here. We’re not talking memorising rule numbers or burying heads deep in the clarifications.

We’re talking where to drop a ball from a penalty area, nearest not nicest point of complete relief, and why you can’t just extract your ball from miles deep in a bush and take lateral relief by the side of a fairway.

It’s the stuff you can’t really play a round of golf properly without knowing.

These players are not cheating. If you asked them, they’d tell you they follow the rules to the letter. They believe it with all their hearts. The problem is they just don’t know them.

I was once one of them. I’ve made every mistake they have. I always thought my integrity was beyond reproach. I was ignorant and so, it pains me to write, are some of you.

I asked a refereeing pal of mine who’s been in the game a long time how he coped during a regular club competition when he’d see carnage going on all around him. He told me he’d simply learned not to look.

And yet, I am troubled. I’m bothered wondering how many times a player has won a tournament while inadvertently breaking the rules. I’m bothered by all the competitors who have been potentially ‘robbed’ of a prize because others in the field basically didn’t know what they were doing.

And I’m bothered that the more we play to these ‘club rules’, the stuff that golfers think they can do but couldn’t be more wrong about, we perpetuate that lack of knowledge.

Don’t believe me? People still insist to me they can declare their ball lost. I get an email about it at least once a week. You haven’t been able to do it since 1964.

‘I’d make every player who wants to play competitions pass a Rules of Golf exam’

Do what you want in a knock. Prefer your lie, forget about stroke and distance, tee it up in the fairway. Strike your ball in absent minded blindness. Whatever makes you happy. I don’t care.

But when we pay our money, or we put a card on the line, we need to hold ourselves to a better standard. We need to a basic level of rules knowledge that everyone can cite.

What’s my answer? I’d make every player who takes part in a competition complete the R&A’s Rules Academy.

Before you start bleating on about cost, it’s free. It covers the things that happen most on a golf course. At the end of it, you can do the official R&A Level 1 exam. Yes, you’ve read that right. I’d make you takes a Rules of Golf exam.

It’ll take you an evening if you do from it start to finish but you can also go through it at your own pace.

Don’t tell me you haven’t got the time. You seem to manage the four hours required for a round every week easily enough.

You can’t play in a competition without a handicap, can you? I’d make every golfer who wants to tee it up when a prize is at stake show they’ve passed that Rules of Golf exam.

Then we’d all know what we were doing. And wouldn’t the competitive game be the better for it?

There’s a similar path in the United States, where the USGA’s Rules 101 course is also free, has nine modules, and gives everyone who takes it the knowledge they need to get out onto the course without inadvertently getting into trouble every time they tee it up in a serious event.

Now when it cones to club committees, I’d go even further. Some of the stuff they do I find utterly head-scratching.

From disqualifying players for not putting a date on the scorecard (for the last time you can’t do it), to inventing Local Rules for the sake of convenience, if you’re setting rules or enforcing them at clubs you need to be held to a higher standard still.

The home unions in Great Britain & Ireland hold regular seminars designed to precisely provide this service, with a Level 2 Rules of Golf exam at the end that will enable you to handle most of the queries that can end up at your doors.

I’d make this a requirement of getting involved. I know you’re all volunteers, and I commend you for it, but what’s the point of handing out decisions if you’re not up to the task?

The days of ignorance, of dodgy drops, and whispers rules, need to come to an end. We could make it happen in one night. So let’s do it.

Have you been through the R&A Rules Academy? Let me know how you got on and whether it helped you in your day-to-day golf.

Got a question for our expert?

Despite the changes to the Rules of Golf in 2019 and 2023, there are still some that leave us scratching our heads. I’ll try to help by featuring the best of your queries in this column.

Should you need to pass a Rules of Golf exam to play in club competitions? Let me know by leaving a comment on X.

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