by James Ruhnke

Created on: May 05, 2009

Why does golf have to have so many stupid rules? Take, for example, not being able to move your ball if it finds a rotten spot to stop rolling. You hit the drive of your life thats 330 and right down the pipe. You arrive at the ball and find it's in some clod's divot. For crissakes, the darn thing looks like a robins egg sitting in an eagles nest! Can you move it without penalty? No! So you hack it out with your super-dooper poop-lie scooper and it goes 22.7 yards....with roll....into a pond. Thanks a lot you royal and ancient rule-makers.

How about not grounding your club in a hazard? I'm kinda teaching my wife how to play golf and she's in a bunker. She lays her club behind the ball and rests it on the sand. "You can't do that. It's against the rules." I say. She says, "Why not?" Well, I'm kinda stumped for a decent answer that a non-golfer will understand. After all, when Tiger is in a bunker he tromps in there with his size twelves and damn near digs his way to China "taking his stance". But, if his golf club moves ONE GRAIN of sand before he swings, it's a penalty! Oh, by the way, if you take your shot and don't break this stupid rule but you leave all of your hoof-prints and don't bother to rake the trap....no penalty. So when the next guy comes along he finds his ball 3 inches below sand level in a heel print. If he moves it.....that's right....penalty.

Now, you are finally on the green in 7 and you have a straight, slightly uphill putt to save your snowman. You approach your ball and there is a spike mark right in front of your ball. It looks like it was made with a pick-axe. Can you fix the spike mark? No! That would be a penalty. So you try to putt through it, ya know, give it a little extra oomph....and it goes six feet past the hole into a pitch mark....a small depression made when a ball strikes the green at the end of its flight. Can you move the ball, fix the pitch mark and replace the ball? Yes! Huh? Yeah, the rules say you can fix a pitch mark but not a spike mark. Anyway, you yank your 6 footer and yip your tap-in for a cool 11. Isn't golf fun?

What I do to avoid all of this is simply play "winter rules" all year long. There is no such set of rules but then, who gave those guys at St. Andrews the right to tell me what the rules should be anyway? Hell, they wear those funny hats with the poofy balls on top! They have bag-pipes! I'm as qualified as they are....so, if I land in a divot....I move the ball and there is no penalty.

Now, for the guy who was somewhere in front of me wearing really big spikes, doesn't know what the rake is for and doesn't replace his divots....who cares? He didn't bother me at all. BUT....if I were following the official rules of golf, I'd find the turd and punch him in the nose so hard that he'd be breathing through the back of his head. Which is not against the rules. However, it is against the law. Not one or two strokes but about 30 days. Unless the judge plays golf too.

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