Golf has a rulebook that runs to hundreds of pages, and for most of its history it was written by people who seemed to enjoy making the game harder than it already is. The good news for the rest of us: the strangest rules have produced some of the most unforgettable moments in the sport — and every one of them has a lesson your Saturday foursome can actually use.
1. The bunker that wasn't a bunker
The 2010 PGA Championship at Whistling Straits came down to the 72nd hole. Dustin Johnson had just birdied the 16th and 17th to take a one-shot lead. Then his drive on the last sailed right, into a patch of sand trampled flat by spectators.
Johnson didn't think twice. He grounded his club in the sand — twice — played his shot, made bogey, and walked to the scoring area believing he was headed for a playoff.
He wasn't. Whistling Straits has roughly 1,000 bunkers, and before the week started every player had been told in a memo that all sandy areas on the course counted as bunkers — including the ones outside the ropes where fans were standing. Grounding a club in a bunker cost two strokes. Johnson dropped to a tie for fifth. Martin Kaymer beat Bubba Watson in the playoff instead.
The lesson for your round: if there's sand under your ball, treat it like a bunker until someone proves otherwise. “It didn't look like a bunker” has never once worked as a defence.
2. The inch that cost a major
Lexi Thompson was cruising at the 2017 ANA Inspiration, one of the LPGA's majors. On Saturday, on the 17th hole, she marked a putt of about a foot, picked her ball up, and put it back down — about an inch from where it had been.
Nobody noticed. She signed her card and went home. Then, on Sunday, a television viewer emailed the LPGA about it.
Officials reviewed the video and agreed: two strokes for playing from the wrong place, plus two more for signing an incorrect scorecard. Four strokes, for an inch. Thompson was told between the 12th and 13th holes of the final round, while leading by two. “Is this a joke?” she asked the rules official. It was not. She went from two ahead to two behind in the time it took to walk to the next tee.
To her enormous credit, Thompson fought back and forced a playoff — and lost it to So Yeon Ryu on the first extra hole.
The fallout was almost as famous as the incident. Within a couple of years the rules were changed so that armchair referees at home can no longer call in penalties. But the underlying lesson survives: replace your ball exactly where it was. An inch is not “close enough” when a major is on the line — and your foursome's money game isn't that different.
3. Two yards too far back
Tiger Woods, 2013 Masters, 15th hole, second round. His wedge shot was so good it hit the flagstick and bounced back off the green into the water. The rules gave him options for the drop, including going back to where he'd played the shot from. He went back — and then, by his own later admission, about two yards farther back than that, because he liked the lie better.
“I went two yards farther back and I tried to take two yards off the shot of what I felt I hit,” he said on television that evening. A viewer had already flagged the drop to officials. The committee first cleared him, then reversed itself after hearing his own words: two strokes for dropping and playing from the wrong place.
It could have been worse. He'd also signed a scorecard that was lower than his real score, which normally means disqualification. The committee used its discretion to waive the DQ — and Tiger finished tied for fourth while Adam Scott won the green jacket.
The lesson: when you take relief, drop where the rule says, not where the grass looks nicer. And maybe don't explain the details on camera.
4. The rule that let you block your opponent's putt
This one sounds made up, but it was real for more than a century. In match play, if your opponent's ball sat on the green directly between your ball and the hole, it stayed there. You had to chip over it or putt around it. That was called a stymie.
It gets better. If your ball hit your opponent's ball and knocked it into the hole, your opponent was considered to have holed out. You could literally help your opponent win by trying to get around them.
The USGA softened the rule in 1938, letting the blocking ball be lifted if it was within six inches of the hole. But the stymie wasn't fully killed off until January 1, 1952, when the USGA and the R&A issued their first unified rulebook. Today, the blocking ball just gets marked and lifted, and everyone putts in peace.
The lesson: if your regular match-play rival complains that the rules used to be tougher, they're right — and you should be grateful.
5. Fourteen clubs, and the one that cost a major
Before 1938 there was no limit on how many clubs you could carry, and some players took full advantage. Lawson Little, who won the U.S. and British Amateurs back to back in 1934–35, sometimes carried as many as 26 clubs. Others carried more than 30. Caddies hauled bags that weighed a ton, and the governing bodies finally decided that skill should matter more than inventory. The USGA set the limit at 14 clubs on January 1, 1938; the R&A followed in 1939. Fourteen was roughly what a standard set already was — driver, a couple of fairway woods, irons, wedges, putter — so it felt like a compromise rather than a punishment.
Sixty-three years later, the rule produced one of the cruellest moments in Open history. Ian Woosnam birdied the par-3 first hole on Sunday at the 2001 Open at Royal Lytham & St Annes to take the lead. On the second tee, his caddie, Myles Byrne, walked up and said, “You're going to go ballistic — we've got two drivers in the bag.” Fifteen clubs. Two-stroke penalty. Woosnam threw the extra driver into the bushes, watched his birdie turn into a bogey, and eventually finished tied for third, four shots behind David Duval.
The lesson: count your clubs before you tee off. It takes ten seconds and it's your caddie's job, but it's your penalty.
6. The great cleanup of 2019
After decades of incidents like the ones above, the USGA and the R&A rewrote the rules, effective January 1, 2019, and a lot of the silliness went away:
- You can leave the flagstick in while you putt. No penalty if your ball hits it.
- Drops are from knee height now, not shoulder height — which, among other things, makes it much harder to accidentally drop a ball two yards from where it belongs.
- You get three minutes to search for a lost ball, not five. (Be honest: if you haven't found it in three, you weren't going to.)
- Accidentally moving your ball on the green? No penalty — just put it back.
- A double hit counts as one stroke. No penalty.
- Your ball is embedded in the rough? Free relief, anywhere in the general area except sand.
- Ball unplayable in a bunker? You can now drop outside it for two penalty strokes instead of hacking away at it.
- And your caddie can't stand behind you while you line up a shot anymore.
Most of these changes share one idea: the rules should punish cheating and carelessness, not bad luck and honest mistakes. It's a better game for it.
What to actually remember on your next round
You don't need to memorize the rulebook. You need about five habits:
- Count your clubs before the first tee. Fourteen max.
- Treat any sand like a bunker unless you're sure it isn't.
- When you mark and replace your ball, put it back exactly where it was.
- Take relief where the rule says — not two yards toward the nicer lie.
- Ball in a divot in the fairway? There's still no free relief. Play it as it lies, curse quietly, and move on.
Golf's rules are weird because golf is weird — a game where you call penalties on yourself, where an inch matters, and where a rule written in 1938 can still ruin someone's Sunday in 2001. That's also what makes it great. Just try not to become the next story in this article.
