Rules, Etiquette and Scoring
Golf is not a game lacking in structure. In fact, it is rife with rules of play, rules of etiquette, and rules of scoring. You may never master all the intricacies of these rules, but you should familiarize yourself with some of the more important ones.
Blimey, It's a Stymie: The Ancient Rules of Golf
The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers devised the original 13Rules of Golf in 1744, over a wee dram (whisky) or 12, no doubt. Anyway, the Rules are worth recounting in this chapter, to show you how little the Rules of Golf have changed over the centuries.
1.You must tee your ball within a club's length of the hole.
2.Your tee must be upon the ground.
3.You are not to change the ball which you strike off the tee.
4.You are not to remove any stones, bones, or any break club, for the sake of playing your ball. Except upon the fair green, and that's only within a club's length of your ball.
5.If your ball comes among watter, or any watery filth, you are at liberty to take out your ball and bringing it behind the hazard and teeing it, you may play it with any club and allow your adversary a stroke, for so getting out your ball.
6.If your balls be found anywhere touching one another you are to lift the first ball, till you play the last.
7. At holling, you are to play honestly for the hole, and not to play upon your adversary's ball, not lying in your way to the hole.
8. If you should lose your ball, by its being taken up, or any other way you are to go back to the spot, where you struck last, and drop another ball, and allow your adversary a stroke for the misfortune.
9.No man at holling his ball, is to be allowed, to mark his way to the hole with his club or any thing else.
10.If a ball be stopp'd by any person, horse, dog, or any thing else, the ball so stopp'd must be played where it lyes.
11.If you draw your club, in order to strike and proceed so far in the stroke, as to be bringing down your club; if then, your club shall break, in any way, it is to be takenout,teed a ndplay’dwithanyironclub.
12.He whose ball lyes farthest from the hole is obliged to play first.
13.Neither trench, ditch or dyke, made for the preservation of the links, nor the scholar's holes or the soldier's lines, shall be counted a hazard. But the ball is to be taken out, teed and play'd with any iron club.
As you can tell from the language and terms used in 1744, these rules were designed for match play (see "Match play," later in this chapter). My particular favorite is Rule 6. It wasn't that long before the rule was redefined from "touching" to "within 6 inches" — which in turn led to the stymie rule. The stymie has long since passed into legend, but it was a lot of fun. Basically, stymie meant that whenever your opponent's ball lay between your ball and the hole, you couldn't ask him to mark his ball. You had to find some way around it. Usually, that meant chipping over his ball, which is great fun, especially if you're close to the hole.
Another rule I particularly like is the one stating that you could leave your opponent's ball where it lay if it was near the edge of the hole. As of the late 1960s, you could use such a situation to your advantage, with the other ball acting as a backstop of sorts. Nothing could hack off your opponent more than your ball going into the hole off his! Happy days!
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