One of the many beautiful things about golf is that everyone plays by the same rules, no matter the level. From the LPGA Tour to your Saturday morning men’s league or the U.S. Open to that twilight round on a weekday evening, the rules you see on TV are the rules used around the globe.
Or are they?
Can the same set of rules really cover all of the nuances of both desert golf and links golf? Of general play at a public golf course and televised professional tournaments? While the basics of the Rules of Golf are always the same, the vastness of our sport necessitates some flexibility. That is where “Local Rules” come in.
Section 8 of the Committee Procedures in the Official Guide to the Rules of Golf states that “A Local Rule is a modification of a Rule or an additional Rule that the Committee adopts for general play or a particular competition.” The Rules book goes on to provide 70 pages of Model Local Rules (MLRs), running the gamut from practice restrictions to temporary immovable obstructions. The purpose of these MLRs is to provide a template for course operators and tournament administrators to address specific situations in a manner that is consistent with the primary text of the Rules of Golf.
If you have never played competitive golf, you may think Local Rules are just for the pros, but the truth is that all of us have encountered them many times. Have you ever had an errant shot find the water and played your next stroke from the dropping zone? If so, you have used MLR E-1. Maybe your group has gone out after a period of heavy rain and decided that balls in the fairway can be lifted, cleaned and placed within a club-length. That’s MLR E-3. Local Rules are also common on scorecards and may address odd boundaries or quirks specific to that course.
Recently, headlines proclaimed that the PGA Tour enacted a handful of “new rules.” In reality, the Tour updated its “hard card” (the document listing the MLRs used at all PGA Tour events) to cover a few niche scenarios. Among these adoptions is expanded relief for embedded balls (MLR F-2.3). This MLR allows free relief from an embedded ball in any unrepaired pitch-mark in the fairway, not just the pitch-mark made by the player’s previous stroke as prescribed in Rule 16.3. This addition invites the questions: Why aren’t these Rules in the standard Rules of Golf that all of us play by? How come pros play by different Rules than we do? The answer is simple – television.
Because professional golf is broadcast live to be consumed and dissected by the masses, Local Rules are sometimes necessary to produce fair and consistent outcomes. Let’s take a closer look at MLR F-2.3. If a player in your weekly group were to find their ball embedded in someone else’s pitch mark in the fairway, free relief would not be available to them. However, that player may not know that the pitch mark their ball is embedded in is not their own. If they did not see the ball land, it may be completely reasonable to conclude that the pitch mark is their own, and they would take free relief. Meanwhile, a tour player in a televised event could find themself in the same situation. In the tour scenario, with no MLR, an o icial armed with video evidence that the player’s ball came to rest in a different pitch mark would have to deny free relief. This MLR remedies that incongruence. Video evidence at most levels of golf is nonexistent, so this MLR is intended only for televised events.
So, do we all play by the same rules? It’s complicated. You will occasionally see rulings on TV that do not apply to your casual, weekend round. However, most differences are necessitated by things that are not concerns for the everyday player, whether that be television or spectator infrastructure.
Next time you are out on the course, remember to observe the posted Local Rules. If you want to play by the same rules as the pros, all you have to do is make it on Tour.
Will Cawthon is the CDGA Director of Rules & Championships and the staff contact for the CDGA Rules Committee. He has been with the Association since 2023.