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The Rules of Golf exist to make the game fair for everyone and following the Rules ensures that your Handicap Index is the most accurate reflection of your skill level. Remember, a Handicap Index can only be as honest as the player inputting scores.
Here are five of the most commonly ignored Rules and some friendly reminders on why they should be followed.
1. Not Holing Out
You roll a putt to the friendly zone of about three feet before raking the ball back into your hand for an implied gimmie. By the book, your hole isn't finished, and unless you’re playing in a match where your opponent explicitly concedes the putt, you're actually committing a costly penalty.
This isn't about being strict. This is about realizing that following the rule of holing out actually yields an accurate Handicap Index. If you pick up every three-footer throughout a round, you're likely posting a lower score than you would have recorded if you actually attempted those putts. A lower score means a lower Index. A lower Index means getting less strokes where you truly need them. The only person that the gimmie actually hurts is the player taking them.
If you take the gimmies because you're convinced you'll make them -- why not actually prove it and make them?
2. Applying Penalty Strokes Incorrectly
You slice a ball out of bounds. There are white stakes but instead of walking back to the tee box, you just drive up to the edge of the fairway, drop a fresh ball in a perfect lie, and hit your "third" shot. If a ball is out of bounds, the official rule requires playing from the original spot under a one-stroke penalty.
The good news is to keep up the pace during a casual round, you don't actually have to walk back to the tee. If Model Local Rule E-5 is in effect at the facility you are playing, you can drop a ball in the fairway nearest to where your ball went out of bounds, but you are now hitting your fourth shot, not your third. If you want to hit three, you need to hit a provisional ball from the tee.
3. Improving Your Lie
Your ball settles into a nasty, muddy divot in the fairway, or sits directly behind a tree root in the rough. Whether you try to sneakily slide the ball over while no one's watching or convince yourself it's a casual round so it doesn't matter, the foot wedge is never in play.
Golf is fundamentally a game about "playing it as it lies." Unless there's an explicitly stated model local rule allowing for preferred lies (usually due to wet winter conditions), moving your ball and playing from the new spot is a penalty.
Embrace the bad lies. Learning how to cleanly pick a ball out of a divot or punch out from behind a tree is how you build a golf game to be proud of and, again, a much more accurate reflection of your skillset, Handicap Index, and the variables of playing an outdoor sport.
4. Taking a Mulligan
There is no "breakfast ball" or do-over in the Rules of Golf. A mulligan sounds nice in theory but the second you take one, not only are you breaking a rule but your round is no longer acceptable for posting for handicap purposes.
If you didn't have time to warm up, there's no harm in accepting that the first hole (or nine) might be a grind. Every round of golf has ups and downs so don't sweat a slow start. Focus on finding your swing and eliminating the big mistakes.
5. Writing the Wrong Score
This is probably the opposite of what you're thinking. We're actually talking about players who write down too big of a number. Casual golfers can sometimes penalize themselves too much on the scorecard. You might have a nightmare hole where two balls in the water, a chunked chip, and a three-putt add up to double digits on the card. However, while each one of those strokes may count in a tournament, for handicap purposes, your maximum score on any given hole is Net Double Bogey. Net Double Bogey is par for the hole, plus two strokes, plus any handicap strokes you receive on that specific hole based on your Course Handicap. Once you hit that cap, pick up your ball, move to the next tee, and write down your maximum allowed score. It protects your Handicap Index® and saves your pace of play.
