Golf Rules – March 2019

Playing the wrong ball in golf happens, even at the top levels. As of March 1st, the rules are changing with 3 things in mind – simplification, encouraging people to tell their opponent before the shot is taken, and making it feel less like a punishment and therefore fairer to both sides. Only the last shot matters The first thing… Read more →

This is another simple update, in that previously if you had one offside ball, and the other onside, if you played the onside ball before the opponent had asked you to move your offside ball to a penalty spot, you’d have to replay the shot. Now you don’t. The penalty spots have changed too – previously it was supposed to… Read more →

It used to be that if a clip was on a hoop, and you hit the clip while running the hoop (usually while playing a jump) then it was a fault. You can now hit the clips as much as you like! Obviously it only counts for clips which are attached to hoops, and either player can get the clips… Read more →

This is more about tidying the rules up than anything more significant, and so they’re more in-line with Association rules. It used to be that a ball went “out” of the court when it was halfway over the line. Now it’s simply when any part of the ball touches the line, which makes it easier to judge. Read more →

Nice easy one here – if a ball is already where you want it to be, and you don’t want to move it, you no longer need to play a tiny little shot for the sake of it – you can just tell your opponent that you’re deeming it, and it’ll become their go. Read more →

In the old rules, if you weren’t in the middle of a shot, and you hit any balls by accident with your body or mallet then it would count as a fault. This was different to the rule in Association, where you’d just put the ball back to where it was and keep going. Some of the thinking behind recent… Read more →