Out of all the popular sports, golf may have the most complex rules, which is why experts are trying to make them easier for everyone to follow.
Thomas Pagel, senior director of rules for the U.S. Golf Association, took part in private meetings devoted to changing the Rules of Golf without losing the tradition associated with the game.
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"Everyone wants the game to be simple, but it's a complex game," Pagel said, via Golf.com. "You have a little white ball that can and will go anywhere, and the rules try to handle all those situations. There's always going to be a level of complexity. But how can we modernize the rules so they're easier to understand and easier to apply so golfers can play confidently that they at least understand the basics?"
The USGA made a huge gaffe this summer when it told Dustin Johnson during the final round of the U.S. Open, in which he was leading, that he would maybe be handed a penalty stroke for a possible infraction that occurred many holes before.
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Johnson was eventually penalized even though there was no clear evidence of a violation; the USGA ruled Johnson's putter caused his ball to move. The real problem was the rule itself.
Though the rules need to be upgraded to limit situations such as this — in the future, a player should be able to replace his or her ball at the spot, free of penalty — the Golf.com report said a modern set of rules is still years away.
"I'd be behind it 100 percent," Kevin Kisner said of a new set of rules. "The game is too slow, too hard and there's too many rules. I wouldn't know where to begin with how many rules there should be. I would think as minimal as possible. And we don't need all these dashes and a's and b's and c's. It's too confusing."
Johnson has seemingly been under constant pressure from some of golf's most tedious rules. The incident at Oakmont this summer was bad on the USGA's part, but Johnson was also controversially given a penalty on the 72nd hole of the 2010 PGA Championship when he grounded his club in what turned out to be a miniature bunker.
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At the time, people were standing in the bunker and Johnson merely thought his ball was resting on a dirt patch — as did everyone else watching — but after he made his final putt, a rules official informed him of his infraction and gave him a penalty that kept him out of a playoff.
"The USGA sends you that rule book, but I don't think it's ever made it out from the envelope to the trash can," Johnson said. "There so many rules that don't make any sense. They could make it a lot simpler and a lot better."
Incidents such as the ones involving Johnson, where the player did not gain a clear advantage from the broken rule, are the ones that need to be addressed. Players shouldn't feel frightened to ground their clubs because an accidental knock or moving blade of grass causes them a one-stroke penalty.
The game could be more fair with a fresh set of rules. It appears the people in charge realize that.