ShopTalk: Rules School

[John Kaufman]

Hi Guys, Did you ever do something and say "what was I thinking"?   I guess when you get older you do some weird things. At least that's what my wife keeps telling me. Of course I reminded her that she's eligible for social security in three weeks. She hasn't talked to me a in a few days.   Last summer I noted on the USGA web site that they were holding one of their two dozen or so four day rules schools in the area so I signed up. I thought it might be interesting to learn something although I thought I had a reasonable knowledge of the rules. The school started last Sunday. Four days, eight or nine hours a day with a 100 question 3 1/2 hour exam at the at the end. Half closed book , and half open.   My first impression Sunday when I arrived was the size of the group. About 115 people with 16 on the waiting list. The group included about two dozen women which also surprised me. We went around the room introducing ourselves and indicating how many of these schools we'd attended. Of course I was a virgin this being my first. The vast majority ranged from 5 to 12! I was amazed.   We started with the definitions and then went through all 34 rules. Anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and a half or more on each. There were two instructors, a USGA rules official and a PGA rules a official. They were both very good of course but I was really impressed by the USGA guy. Somebody would ask a question and he'd recite off the top of his head "well in accordance with Decision 12-6b2 such and such.". The presentation was a PowerPoint computer animated slide show intermixed with many videos right off the PGA tour. Just about every screw up you ever saw from Love hitting his putt during a practice stroke at the TPC (an $80,000 screw up) to Stadler kneeling on his towel at San Diego was shown. (DQ'd).  The one that got the most laughs was Els taking some practice swings in the rough near an over hanging limb. Some leaves came down. They broke for commercial but they still had the audio and Venturi was going on and on about how he was obviously guilty of a two stroke violation. When they returned from commercial it was found the official had declared no penalty (definitely a correct ruling) to which Venturi commented "I full agree"! They indicated that they had offered the course to various TV anouncers and nobody has taken them up on it yet.   By the second afternoon my mind had turned to mush. The third day I recovered somewhat and it wasn't too bad. The fourth day of course was the exam. After about two hours my mind was like scrambled eggs. After three hours I actually could not focus my eyes on the fine print in the decisions book anymore and had could no longer use it.  Here's a typical example. Guys in a horseshoe shaped bunker. Caddie goes over to the other side of the green to get a rake and rakes some foot prints he finds there. Player skulls ball over green  near just raked area. Caddie rakes area the player just hit from. Player again skulls the ball over into the other side of the trap (sorry bunker, there is no such thing as a trap) to where the caddie has just raked. Caddie goes over and again rakes  bunker on the other side. Player again skulls ball. This is repeated four times. What did the player score? I have no clue. I will be getting my score from the USGA in a few weeks but if I got 50% I'd be surprised. Interesting experience. Now that that's over I can relax and start on my 1040. Piece of cake.   Cheers, John