PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

If you are a golfer like I am – and even if you don’t set out to play every day as I do – there is good news coming.

As of January 1, 2019, major golf rule changes will go into effect and the changes are designed to simplify the rules, which can come across as a set of regulatory statutes many pages long – too many pages long.

The changes are being proposed jointly by the United States Golf Association (USGA) and the Royal & Ancient Golf Association (R & A), which have won plaudits for a review that covered a number of years, involved both sides of the Atlantic and featured ample opportunity for input from all kinds of golfers, from pros to amateurs.

Oregon’s own Barbara Trammell, the excellent executive director of the Oregon Golf Association, served on the overall committee that drafted the rules – and deserves plaudits for, first, being selected for the role, and, second, contributing to a solid proposal.

The overall effort was sparked by a major concern. The rules of golf were too complicated, sometimes hard to find in the rule book, and not always clear to most golfers. You almost had to act like a budding lawyer trying to pass the bar exam when you looked at the rule book, along with its 500-page summary of “golf decisions.”

In the new code, words such as “hazard” and “through the green” are gone. They have either been taken out or replaced by simpler to understand rules or phrases.

“Through the green” is a perfect example. I have played a lot of golf for more than 30 years and I found it difficult to understand the term, which was critical to many of “old” rules. The phrase has been replaced by the term “general area” to cover all of a golf course except four defined areas – the teeing ground on a hole, all bunkers, all penalty areas, and the putting green of the hole the golfer is playing.

Here are a few of the major rule changes:

• Ball Accidentally Moved in Trying to Find or Identify It: There is no longer a penalty for this accidental act. Good, I say.
• Ball lost or Out of Bounds: The change is that a ball would be considered lost if not found within three minutes, not the current five minutes. Plus, a golfer can take relief for a lost ball at the spot of the loss without heading back to the tee. Again, good.
• Dropping a Ball in a Relief Area: It used to be that the golfer was supposed to drop a ball from shoulder height. That has been now been reduced to knee height, far easier to assess than shoulder height. At one point, the draft rule changes suggested dropping from one or two inches above the ground, but that properly was determined to be close to placing the ball – and, in fact, placing the ball was considered, so I imagine that placing could be another change considered down the road. Good.
• The Flagstick: Players will have the option next year of playing a stroke from anywhere on the course – including on the green – with the flagstick left in the hole.   This change was a nod, at least in part, to speed up play. Good.
• Playing a Ball in a Bunker: Under the new rules, it will be possible, (a) to remove obstructions and loose impediments, and (b) to take a two-stroke penalty, remove the ball from the bunker and play out of the grass, an obvious nod to amateur golfers, not pros. Good.

In all of this, famous pro golfer Gary Player put it well: “Change is the price of survival, so I applaud the governing bodies’ effort and initiative to continuously implement rule changes to help golf in the long term and simplify the game. We have witnessed several instances over many years that unnecessarily changed the outcome of a tournament. So, recognizing the need for continuous improvement is paramount for our future.”

To Player’s quote, I would add only that the rule changes will help amateur golfers who love the game AND want to play by the rules. They also may help me pass the USGA rules test in order to become a certified rules official. We’ll see about that in 2019.