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.

The other day I was asked by my friends in the “senior golf group” at Illahe Hills Golf and Country Club to summarize new golf rules, which will take as of January 1, 2019.

I was asked because I had taken a recent United States Golf Association (USGA) and Royal & Ancient (R&I) seminar on the new rules, which were several years in the making.

As a friendly critic, I say the seminar would have been better if two things were done: (1) There should have been a summary of the major rules issues you could encounter on the golf course, not on all of the minutia; and (2) the presentations could have focused on explaining the rules, not just using a power-point presentation to put the actual rules language on the screen, then reading the lines with only a little interpretations

For the senior men, I might not have been the best person to prepare the summary. Others at my club know more about the rules as I do.

But I took on the task and what follows is a brief summary about what I wrote.

2019 GOLF RULES EXPLANATION/The United States Golf Association (USGA) and the Royal & Ancient (R&I) in Europe have spent several years revising official golf rules, including reducing the number from 34 to 24 and re-writing many of the rules in more up-to-date language. Still, the rules remain complicated, which owes at least to the fact that the game is played in the outdoors, not inside a stadium or pavilion.

For regular golfers, the best approach is to get a copy of the “Player’s Edition of the Rules of Golf” (effective as of January 1, 2019.) As was the case with old Player’s Edition, it is small and can be carried in your golf bag. Order it from the USGA through its regular website.

List of Major Rules You Might Encounter (in no priority order):

• You can now leave the flagstick in the hole whenever you want – no penalty
• In a nod to the Dustin Johnson issue at the 2016 U.S. Open, if your ball or ball marker is accidentally moved on the green, no penalty
• You can now fix any mark on a green (a spike mark), not just a ball mark
• If you don’t like to play in bunkers, you can now take the ball out, with a two-stroke penalty; and removing loose impediments is allowed  [This is one of the most interesting new rules if only because a phrase in the rules about what golfers are now allowed to do in a bunker enshrines this incredible language – you are now allowed “to pound the sand in frustration or anger” after hitting a bad shot from a bunker.]
• You now have three minutes to search for a lost ball, not five
• In a penalty area (formerly called a “water hazard”), you do not receive a penalty if you happen to touch the ground inside the area as long as you don’t use your club forcefully to improve your lie
• If you damage your club in the course of play, you are now allowed to continue using the club which might no longer meet equipment standards
• When taking a drop, you now do so from knee height, not shoulder height
• If you think or know you have hit a ball out-of-bounds, a local rule, if enacted, allow you to play the ball from where it went out or back on that spot and a line to the tee, with a two-stroke penalty
• No penalty now for hitting a ball twice with one swing

One last point: Rules should not get in the way of enjoying golf. Some rules could help golfers in playing the game, but the focus, in any event, should be on enjoying the game and friendships.