Ever had one of those frustrating days on the golf course?
You’re going nowhere, fast, the foursome in front of you is painfully slow. The sun is beating down, the cart girl is nowhere to be found, you just four putted the last green and now you’re on the fairway, lying four on a Par 4.

Then, as you’re waiting, a ball takes one bounce and sails right past your left ear. You look back and some jackass has teed off behind you, slamming his 290-yard rocket 20 yards past you.

”When I was a kid, I used to caddy for this guy, 6-foot-6. He could hit the ball a country mile,” says Jim Corbett. “One day we were waiting for
the group on the green and he and I were talking. This golf
ball comes bounding between us. He says to me, ‘Go get
that ball.’

”Then he says, ‘Give me my five iron. He whacks a ball way
back down the hill and I’m sure they were scattering when
they saw the ball coming. Now that’s the wrong way to handle
the situation.”

Corbett knows a bit about the rights and wrongs of golf. He’s
got his own website, www.mrgolf.com. He has also written a
book: The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Golf Rules and Etiquette.

”One of the hardest parts of golf etiquette, where you run
into the highest likelihood of a problem, is when somebody
wants to play through,” says Corbett. “Just by asking
somebody, there’s an implication that he’s not doing
something right. There can be resentment. You’ve got to be
courteous about it and make sure you’re not rude. And
you’ve got to be realistic. Maybe they’ve just had a bad hole.
Maybe they’ll catch up. “When you get one guy thinking,
‘Hey, I paid my money, I’ll take all the time I want’ - that’s
a problem.”

So what about the rules of golf … are they a bit stuffy?

Corbett says “they’ve been developing these rules for 600 years, so they can be confusing,” but he says most of them make good sense.

”One of the questions I get asked all the time relates to Rule 10, the order of play,” he says. “Who goes next when somebody’s on the green and he’s 40 feet away and somebody else is off the green and 15 feet away.

”The rule is whoever is farthest away goes next. It doesn’t matter if you’re on the green. The reason for that rule is because back in the old days, there was no real distinction between the greens and fairways. The difference was there was just a hole in the ground.

”Some of the things we may think of as quirky seem to make sense if you look at them rationally.

”The rule about an embedded ball in the ground ... everybody thinks they should get a free lift. You do if you’re in the fairway or closely mown area. But if you’re in the rough, you have to play the ball out of the
hole .... or play it as an unplayable lie and
take the one-stroke penalty.

”If you think about it rationally, if you’re in
the fairway, you’ve hit a pretty good shot.
If you hit it into the rough, you deserve to
be penalized.”

Oh, and there are other rules that we often
abuse.

”One of the ones that people goof up is
shots that go out of bounds,” says Corbett.
“Some golfers play it like it's a red-staked
area, with a two-club length drop and a
one-stroke penalty.”That’s not it at all.
The rules for OB are pretty harsh. It’s stroke and distance. You’ve got to hit another ball and that ball now lies one stroke more than when you started.

”I actually wrote a suggestion to the USGA and asked about allowing people to drop the ball two-club lengths and take a two-stroke penalty. But what that doesn’t account for is that when you put the ball on the tee, you could hit another bad shot.

”As an old Scottish friend of mine once told me, the rules of golf are meant to be harsh. You can’t make them too wimpy.” But do we all have to adhere to the strict rules of golf if we’re just out to have a couple of beverages and whack the ball around? Can’t we just kick the ball around a bit to get a better lie ... maybe we throw in some gimmes?

”If you’re going to count the score for handicap purposes, you’ve got to have a higher level of adherence to the rules,” says Corbett. “The score actually has some relevance.”The rules of etiquette are part of every social thing we do. There are pecific rules of etiquette like not stepping on somebody’s line of putting. And after you put the ball into the hole, take the ball out. Don’t leave it in while the next person putts.

Corbett is excited about his new book...and he hopes golfers use it as a learning tool. ”One of the things I’m excited about is that I’ve got a reference card in the front of the book. On one side, it has all the major penalties with a grid that shows you what your options are. The other side is all about free lifts. I’m hoping people laminate the card and keep it in the golf bag. Corbett, who lives north of Seattle, says he plays to a 10-handicap when he’s in mid-season form.

”If I could only putt better, I’d be in low digits,” he says. “I’m 56 years old, I started caddying when I was 14. One of the things that struck me about golf was how people competing against each other still root for the other golfers.”

So there’ve got to be some things that bother Mr. Etiquette, things that get him steaming when he’s on the course. Says Corbett: “What’s irritating to me? People, not paying attention to what they’re doing. Hitting the ball onto the green and not repairing the ball mark. Not replacing a divot. Why do they do that?”

Ah, golf is such a grand game.

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GOLF-SOUTH.NET