Official Exceptions to the Rules of Golf: The Hacker's Bible

Introduction How many times has this happened to you? Your tee shot takes a bad bounce into rough thick enough to smother a buffalo, or you split the fairway with a perfect 250-yard drive, only to find that it came to rest in a divot hole so deep that if it were on the moon someone would give it a Latin name. Naturally, you tap your ball out of those ridiculous lies and onto a nearby stretch of reasonably playable turf where you have at least a fighting chance of hitting a halfway decent shot. After all, this isn't the Masters--it's just a friendly game of golf. And anyway, you know perfectly well that your playing partners in the opposite rough and on the other side of the fairway are doing exactly the same thing you are. Why then do you feel this nagging sense of guilt for simply having corrected what is obviously a totally unfair playing condition? Why? Well, every golfer knows the answer to that question. It's all because of a deadly little booklet called "The Rules of Golf"--over a hundred brain-numbing pages filled with batty commandments, nitpicking definitions, idiotic distinctions, and blatant contradictions, which, taken as a whole, are about as relevant to the game of golf that most people actually play as Escoffier's classic haute cuisine recipes are to microwave cookery. You see"The Rules of Golf" as they now stand (and they have been much amended over the years) have come to serve only one real purpose, and that purpose isnotto establish a universal standard of fair play and sportsmanship for golfers of varying skills anywhere in the world. No, the purpose of "The Rules of Golf" is to ensure that during the opening round of a multimillion-dollar tournament, a modern professional golfer with a bag full of custom-made, individually swing-weighted clubs, the build of a linebacker, the concentration of a mongoose, and a close personal relationship with God, cannot step out onto a lush, manicured, overwatered, rarely played, divot-free, lovingly maintained sod farm of a golf course, like Augusta National, and score a 21-under par on the first 18 holes. Now, you've seen pros like that on TV complaining about some course you'd kill to play on. And when they bitch and moan because the fairways haven't been cut close enough to let their drives carry 300 yards, or because the stuff in the bunkers isn't actual jewelers' pumice so they can't put a sand wedge a foot from the cup, or because they had to settle for a couple of 2-putts on greens with their own zip codes due to a spike mark or two, you must sometimes say to yourself, "Hey, I'm not playing the same game these guys are." Well, you're right. You're not. And so it also stands to reason that you shouldn't be playing bytheirrules either. You should be playing byyourrules--hackers' rules--or, as they are more formally known, "The Official Exceptions to the Rules of Golf." Most golfers know a handful of these unwritten but customary exceptions--the mulligan, winter rules, gimmes--but the book you are now holding represents the first serious effort to collect and codify in one handy, easy-to-use volumeall 62of the time-honored, generally recognized modifications of, and exemptions from, "The Rules of Golf.'' Each exception has been rendered into precise, quotable prose, illustrated with simple-to-understand drawings describing the particular extenuating circumstances the exception covers, and presented in the natural order of play from tee to green so that the appropriate remedy for any situation is always right at your fingertips.So now it's up to you. Are you going to play the game as it was originally played and was always meant to be played, with a little common sense based on the simple fact that just hitting the ball is hard enough already, so players are entitled to a break once in a while? Or are you going tBeard, Henry is the author of 'Official Exceptions to the Rules of Golf: The Hacker's Bible' with ISBN 9780679408864 and ISBN 067940886X.