My sister, Barbara, who plays golf twice a week year around, suggests others use the following list of rules of golf which she has adopted for her play.
A ball hooked or sliced into the rough shall be lifted and placed in the fairway at a point equal to the distance it carried in to rough. Such veering right or left results from friction between the ball and the club face and the player should not be penalized for such uncontrollable mechanical problems.
A ball hitting a tree shall be deemed not to have hit the tree. Hitting the tree is simply bad luck and has no place in a scientific game. The player should estimate the distance the ball would have traveled had it not struck the tree and move the ball in the fairway at the point, preferably on a nice tuft of grass.
There shall be no such thing as a lost ball. The missing ball is certainly there someplace and will be pocketed by someone else at a later date. It thus becomes a stolen ball and the player should take a stroke off his total score for each such ball at the end of their round.
When hitting a ball from a bunker, the player shall have the right to strike the ball as many times as necessary to remove the ball from the hazard. A maximum of two strikes shall be counted in any case since it can be assumed that if the player had adequate time to concentrate that he could remove the ball in as many strokes. This rule applies to the first bunker only. Thereafter, the ball shall be lifted from the bunker without penalty.
A putt which passes over the cup without dropping shall be deemed to have dropped. The law of gravity states that an object attempting to maintain its position in the atmosphere with out support must drop. The same theory holds for a ball which hangs on the rim of the cup. The law states that it must drop. A ball stopping so close to the hole as to inspire such comments as ‘You could blow it in? may, in fact, be blown in. This rule does not apply to a ball which is more that three inches from the hole since no one wants to make a travesty of the game.
Shots which strike the green but roll off the back shall be deemed to have stayed on the green. The ball shall be placed on the green at the point halfway between the point it struck and the back of the green. Obviously, the green has not been kept in ideal condition and the player con not be penalized for this.
On courses where the greens are not kept up, such as above, the old rule of ‘inside the leather? does not apply. Instead, the player shall remove the flagstick and measure the putt. If the ball likes within the flag, the putt shall be termed a ‘gimme?. Putts lying outside the flag may be practiced up to three times prior to the player putting them for real. A practice putt which falls may be called a real putt. A putt which travels less than 50 yards, such as a shank or a top, may be replayed without penalty.