Indoor Golf: USGA and R&A Adopts the DJ Rule

By: Tony Covey

Finally! The USGA and R&A are taking a common sense step towards addressing and fixing at least one of the complexities and contradictions within The Rules of Golf.

The game's governing bodies have announced a new local rule (effective January 1st, 2017) that eliminates the penalty when a player causes his or her ball to move while on the putting green.

You know the context. During the final round of this season's US Open, Dustin Johnson's ball moved on the 5th green. Did the ball move on its own, or did DJ cause it to move? Despite very shaky video evidence, the USGA pinned it on DJ who took his penalty like a boss and cruised to victory, potentially saving the USGA from an outright revolt.

Given how the rules handle accidental taps on the tee box, if there were continuity in the rules from tee to green, the question wouldn't have been "Did Dustin Johnson cause the ball to move?" It would have been "Did Dustin Johnson intend to cause the ball to move?" The latter is a hell of a lot easier to sort out.

The change appears to be the first change to come out of the USGA's rules modernization project, a comprehensive study to "see how the rules could be made easier to understand and applied by golfers throughout the world."

As explained in the video below, the local rule will be adopted for all of the USGA and R&A's championships and qualifiers beginning in 2017. The expectation is that will also be widely adopted by competition committees across the world.

Here are the full details:

Many of us would agree that the rules of golf in their current state are an overly complex mess. It's exactly why, despite the USGA's hardline stance, most of our weekly foursomes already play with some common sense tweaks.

I'd call this a step in the right direction - one of the few of late from the USGA that addresses tour concerns while at the same time simplifying the game for amateurs. Kudos guys.

Here's hoping this is just the beginning of a significant simplification effort.

While we're at it, can we get the intent to hit rule applied to the rest of the golf course, and maybe do something about playing out of divots as well.