Hurry up and find that ball

The distance of the penalty drop will also be changing in 2019, when golf ’s modernized rules take effect. draft a year ago and during six months of public feedback received some 30,000 comments from 102 countries through surveys, social media and phone calls.

The original proposal was for players to drop the ball two inches from the ground. Pagel said there were concerns it was too close to the ground. The idea was to get the ball back in play and knee-high length was determined to keep the ball from bouncing away from the right area and keep some randomness to how it lies.

One rule is only for recreational golf. Starting next year, a local rule will let golfers simply drop a ball that goes out of bounds in the vicinity of where it went out — even if that means the fairway — with an additional two-shot penalty.

That was done for pace of play and will not be applied in professional golf and other elite competitions. Other changes include: Eliminating penalties for accidentally moving a ball on the green or while searching for a lost ball.

Players will have only three minutes to search for a lost ball instead of five minutes.

Players now can repair spike marks or shoe prints on the putting green. Some players expressed concern that this might slow the pace if players spent too much time grooming the putting surface. Pagel said pace-ofplay policies would keep that from happening and it was a rule change that was needed for competition. No one wants to see a tournament decided by a spike mark in the line of a putt.

“It’s the skill we’re testing,” he said. “We’re not testing whether you can navigate around a shoe print. Really, it allows for great equity across the field.”

Eliminating the penalty for removing loose impediments in a bunker and the general touching of sand with the hand or club (without grounding the club next to the ball). Also, players can declare a ball to be unplayable in a bunker, take a twoshot penalty and play from outside the bunker.

The modern rules are available at www.usga.org/ rules or at www.RandA.org.

The tours are likely to provide training packages or seminars to get players up to speed before the new rules go into effect next year.