NEW YORK (AP) – For the last five years, the top rules experts in golf have come together from around the world to study a jigsaw puzzle.
That’s what Thomas Pagel of the USGA refers to as the book more commonly known as the Rules of Golf.
The purpose of these private meetings essentially is to break up the puzzle and start over so the rules make more sense, without losing sight of the tradition or ethos of a game with six centuries behind it. Sessions can last at least eight hours. The singular goal is to make the rules less complicated.
It has not been easy.
“Everyone wants the game to be simple, but it’s a complex game,” Pagel, the USGA’s senior director of rules, said in an interview at the Olympics. “You have a little white ball that can and will go anywhere, and the rules try to handle all those situations. There’s always going to be a level of complexity. But how can we modernize the rules so they’re easier to understand and easier to apply so golfers can play confidently that they at least understand the basics?”