I guess I’m on a rules roll this summer. A few weeks ago I proposed a way to fix the abhorred out of bounds rule. I haven’t heard back from the USGA yet, but they know how to get in touch.

Today I want to inject some sanity into the scoring method the rules call for in tournament play. Too many golfers have been hurt unnecessarily by the rule holding a player responsible for his or her own score.

The earliest notable example I know of was when Jackie Pung shot the winning score in the U.S. Women’s Open at Winged Foot in 1957, but signed for a lower score on the fourth hole than she actually took. DQ.

The linked article recalling this incident repeats a common misunderstanding regarding incorrect scores, by saying that a player who signs for the wrong score is disqualified. A player signing for a score on a hole that is lower than actually taken is disqualified. If a higher score is signed for, the score stands and the player’s standing in the tournament is adjusted accordingly.

Also, players sign for scores on each hole. They do not sign for the total of all the hole scores. Rule 6-6d.

The next case to cause a stir was at the Masters in 1968 when Roberto De Vicenzo signed for 4 on the seventeenth hole instead of a 3, and lost by one stroke the chance to play off with Bob Goalby the next day for the title.

In the past few years, it has become not uncommon for a player in a professional tournament to be DQ’d for signing for a lower score. Sergio Garcia was a victim twice in the same year, and Boo Weekly was the playing partner who wrote down the wrong score each time. Once was in the 2007 PGA Championship, and the other time was three weeks later in the Deutsch Bank Championship. Garcia was DQ’d from the PGA, but the error was caught by tournament officials the second time before Garcia signed.

Here’s the problem. Golf is the only sport that doesn’t have an official scorekeeper. Tennis players don’t keep their scores. Shot-putters don’t have to sign for the distance they toss. Sprinters don’t have to carry their own stopwatch. Yet golfers are expected to be competitors and tournament officials at the same time.

Yes, golfers are expected to enforce rules, because many times the player is the only person who knows that a rule was broken. When the game is played on a 150-acre field instead of in a much smaller arena where an official monitors an area the size of your back yard, this is necessary.

But not for scores. That information is pretty public. When the world knows that DeVicenzo made a 3, nothing should get in the way of that score being posted.

The solution, then, in tournaments where markers accompany each group, is for the score recorded by the marker to be the official score for the players in that group. A player would be allowed to appeal a score if there was a disagreement, but otherwise the marker’s score would stand.

In tournaments where markers do not accompany each group, the players would keep each other’s score. If a player signed for a higher hole score, that score would stand, as it does now. If a player signed for a lower hole score, the correct score would be replaced and a two-stroke penalty added on the infraction.

Earlier this year the USGA and R&A issued a ruling preventing a player for being disqualified for not including penalty strokes when the player was not aware,until after the scorecard had been signed, that a rule had been broken. The basic issue remains unaddressed, though. Let’s get real on wrong scorecards and let’s have the punishment fit the crime.

Does anyone want to lay odds over which of The Recreational Golfers’ brilliant Rules suggestions becomes official first?

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

There are few rules golfers hate more than the stroke and distance penalty incurred for hitting a ball out of bounds. For a shot that was perhaps two feet away from leaving you with a playable next shot, golf assigns you its toughest playing penalty.

Harvey Penick says as much in his Little Red Book under the heading, Strange Penalty:

“The most embarrassing thing you can do in golf is swing your driver on the tee and completely miss the ball.
“For this humiliation, the penalty is one stroke.
“However, if you smash a drive a long way but the ball lands an inch out of bounds, the penalty is stroke and distance–in effect, a two-shot punishment for what was nearly a good drive.”

Golf (with a capital “G”) understands this. Few rules have been tweaked as often.

The problem is a neat one, as Tom Watson explains in his book about the rules of golf. He says if the penalty were distance only, as it was for a brief time, the next stroke from the same spot would be essentially a mulligan. Watson supposes hitting the tee shot on a par 3 out of bounds, teeing up the second shot, knocking it stiff, and tapping in for a par. That bothers him. It bothers me, too.

Where his argument breaks down is when he goes on to say, “…common sense demands that the procedures be the same for balls lost or out of bounds.” No, it doesn’t. We make a distinction between a ball found and lying out of bounds, and a ball that could be out of bounds, but is not found.

In the first case, it is a fact that the ball is out of bounds. The ball would be dropped in-bounds, two club-lengths from the nearest in-bounds point, but not nearer to the hole, with a one-stroke penalty. If that were not possible, or would result in an unplayable lie, the player could choose to hit another ball from the spot where this ball was hit, and take a one-stroke penalty. This was the rule from 1964 to 1968.

I know that second option is stroke and distance, but that is an option that exists in the unplayable lie rule and the water hazard rule. No reason why the OB should not have it as an option, either.

In the second case, where it is not an ascertainable fact that the ball lies out of bounds, the ball would be treated like a lost ball, and that current rule would apply.

In short, if you find your ball, a penalty less severe than stroke and distance should apply. Only if you can’t find your ball, should the stroke and distance penalty apply.

Problem solved. Now all I have to do is get rules officials from the USGA and R&A to start reading my blog, and rescue golf from this strange penalty.

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Since there isn’t much of interest happening in the golf world right now, much discussion in the media is turning to which undeserving player most/least (they can’t decide which tack to take) deserves to be #1 in the World Golf Rankings. (Actually, the fuss is over why TW is #7 or so, when in the last year he has been playing like #25, but no one wants to come out and say that).

And while we’re at it, why don’t we criticize the formula itself, which we’ve never paid attention to until now? The formula puts Lee Westwood at #1, but he hasn’t won a major championship. So what? He plays consistently well more than anyone else in the world. You can make a case that player is deserving of being #1. Not a great case, but a case.

The Rankings formula is too complicated. Again, so what? It’s a complicated matter to compare over a thousand golfers playing on six different tours, most of whom have never had head-to-head competition with more than a few hundred. That’s a complicated feat to pull off.

But the real problem is that a two-year period is too long to carry over performance. Now we’re on to something — the Tiger thing actually. They way he played in 2009 is nowhere near how he’s playing today, or did in 2010. That’s the formula’s biggest flaw, and the one easiest to fix.

Golf’s ubiquitous ranking system is the handicap. The USGA has one, the R&A has one, I think. While the handicaps are rating systems, they can easily be turned into ranking systems.

Base the Rankings on performance in the same vein as my handicap and your handicap is based — on the 10 best of the last 20 tournaments (instead of rounds), with a thirteen-month limit. Not enough tournaments, you’re off the Rankings list.

What everybody wants to know is, who is the best golfer in the world right now? What someone did two years ago, even though those results are down-weighted currently, is no indication of current performance. The USGA recognizes this, which is why they keep dropping off rounds as I add new ones on. They want to keep my rating (handicap) current. If it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough for the pros.

Now I can’t tell you what the Rankings would be using this plan. That requires more data than I have at my command, and more time than I would want to devote to the analysis if I had it. It wouldn’t matter anyway.

This different way of ranking players would have immediate validity because it would be understood by the layman, and it is aligned with how he or she is rated. While there are many ways to rank things, the method that has the greatest acceptance among the consumers of the rankings is always preferred.

You might point to the major flaw in the USGA handicapping system, which is that their formula rewards a hot-and-cold player more than it does a consistent player. This would not be a flaw for the pros, though. Who do you think should be ranked higher — a guy who gets a lot of top tens, or the player who might not be as steady, but who wins a few tournaments every year? The winner, of course. That’s the point of competition anyway, isn’t it?

We’re going through a period right now where there is no dominant golfer, and the Rankings rely too much on ancient history. We can’t scratch the first itch, but we can the second. The powers that be read this blog religiously, and I know they will see the sense of what I suggest. Until they do,

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

I just got back from playing a two-man scramble at my men’s club. We had a ball, we made up for each other’s deficiencies, and shot a gross 75, net 65. It was no-pressure golf, lots of fun.

As we were driving away from the course, it hit me. They should do this at the Ryder Cup, too! Foursomes, four-ball, and a two-man scramble.

Why not? Everyone in the world plays a scramble at some time or another except the pros. Why shouldn’t they have as much fun as we do?

And can you imagine what the scores would be? Even a 59 wouldn’t guarantee a win, most likely.

Just think, if you paired a shot-maker like Boo Weekley (yes, Boo Weekley), with a master around the greens, like Phil Mickelson, would a 54 be out of the question?

This would all be so much fun to watch because they would be playing golf like we play. They’d be playing our sport.

So Corey Pavin, if you’re a regular reader of The Recreational Golfer, think about it. The Ryder Cup needs to let a little air out of its tires. If this is a world tournament, play golf like the world plays. Be one of us.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

Sensitive to charges of elitism, the PGA Tour played the ScamTec Recreational Open last week. ScamTec is a maker of software for home computers that supposedly makes the computer run faster and smoother, at least according to their marketing department. Developers at ScamTec are required to sign a gag order.

The SR Open is recreational golf from start to finish. The rules are simple: no caddies, no carts, no yardage books, no pin sheets. Every player gets a three-wheeler to put his bag in and away they go, to play golf the way the 40 million other people play it.

It starts at the contestant’s entrance. “Good morning, Mr. Scott, it’s nice to see you today. Oh, Mr. Williams, would you hold up for a moment? I’m afraid you’ll have to go around to the public entrance and purchase your admission ticket there. Stay behind the ropes, if you would, please, and no giving advice to the players!”

Following his drive on number four, Mr. McIlroy wheeled his cart up to his ball then went looking around for the sprinkler head. He paced off the distance from the sprinkler head to his ball and would have pulled the perfect club except he thought the red flag meant pin in back, and overshot his target by 20 yards. Disgusted, he started for the green when a foghorn from the gallery cried out, “Hey, Mr. Millionaire! For cryin’ out loud! Replace your @#!&^* divot!”

Over on the 2nd tee, a cart with a Marshall flag flying careened up the group that just arrived. Very politely, he said, “Mr. Crane, you’re about fifty minutes behind the expected pace of play. The players behind you would appreciate your stepping it up just a bit if it wouldn’t be too much trouble. Oh, and we’re noticing that some of you aren’t leaving the bunkers in the same condition you found them. If you wouldn’t mind raking them when you’ve hit out, that would be a great help to everyone else.”

Play is clogged on the 8th tee because Cart Girl is parked there. CG doesn’t know even the rudiments of salesmanship, but she doesn’t need to. She is the image of American Sweetness, and her tank top and short-shorts barely cover a figure that reduces a man’s speech to a series of random vowel sounds. Buy big and buy often seems to be the credo. Several players were seen giving excess purchases to fans behind the ropes. One report said that Mr. Williams declined a bag of chips offered by Mr. Mickelson, though the reporter refused to get involved on whether the declension was “respectful” or not. Another player kept all his purchases to himself and withdrew after 15 holes with stomach cramps.

The SR Open ended when Mr. Garcia, eleven feet from the hole on the final green, two putts away from a career round and the win, four-putted, but won anyway because the player who seemingly two-putted for the one-shot win was penalized two strokes for playing the wrong ball on his approach out of the rough. In the interview room, he said, “Well, that’s about where my drive went, and it kinda looked like my ball . . .”

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

So far, it looks like the FedEx Cup is set up so that Tiger Woods will win it every year that he’s healthy, and have it won before the final event.

Can you imagine the NFL setting up the Super Bowl so that one of the teams just has to show up and play the game to win the trophy? Or if in the World Series one team would have to win six games out of seven instead of four out of seven to take the title?

Well, that’s how the FedEx Cup works. Not more than a handful of guys have a chance to win the Cup this weekend. What are the rest of them doing there?

Here’s my fix – and this assumes we even have to have a Fed Ex Cup.

The first tournament is filled with 144 guys based on the PGA Tour money list. This event is a four-round, no-cut tournament. All 144 play four rounds, and at the end the low 100 and ties move on to the next tournament.

This second tournament is also a no-cut tournament. At its end, the low 70 and ties move on to the third tournament, in which everyone plays all four rounds and the low 30 and ties play in the final tournament, the WINNER of which wins the Fed Ex Cup.

No mathematical complications. You have to play in every event and WIN the final one to win the Cup. Just like in every other sport. Except maybe NASCAR, which I heard the FedEx Cup is supposed to be modeled after, but I don’t know much about auto racing.

What do I know about anything, though? I’m just a sports fan.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.