Golf Rules

What a marvelous game Golf is. I have played the great game of Golf for about 30 years and really got into it in the 1990's playing against very competitive players in the Golf Club I belonged to in the South Hills of Pittsburgh. It is a game that is made up of an immense amount of rules and regulations and the Golf rule books need to be thoroughly studied to understand all the ramifications of the entire game. 2 areas in Golf need to be addressed. A primary area that does not involve an amendment to the Golf constitution is the speed of play on the Golf Course. On Memorial weekend Sunday playoff in the Senior PGA event, the first and only playoff hole took a tremendous amount of time to complete. The 3 guys in the playoff were Tom Lehman the eventual winner, Fred Couples, and David Frost. David Frost hits his 2nd shot from a fairway bunker into some brush adjacent to the green. Couples had to take an unplayable lie and hit his third shot short of the green while Tom Lehman was almost perfect with his drive and 2nd shot leaving himself a 12 footer for birdie. Frost's lie was very difficult causing him to study the shot for a extended period of time. Watching him pace around the green, look at the position of the ball, evaluating his shot, and taking numerous practice swings must have taken 8 to 10 minutes. I thought there was a time limit on when a player was supposed to hit his shot. Now I realize that this was a playoff hole(sudden death only)but the player should make ball contact within a certain time frame by the standards of the game. Frost hit his shot across the green and ended up with a double bogey as did Couples. As a fan, I feel that a player should fit into a time frame with his approach to hitting the golf ball.

I feel that there should be one major rule change in the great game of golf. That rule change should be this. Upon hitting a ball into any part of the fairway and the ball enters a divot or a divot that has been repaired on a fairway, then the player should get a free drop on the fairway no closer to the green. Some of these divots are like small hazards so therefore a free drop seems to be appropriate.