Rickie Fowler mocks golf’s new rules, and he has a point

With players questioning the new rules and even openly mocking them, it’s time for the USGA to reconsider their new rulebook.

It took just two months, but players are officially fed up with the new rules of golf.

The exact moment can be pinpointed to Thursday at the Honda Classic when Rickie Fowler needed to replace his ball in the fourth fairway. A week earlier Fowler was penalized at the WGC-Mexico Championship for dropping from shoulder height, something that used to be legal. On Thursday he took the opportunity to mock the new rule mandating a knee-high drop, crouching down and putting the ball behind his back, mimicking what you might see in a public bathroom.

The USGA and R&A, golf’s two governing bodies, introduced a new set of rules at the start of the year in an attempt to simplify the game. Instead, players are more confused than ever. The new drop rule is the brunt of jokes. No one knows what the pace of play rules are, or if they’re going to be enforced anyway. Two players have already been penalized for having their caddie stand in the wrong place.

Fowler explains he was trying to send a message that if the new rules can be made fun of, it’s not good for the game. “Golf is trying to appeal to a younger audience, get people into the game, want it to look cool. Well, I was sitting at home the first couple weeks of the year and me and some buddies were making fun of the new drop rule,” he said after his round on Thursday. “It looks terrible. When you have people making fun of something, that’s not good.”

Already in the first two months of 2019, there have been a number of controversies about what has, and what hasn’t, been called an infraction. Denny McCarthy was given a two-stroke penalty during the second round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open in February for his caddie standing behind him too long (officials prudently rescinded the penalty a day later). A week earlier in Dubai Haotong Li was assessed the same penalty which cost him a top-10 finish and nearly $100,000 in prize money.

Then there’s the pace of play issue. Rule 5.6 states players should hit a shot in no more than 40 seconds. Two weeks ago J.B. Holmes won the Genesis Open, constantly flouting the new rule by taking more than a minute to play his shots. Not only was Holmes never penalized for his slow play, he wasn’t even given a warning.

USGA Executive Director Mike Davis claims that the new rules have “been a huge success.” The players, however, don’t share that sentiment. Brooks Koepka has been a vocal critic of the USGA’s hypocrisy in going after minor infractions while ignoring the pace of play regulations.

“I think it’s weird how we have rules where we have to make sure it’s dropping from knee height or the caddie can’t be behind you and then they also have a rule where you hit it in 40 seconds, but that one’s not enforced. You enforce some but you don’t enforce the others,” he said on SiriusXM Radio in February. “No one ever has the balls to actually penalize them.”

Justin Thomas, defending champion of the Honda Classic, believes the new rules have just made the game more complicated. “I think they’re terrible. Pretty much all of them seemed like they didn’t better the game, to me,” he told Golf.com on Wednesday. “I mean, the ball-dropping thing is weird, it doesn’t make sense.”

No one, except the governing powers that wrote them, seems to be happy with the new rules. Even though they’ve only been in effect for two months, the verdict is they’re clearly not working. It’s time for the USGA and R&A to go back and work with the players to come up with modifications that everyone can agree with.