Sports Jokes

The Rules of Golf

These rules of golf are for good players whose scores would
reflect their true ability, if only they got an even break
once in awhile. They were adapted from those proposed by the
Union Printers Golf Club in Baltimore and have some appealing
provisions:

1. A ball sliced or hooked into the rough shall be
lifted and placed on the fairway at a point equal to the
distance it carried or rolled in the rough. Such veering
right or left frequently results from friction between the
face of the club and the cover of the ball, and the player
should not be penalized for the erratic behavior of the ball
resulting from such uncontrollable
mechanical phenomena.

2. A ball hitting a tree shall be deemed not to have hit the
tree. Hitting a tree is simply bad luck and has no place in a
scientific game. The player should estimate the distance the
ball would have traveled if it had not hit the tree and play
the ball from there, preferably from atop a nice firm tuft of
grass.

3. There shall be no such thing as a lost ball. The missing
ball is on or near the course somewhere and eventually will
be found and pocketed by someone else. It thus becomes a
stolen ball, and the player should not compound the felony by
charging himself with a penalty stroke.

4. In or near a bunker or sand trap, a ball rolling back
toward the player may be hit again on the roll without
counting an extra stroke or strokes. In any case, no more
than two strokes are to be counted in playing from a bunker,
since it is reasonable to assume that if the player had time
to concentrate on his shot, instead of hurrying it so as not
to delay his playing partners, he would be out in two.

5. If a putt passed over the hole without dropping, it is
deemed to have dropped. The law of gravity holds that any
object attempting to maintain a position in the atmosphere
without something to support it must drop. The law of
gravity supersedes the law of golf. (Same thing goes for a
ball that stops on the brink of the hole and hangs there,
defying gravity. You cannot defy the law). (Same thing goes
for a ball that rims the cup. A ball should not go sideways.
This violates the laws of physics).

6. A putt that stops close enough to the hole to
inspire such comments as, "You could blow it in" . . . may
be blown in. This rule does not apply if the ball is more
than three inches from the hole, because no one wants to make
a travesty of the game.