Diego Molina, chairman of the RFGA Rules Committee

“MOST INFRACTIONS OF THE RULES OF GOLF OCCUR THROUGH ERROR OR IGNORANCE, NOT DELIBERATELY.”

The main function of the Rules Committee of the Royal Andalusian Golf Federation is to ensure strict compliance with the Rules of Golf in competitions entrusted to it for refereeing.

It also encourages respect for the rules of etiquette at the grassroots level, responds to queries on rules from clubs and players, fights against slow play, provides training for club competition committees, organizes refereeing, determines the number of referees, regulates the requirements and tests for access to the RFGA referee category, etc.

Diego Molina, a lawyer from Cordoba who has been playing golf for more than three decades, is the chairman of the RFGA Rules Committee and the ideal person to talk about how golfers conduct themselves on the course in relation to the rules of the game.

-What are the most frequently asked questions about the Rules of Golf by clubs and players?

-Player queries generally relate to the application to specific situations of virtually all of the Rules of Golf, although perhaps the majority are about how and where to obtain relief when the ball has gone into a water hazard, an obstruction or ground under repair. Competitions Committees’ queries often concern the appropriateness or otherwise of the decisions they make or the interpretation of the rules of their events.

-Based on your extensive experience, which rules are most often violated and which are due to ignorance and which are deliberate?

-The most frequently infringed, generally by inadvertence, are Rules 13-1 and 13-2, which order to play the ball as it is, without improving the place where it rests and the other circumstances of the stroke (player’s placement, swing area and line of play), Rule 15-3 on playing the wrong ball, and Rules 18 and 19 on a ball at rest moved or a ball in motion that is deflected or stopped. Personally, I not only believe but I have found that the vast majority of infractions of the Rules of Golf are caused by error or ignorance of them, but not by a deliberate intention to infringe.

-What level of respect for the rules of etiquette is registered, in general terms, in Andalusian golf courses? Which are the most frequently breached?

-The Andalusian player is usually very respectful of the rules of behavior on the field, which is ultimately what the Rules of Etiquette are all about. There is only one that, unfortunately, does not enjoy this generalized respect, but quite the opposite. I am referring to the rule of conduct that obliges you to give way to the group playing behind, not only when your group has lost its position on the field or simply when the group behind is clearly playing faster, but also, as often happens, when someone in your group has to look for the ball and it is foreseeable that it is not going to be found easily. Very few players are willing to give way. I don’t know if most of them consider that doing so demeans them, humiliates them or harms them, when in fact it is elegance and fair play.

-The authorities that govern golf worldwide (R&A and USGA) advocate, in order not to distort the essence of the game, the use of electronic devices limited to the strict measurement of distances and not to check other parameters such as wind direction and speed, slopes of the green, etc. What is your opinion on the use of technological devices on the golf course?

-I have almost nothing against technology applied to the game of golf in general, nor in particular against distance gauges. For many, many years there have been posts, trees or other elements on the courses that indicate the distance to the green. In quite a few courses, in addition, on the ground, on each sprinkler, its distance is painted. Booklets with many more reference points are published and sold on the courses, so why not allow distance gauges? And with respect to other devices that measure other circumstances of the game, it is true that the R&A and the USGA are against them today, but they were also against distance meters in their day, and now they are not. It is to be expected that sooner or later everything will be authorized. For my part I only have one “but” that corresponds to the “almost nothing against” that I said at the beginning: in the end we are going to end up with “me against the course” or “I have beaten the course” replacing it with “my computer against the course” and having to carry a PC in the bag of clubs. I think golf will be a lot less fun that way, especially if we ever have to say, “My computer dropped my handicap today”.

-Slow play has been, and in many places continues to be, a problem in many golf courses. What recommendations would you make to course directors to solve or alleviate this problem as much as possible?

-It is a subject whose study in depth would require much more space than this interview. In summary I can tell you that my particular theory about slow play, proven in the competitions I referee, is that in a minimum part it corresponds to a low level of play of the player, who needs to give more strokes, but above all it is related to the increasing number of players who come out to the field. The more players, the less pace, because the groups are crowded. I have checked it: if in a competition of 90 players a time is calculated for each group, for example, of four and a half hours for the 18 holes, this time, if monitored, is met by all the groups. With 120 players, the last groups, whatever you do, take five long hours, and with 140 players, six hours or more. I can ask the Committees (even if they don’t listen to me) to limit the number of participants. But I cannot ask the course directors to sell fewer green fees. And the concern to avoid slow play is clearly due only to the desire, or commercial need, to have a greater number of competitors or to get as many players out on the course as possible.

-Being a golf referee doesn’t carry with it the dangers to your physical integrity that your counterparts in soccer do. However, I’m sure you’ve had some good anecdotes over the years as a referee. Could you tell us one of them?

-Fortunately I do not know of any case of physical aggression to a golf referee, although, rarely, some not too serious insult by the victim of a penalty or a decision not to the liking of the person concerned. Personally, I have not suffered either one or the other; but once I had to be evacuated on a stretcher from a golf course (Montecastillo to be precise): when going down a slope to assist a player in a problem of a field under repair, I had the misfortune of slipping one foot while the other was stuck, suffering a double fracture and dislocation of both malleoli in the left ankle.

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