Most rules decisions, like this one involving Maja Clark at the 2024 US Women’s Open, are handled relatively quickly.
Chris Keane/USGA
Golf tournament official rules have been known to describe their work as hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. Fortunately, those moments don’t last long.
Perhaps this comes as a surprise to you.
Among fans, rules decisions are widely perceived as time-consuming issues that disrupt play and block television coverage.
But new data paint a different picture.
The findings come from a year-end survey by USGAwhich compiled statistics on rules decisions from the organization’s 15 championships in 2024.
Those events yielded a total of 2,039 decisions, many of which were completed and executed faster than some pre-shot routines. On average, rules officials took 35 seconds to arrive at the scene of a rules incident and 1 minute and 39 seconds to make a decision. Total elapsed time: 2 minutes and 14 seconds.
“I think people might be surprised at how fast our average ruling time was across all championships,” said Kathryn Belanger, the USGA’s director of rules championships. Most situations, Belanger said, are “quick interactions with the players to make sure everything is done correctly.” What’s more, she added, other players in the group often play ready golf as the decisions open, so the action continues even as the decisions themselves drag on.
Which, of course, they can. Because those odd events tend to attract media attention, they can end up skewing the public’s perception of how long most decisions take. Consider, for example, the high-profile incident in the final round of the 2023 US Open, when Rory McIlroy’s ball is embedded into the grass above a greenside bunker, or the decision involving eventual winner Jordan Spieth at the 2017 Open Championship, which lasted 20 minutes as Spieth and officials worked out the intricate details of the line-of-sight relief.
The vast majority of decisions are more straightforward.
Last year, the most common rule applied in USGA championships was Rule 17.1, which deals with options for a ball in the penalty area. These decisions constituted 657 decisions. The second most commonly applied rule was Rule 16.1, which deals with cases of abnormal course conditions, such as a ball coming to rest on a cart path. These decisions constituted 578 decisions.
All of this information was collected digitally, a practice the USGA adopted during Covid to eliminate paper, but which has also helped guide the championships. Data is reviewed in real time, allowing tournament organizers to increase support in areas of the course that require it. Information is also shared with the rules officials after each round so that they can place themselves on the course accordingly the next day.
As recreational golfers, the rest of us cannot count on guidance from tournament officials. But the same rules apply. The more familiar we are with them, the more enjoyable the game becomes, as we can make decisions quickly and play.
