Cleaning Ball on Green

[cardoustie]

Anyone know what year in the rules allowed cleaning your ball on the putting surface ?  Google not helping

[st1800e]

 

“Reflecting evolving views within the game as the surfaces of putting greens became more uniform and consistent, the 1960 code included the major change of allowing players to mark, lift, clean and replace a ball on the green. ”

 

https://www.usga.org/rules-hub/rules-modernization/text/a-brief-history-1744-to-present.html

 

 

[Hawkeye77]

42 minutes ago, cardoustie said:

Anyone know what year in the rules allowed cleaning your ball on the putting surface ?  Google not helping

 

Here's a great resource for earlier versions of the rules!

 

http://www.ruleshistory.com

[Mr. Bean]

17 hours ago, cardoustie said:

Anyone know what year in the rules allowed cleaning your ball on the putting surface ?  Google not helping

 

I wrote "history of golf rules" in the Google and found the answer immediately. Maybe your Google is on strike 😁

[cardoustie]

I wrote “year of rule change cleaning ball on green”

[Newby]

2 hours ago, cardoustie said:

I wrote “year of rule change cleaning ball on green”

I put that into DuckDuckGo and got results including http://www.ruleshistory.com

[bcjim]

Maybe he means physically wiping the ball on the surface of the green to remove foreign material?

[Mr. Bean]

2 hours ago, bcjim said:

Maybe he means physically wiping the ball on the surface of the green to remove foreign material?

 

You mean when it began to be allowed to clean the ball against the surface of the green? Now that is tough, has been allowed as long as I remember.

[st1800e]

17 minutes ago, Mr. Bean said:

 

You mean when it began to be allowed to clean the ball against the surface of the green? Now that is tough, has been allowed as long as I remember.

I believe previously that constituted testing the green surface, and was contrary to the rules. 

[davep043]

7 minutes ago, st1800e said:

I believe previously that constituted testing the green surface, and was contrary to the rules. 

I looked back at the 1960 Rules, which say:

"During the play of a hole, a player shall not test the surface of the putting green by rolling a ball or roughening or scraping the surface"

That's pretty much the way the Rule reads today.  You can't roll a ball, you can't rub the surface, but you CAN clean the ball by rubbing it on the surface.

For those who are interested, there's an interesting article from the USGA Journal in November 1960.  Richard Tufts (author of "The Principles Behind the Rules of Golf") suggests that Golf might be getting "too easy".

file:///C:/Users/David%20Panich/Downloads/601112%20(2).pdf

https://gsr.lib.msu.edu/

[Mr. Bean]

I must say that I disagree with Tuft afa repairing pitch marks on the green are concerned and especially I disagree with his comparison to divot holes. Putting greens are prepared to be smooth unlike fairways for very obvious reasons.

[davep043]

16 minutes ago, Mr. Bean said:

I must say that I disagree with Tuft afa repairing pitch marks on the green are concerned and especially I disagree with his comparison to divot holes. Putting greens are prepared to be smooth unlike fairways for very obvious reasons.

I'm sure that in 1960 conditions were not  nearly as good as they are today, but were substantially better than they were 50 or 20 or even 10 years earlier.  I wasn't playing then, but I'm guessing that  underground irrigation systems were becoming more common, so greens were becoming softer. The rules have evolved in part because course conditions have evolved, and I think this change, allowing a player to loft and clean their ball on the green, and to repair ball marks on the green reflect those improvements.  The much more recent change to stop penalizing a player for accidental movement of a ball on the putting green is a continuation of that same trend, greens are faster and smoother now.

[rogolf]

I grew up playing on sand greens- not much sense rubbing a ball on them to try and clean it! 🙃

[Pepperturbo]

On 2/12/2023 at 1:19 AM, Mr. Bean said:

 

I wrote "history of golf rules" in the Google and found the answer immediately. Maybe your Google is on strike 😁

OR googles newer ChatGPT bot is confusing their regular Brainiac bot.

Edited February 13, 2023 by Pepperturbo

[Pepperturbo]

3 hours ago, davep043 said:

I'm sure that in 1960 conditions were not  nearly as good as they are today, but were substantially better than they were 50 or 20 or even 10 years earlier.  I wasn't playing then, but I'm guessing that  underground irrigation systems were becoming more common, so greens were becoming softer. The rules have evolved in part because course conditions have evolved, and I think this change, allowing a player to loft and clean their ball on the green, and to repair ball marks on the green reflect those improvements.  The much more recent change to stop penalizing a player for accidental movement of a ball on the putting green is a continuation of that same trend, greens are faster and smoother now.

There's underground drainage call French drains throughout better courses, including under bunkers; both my last clubs had them, and I had them in our yard.  Also, there are SubAir systems which push and pull; we had that on a few holes at one club.  Only I have never heard of under putting surface water systems. 

 

As for rule changes; I am an old golfer, comfortable with Robin William's idea of golf.  Changing rules to accommodate lazy, lack of attention to detail, people is NOT how golf was meant to be played.  See Robin William's idea of golf - YouTube

 

 

Agree, greens are faster and smoother today, than when my uncle played on tour.  But, most muni's in SOCA and a few other states I frequent, have greens around 9-9.5; that isn't fast to my way of thinking.  Just saying...

[Mr. Bean]

19 minutes ago, Pepperturbo said:

Only I have never heard of under putting surface water systems. 

 

 

I wonder what you mean. The pipes may well travel under the PGs but there is no "underground irrigation", meaning those pipes would push water into the surrounding soil.

 

But what is very common is that there are sprinkler heads right next to the PGs for irrigation purposes and I believe that is what Dave meant by saying "greens were becoming softer". Those sprinkler heads get their water from an underground irrigation system.

[davep043]

25 minutes ago, Pepperturbo said:

Only I have never heard of under putting surface water systems. 

@Mr. Bean has it right, greens have continued to became smoother and softer for a number of reasons, one of which is advancements in getting the right amount of water to them.  I believe that the changes in the 1960 Rules were at least partly a reaction to those changes in the greens, which of course led to changing expectations for smoothness.

[Pepperturbo]

7 minutes ago, Mr. Bean said:

 

I wonder what you mean. The pipes may well travel under the PGs but there is no "underground irrigation", meaning those pipes would push water into the surrounding soil.

 

But what is very common is that there are sprinkler heads right next to the PGs for irrigation purposes and I believe that is what Dave meant by saying "greens were becoming softer". Those sprinkler heads get their water from an underground irrigation system.

Yes.

 

We never had irrigation pipes running under greens, they ran up to and around greens with sprinkler heads for surface watering and drainage on aprons and satellite controlled computers, running sprinklers course wide.  Greens were kept at 11-11.5 and events pushed to 12-13.

Edited February 13, 2023 by Pepperturbo

[cardoustie]

The speed of the greens, even in the 70’s, were comical compared to today, even at Augusta National

 

I think the agronomy improvement of greens is the largest reason for current low scoring

[Mr. Bean]

1 hour ago, cardoustie said:

The speed of the greens, even in the 70’s, were comical compared to today, even at Augusta National

 

I think the agronomy improvement of greens is the largest reason for current low scoring

 

Agronomy certainly plays a big role but even bigger does the amount of hours current pros spend on practice greens, IMO.

[rogolf]

5 hours ago, cardoustie said:

The speed of the greens, even in the 70’s, were comical compared to today, even at Augusta National

 

I think the agronomy improvement of greens is the largest reason for current low scoring

Agronomy is one significant part, I think another is construction.  The USGA greens, with their sand bases, are a lot more consistent, both in smoothness and consistency, that the older clay/topsoil based greens.