"I think this puts the integrity of the player back into the game."

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That's Jack Nicklaus speaking to Steve Elling, not long after the USGA and R&A handed down their modification to the Decisions on the morning of 2011's first major and after years of bickering, opening up the possibility that there will be fewer scorecard DQ's after phoned-in violations are discovered.
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Effective Immediately, Players Ignorant Of Rules Need To Convince Officials They Are Blissfully Ignorant

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Where to start? Oh let's just go to the Immediate Release, dumped in mind-boggling fashionon the morning of the first round of a major. Besides the obvious silliness of burying this news when all eyes are on golf, the governing bodies decide to share this when probably not a single player will want, no should they, read about the announced decision on scorecard DQ's for blissful ignorance...as opposed to sheer ignorance. (There is no link yet at USGA.org.)
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"So many people called in, the officials in the rules trailer unplugged the phone. They ignored it."

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Thanks to reader Stuart for catching this from SI's all-player confidential. The topic was "rules warriors."

Van Sickle: This has been a year of weird rules violations. How do you feel about TV viewers reporting potential mistakes?

Henry: I'm not a proponent of fans calling in. Unlike other sports, we don't have an official watching every shot by every player. And not every shot is seen on TV, so some players are under more scrutiny than others. That isn't equal. We need to come up with a solution where a guy isn't disqualified for something he did wrong two days earlier.

Crane: Right. When a guy commits a penalty and doesn't know it, it should be a two-shot penalty, not a disqualification for signing a wrong score. All it's going to take is to DQ a leader everybody wants to see win.

Purdy: I wouldn't mind if the Tour had an 800 number. I wish they'd had that for the Heritage Classic, where Stewart Cink beat me after he moved sand from behind his ball. You can't do that except on a green. So many people called in, the officials in the rules trailer unplugged the phone. They ignored it.

Oops!

"It all goes back to this central pillar of the game, that you must sign properly for your own score."

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John Huggan's chat with the R&A's Peter Dawson about the likelihood of a rules re-write yielded the revelation that the R&A already has a re-write draft on disqualification about ready to go. Though I'm still not sure about the delineation between the Camilo and Padraig incidents.
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“If you ask people who really know the rules and understand the ramifications they understand why the R&A and USGA don’t want to change it."

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Rex Hoggard helps us hone in on what will be the dilemma in modifying any rule related to scorecard DQ's. Talking to the USGA's Mike Davis, he writes:

Davis’ answer to the Tour was the same then that it is now – you can’t get there from here. At least not without opening a Pandora’s Box of unforeseen, and seen, problems.

“The whole reason the (Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, which governs the game everywhere else in the world) and USGA have rejected it is there are too many ramifications if you do that,” Davis said.

“If you gave Camilo a four-stroke penalty (instead of an early exit) the problem with that is you may all of a sudden mess up a cut. It could be the U.S. Amateur and you just played 36 holes of stroke play and your entire bracket (for match play) could get messed up. It would be illogical to make a change.”

"THERE ARE NO BUNKERS ON THIS COURSE"

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Nice reporting by Paul Casey to Tweet this week's Euro Tour declaration at the Royal Golf Club of Bahrain.

However, as Steve Elling notes on Casey's reporting and the likelihood he snapped the shot in the locker room, it's "where most players doubtlessly ignored it."

Has anyone played this Monty-design who can tell us why they would make this move?

"Because our scatter value on television would go up, and that's why we like to have better ratings, because it is a value proposition."

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Commissioner Tim Finchem took a few minutes from his schedule to visit the Farmers Insurance Open press center. While some scribes were taken by the newsworthiness of several answers, I will contend that it was his concoction of a potentially life-changing b-speakism that should be the lede story.
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