The article below was written by Steve Carroll of National Club Golfer.

I was thinking about opening my wallet – the moths needed releasing – while perusing the ‘visitor’ rules at a prospective golf club.

I’ve got a weird fascination with some of these pages. They simultaneously manage to make me chuckle and choke at the same time.

At this establishment, there was a request to use the clubhouse rather than the car park in which to change into your gear and the exhortation caught me a little off guard.

I’d honesty thought this wasn’t a thing anymore, particularly since the clubhouse temporarily became out of bounds during the Covid pandemic.

I resolved to delve deeper and found there were others of the same mind – and they expressed it more forcefully too.

Now that I’ve spent some time – probably far too much – looking over this issue and reading what golfers think, several defences emerged to justify the act.

Let’s look at some and put them in their place. I change my shoes in the car park all the time. Tell me: what’s the problem?

Why shouldn’t we change our shoes in the car park?

We want you to come into the clubhouse

Is this part of your cunning plan to get me to buy a post-round drink? It’s not a difficult puzzle to solve, though, is it? If I fancy a drink after a round, it’s because I fancy a drink after that round.

I’m not such a slave to alcohol that the mere sight of a beer pump has a Pied Piper effect on me and compels me to order a pint of mild.

Atmosphere’s an under-rated factor too. Is the clubhouse lively or is it so dead an undertaker’s got a permanent office on the premises?

Either way, a compulsion to remove one set of shoes for another within those walls isn’t going to make me any more likely to hang around.

It’s more comfortable in the golf locker room

Have you been in some visitors’ areas recently? They’d give me nightmares if I was claustrophobic.

Think about some of the away dressing rooms you’ve seen at football grounds. Pretty dingy, right? Now compress that into the size of a shoe box – barely big enough to hold the pair you’re looking to store – and you’ll get the drift.

If that’s what you call a comfortable welcome, you can forget it.

I’ve been in a tiny visitors’ locker room where the club stored all the crap for which they couldn’t otherwise find space.

Old paintings, delivery pallets, they were piled high. Yet, I’m the one being chastised for poor etiquette for saying: ‘I don’t really fancy that, I’ll just slip my Eccos on out here, thanks very much’.

You’re at risk of losing your property too. I don’t necessarily mean from thieves – though some might see a golf locker room as an easy target.

I’m so absent minded, I’ve left pairs of shoes at clubs as I’ve changed in the locker room, gone upstairs for a pint, and then headed to the car without remembering to dive back in and retrieve them.

When you change your shoes right by your boot, nothing’s getting left behind.

You’ll leave a mess in the car park

I’m not sure how this trumps people leaving the same mess in a locker room, but here’s a thought: just use the air gun first as you’re leaving the course?

Is it just shoes that make a mess? Don’t trolleys carry more muck around? Should we ‘change’ them in the clubhouse too?

Look, I’ve no more desire to half fill my motor with left-over grass clippings than leave them littering the car park. Tidy up after yourself as you come off the course and there’s no problem.

We’ve got to protect standards

That old chestnut. The car park is for parking, they say. It’s not conduct becoming of our establishment. Get over yourselves, I say.

It’s a car park, not Harrods. And if your course is any guide, you appear much more tolerant of unraked bunkers and unrepaired pitch marks. Priorities, people. Priorities.

What do you think of this golf club etiquette? Does it matter where you slip on your golf shoes, or should Steve be locked in a golf locker room never to be let out? Let him know by leaving a comment on X.

The article below was written by Steve Carroll of National Club Golfer.

It might still be hitting a ball around a course but match play and stroke play can feel like completely different games.

This was brought home when I made my international refereeing debut in August, as part of the team that officiated a match between England and Switzerland Under-16 girls at Pannal.

I’ve carried my rule book around plenty of stroke play tournaments now, but this was my first match play event and the foursomes game I followed in the morning, and singles in the afternoon, asked very different questions.

Did you know, for example, that players can agree how to decide a rules issue in match play – even if it turns out to be wrong? And if a referee isn’t assigned to a specific match, they’ve got no authority to get involved barring a couple of exceptions?

If a referee is assigned to a game, though, that official has to step in on any issue that comes to their attention in time.

As I was shadowing these players at Pannal, hoping they kept to alternate shots and kept out of any rules trouble (I need not have worried – the standard of play was incredible), I started thinking about some of the specific differences between match play and stroke play.

Some of those match play golf rules – when you concede a hole being the one that springs most prominently to mind – are obvious. But there are other subtle changes it may pay to be aware of the next time you go into head-to-head match combat in your club knockout.

Key golf match play rules

There is no penalty in match play for playing from outside the teeing area

This is a costly error in stroke play – it’s the general penalty (two strokes) and you’ve got to correct the mistake. You’ll even get disqualified if you’ve not done that before “making a stroke to begin another hole”.

That’s not the case in match play. It is still a breach of Rule 6.1b (1) and your opponent can cancel the stroke and make you play again.

But if they don’t do that promptly – so “before either player makes another stroke” – then the stroke counts, the ball is in play, and you move on.

The honour is absolutely a thing in match play

All we hear about these days is ‘ready golf’ and speeding up the game. But in match play you and your opponent must play in a particular order. You can toss a coin to see who goes first and then whoever’s won the hole, or had the honour at the previous teeing area if it was tied, keeps it and goes first.

After a hole is started, the ball that is farthest from the hole is played first. Just as with the teeing area, a shot that is played out of turn can be cancelled by your opponent.

You can play out of turn by agreement to save time, but you’ve given up the right to cancel the subsequent stroke.

Make sure you both know what the match score is — and where you get your handicap strokes

You are both expected to know what the score in the match is. If you get this wrong, and you’ve both mistakenly agreed to it, you need to fix it quickly.

Rule 3.2d (3) says you can correct a match score before either of you takes a shot at the start of another hole or, if you’re on the last, before the result of the match is final.

If you don’t do this, did you know that “wrong match score becomes the actual match score”?

Let’s spell out what this means in the rules. If you’ve messed up the score on the 6th, and only realise on the 10th, it’s now irrelevant. You’re stuck with the current score you’ve agreed.

There is an exception to this and it’s when a player requests a “ruling in time” and it’s discovered the opponent “gave the wrong number of strokes taken or failed to tell the player about a penalty”. Only then is the match score corrected.

It’s a similar situation when applying handicap strokes during a match. Rule 3.2c (2) says players are responsible for knowing the holes where they “give or get handicap strokes”.

“If the players fail to apply or mistakenly apply handicap strokes on a hole, the agreed result of the hole stands, unless the players correct that mistake in time”.

Don’t touch your opponent’s ball

When a ball is lifted or moved by another player in stroke play, they are defined as an outside influence. There is no penalty.

It’s very different in match play and it’s outlined in Rule 9.5. If it’s known or virtually certain that an opponent has lifted a player’s ball at rest, deliberately touched the ball, “or their actions caused it to move”, they get a one-shot penalty.

There are a couple of exceptions to this: It’s fine if your opponent is lifting the ball when conceding a stroke, hole, or match.

It’s also OK if you ask them to lift it. They won’t get a penalty, either, if the movement is caused accidentally.

You can choose to ignore a penalty

Do this in stroke play and you’ll probably get kicked out of the club. But in match play, where you don’t have to protect the rest of the field, if you know or believe that your opponent has breached a Rule that comes with a penalty, Rule 3.2d (4) reveals “the player may choose whether or not to act on the breach”.

It’s very unlikely you are going to let your opponent off scot-free if you see them breaching a rule in the cauldron of battle, isn’t it? But the rules do allow you to do it.

What you can’t do, though, is both agree not to apply the Rules or a penalty you know applies. If that sounds a bit contradictory, there is a clarification in the Official Guide to the Rules of Golf that gives out some crucial information.

An example of when there is not an agreement is outlined in the following: A player sees their opponent lift a ball without marking it first. The clarification says that they tell the opponent it’s a breach but they are not going to act on it.

“It was the player’s sole decision not to act on the breach and, consequently, there has not been an agreement.”

Where it changes, in the same example, is where the breach is revealed and then the player and opponent conclude they “don’t want to apply penalties in situations where is no clear advantage from the breach of the rule”.

Now, because there has been an agreement where both players have agreed not to apply the rules, both are in trouble. They would be disqualified.

The article below was written by Steve Carroll of National Club Golfer.

It’ll be in everyone’s top five moans at their golf club – and it’s probably number one for many.

Players and critics got excited about the bunkers at Royal Liverpool during The Open in July, and the R&A then changed the way they were raked, but complaints are by no means restricted to the highest levels of the game.

We mope at our clubs about the lack of raking, the raking itself, whether there’s enough sand in there, and whether there’s too much sand in there.

But bunkers are supposed to be a hazard. Aren’t we meant to try and avoid them at all costs, rather than complaining because we haven’t got a perfect lie when we find one?

Steve Carroll and Tom Irwin weigh in…

Should golf bunkers always be fair?

‘If bunkers don’t provide jeopardy, or tragedy, what’s the point of them?’

In the professional game, bunkers have become an afterthought, says Steve Carroll. You’ll often hear players going ‘get in the bunker’ because they know they’ll get an ultra-consistent lie. They’re so great out of bunkers that they know they can get a lot of spin.

I thought some of the furore at The Open was a bit misplaced. Let’s take Rory McIlroy. His second shot on 18 [in round one] buried in the face of the bunker.

But no one forced him to take the second shot on. There was a risk and reward in that. He thought he hit a good shot, but he had a little bit of bad luck. It ran into the bunker and into the face.

That’s what can happen if you try and hit a wood from wherever it was on a 609-yard par 5. I thought the risk and reward there was fair. If you messed it up and got it in the bunker, there was going to be chance you weren’t going to be able to get it out in one go.

I was slightly disappointed the change was made, and it does make think, ‘what are bunkers for if they’re not going to produce that kind of tragedy, that kind of calamity? If all the time when we go into a bunker, whether it be fairway or green, we expect the ball to roll back into the middle so we can just chop it out with a load of spin’.

If there’s not going to be an element of jeopardy, because we’re fixing them in such a way that the ball will always roll back a lot of the time, then what is the point?

‘Sanitising golf courses in the pursuit of fairness is a fool’s errand’

The sanitisation of golf courses and this idea of trying to make them consistent in all areas – in the pursuit of fairness – is an absolute fool’s errand, isn’t it? says Tom Irwin.

Bunkers should effectively be a half a shot penalty, shouldn’t they? You should have the opportunity to get up and down. There should be an element of jeopardy – you may well get a bad lie, or you may well get up a face, or have some sort of funny stance, because that’s the risk you take.

We’ve talked on the podcast before about whether we should return to not raking bunkers, because unless you get a plug there’s almost no chance for a bad lie in bunkers in premium venues.

Again, that’s just something thar removes them as being a hazard. It’s a very strange to do. We don’t want to see pros suffer, so we’re going to soften the bunkers off. It’s a very odd decision.