Perhaps the lawyers and professional grammarians employed by the R&A and USGA should be told in addition to the thousands of referees around the world who will now have to go back to school.

If qualifications are relevant I used to be a professional grammar analyst and I have no problem with the structure of the words in the book.

However, the words of Humpty Dumpty are more significant than anything we might think.

Rulesman wrote:

Perhaps the lawyers and professional grammarians employed by the R&A and USGA should be told in addition to the thousands of referees around the world who will now have to go back to school. If qualifications are relevant I used to be a professional grammar analyst and I have no problem with the structure of the words in the book. However, the words of Humpty Dumpty are more significant than anything we might think.

You want to know why so many people disregard and disrespect the rules of golf? One of the reaons is because the rulebook says one thing while something else entirely is enforced. I've come to the conclusion that a professional grammarian is something that the USGA lacks, and until they become consistent in the way that they enforce tehir rules, I will not donate money to them.

It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for the other green (the one without the flagstick) to NOT be declared a wrong green and preventing players from taking relief from it.

Why would you want to let players hack up a painstakingly prepared putting surface with a wedge or an iron, where that green is typically nowhere near the actual green in play? To put that green in play the following week or whatever? Except, now you can't because it's all damaged!

The rules of golf may seem complicated and what not, but they are derived from common sense (and fair play), and I agree with Rulesman's interpretation that if indeed any putting surface was the considered to be "the green", the term "any" would have been used.

Now, if the 2 "greens" are in fact contiguous to each other with perhaps a strip of rough between them in one area (but the contiguity is maintained in another part), then it's a single green, and it would be no different than having a bunker in the middle of the green: it's not necessarily a smart or cost-effective design, but it's possible, even when only amateurs and hackers are using that course. There is such a hole at #15 at The Ranch, in San Jose, CA.

sjduffers wrote:

The rules of golf may seem complicated and what not, but they are derived from common sense (and fair play), and I agree with Rulesman's interpretation that if indeed any putting surface was the considered to be "the green", the term "any" would have been used.

The problem here is two-fold. First of all, invoking "common sense" is somewhat of a logical fallacy that creates bias. What might be common sense to you is not going to be common sense to everyone, and this has been made obvious based on the fact that we are having this conversation. Furthermore, I find that golf rules, in general, tend to not be based on common sense at all. And I could name a dozen rules that prove that point, but I digress.

What is obvious about golf rules to me is that the rules are extremely strict about when, where, and how a person can take relief from certain lies. Furthermore, the game itself is designed to give players a variety of different types of shots to try to execute in order to keep the game challenging. So in my opinion, these factors along make up for the use of "common sense" in your argument. It's just not a factor.

My interpretation of the rule relies on a strict reading of how the rule is written without any outside bias figured in.

But that's the kind of argument that justifies why more than half of the world's lawyers are in the US. Nitpicking every letter of the law, instead of taking the big picture approach and looking at the intent of the law...

Carry on, and ruin the greens, if you like (and you'd better be ready and have the rules of golf and the Webster dictionary in your pocket to fully explain why you did so, when the club head pro sees you do it). I'll take a drop under the wrong green rule: it's just common sense to me and most people...

So hypothetically, if the two greens on different levels were connected by a tiny strip of green-bridge, miniature-golf style, then it would suddenly become a single green again, right? That seems a strange distinction to enforce.