TheRules
Help!
BY KENDALL DUNOVANT
WHAT IS ADVICE AND WHO CAN
GIVE IT?
First and foremost, it is essential to know
that during a round you must not give
advice to anyone in the competition who
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The Rules do allow you to ask for advice
from a few select people: your caddie and,
in partner forms of play, your partner
and his or her caddie.
is playing on the course or ask anyone for
advice (with a few exceptions).
The Rules offer a clear Definition of
advice. Advice is any verbal comment or
action that is intended to influence a play-
er in choosing a club, making a stroke, or
deciding how to play during a hole or a
round. But advice does not include pub-
lic information, such as the location of
things on the course, distance from one
point to another, or the Rules. Let’s look at a
few examples:
V I R G I N I A G O L F E R | M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 2 0
• You may ask someone the distance from
your ball to the hole, but you may not ask
someone what club you should use.
• You may ask where the green is located
or whether there are any bunkers or
penalty areas on a hole (if perhaps the
tee shot is blind).
• You may ask another player (or tell another
player if they ask you) what your options are
when you find yourself in a situation where
you may wish to take relief (such as in a pen-
alty area or when your ball is unplayable).
vsga.org
When you are trying to navigate your way
around a course, you may end up finding
your ball in a tough spot and wish you
could ask for some help to make it a bit
easier. However, one of the fundamental
challenges in the game of golf is that you
must generally make your own strategic
and tactical decisions during the round.
The Rules of Golf limit the help that
is available to players to maintain this
specific challenge.
Let’s dive into the rights and restrictions
around help and advice, which are covered
in Rule 10.2.