By Brian Gramolini
The sports world had a weekend. The Super Bowl, the WM Phoenix "Open" and the 2026 Winter Olympics all in one day. We, however, are still waiting another day for the temperature to get above freezing.
Last post I teased covering the 6 rule changes on the PGA Tour and how they impact us. If you don't feel like reading on, the rule changes don't apply to Saxony play. The PGA Tour is a separate entity and can make their own rules. Most of the changes are applied as Local Rules, and we wouldn't adopt them anyway because it would just be plain silly.
I'm going to kick things off with one of the more misunderstood rule changes. This rule applies to balls that have come to rest in a pitch mark. In the past, players could only take relief if a ball embedded in their own pitch mark. This rule allows relief from other player's pitch marks.
This gets confusing to some, because a pitch mark is different from a divot. For simplicity, a pitch mark is made by a ball and a divot is made by a club. There is still no relief for balls coming to rest in a divot on the PGA Tour. Most of our members use the unwritten "roll 'em in your own fairway" rule anyway.
Starting in 2026 on the Tour, internal out of bounds will only apply to shots played from the teeing area. We don't have internal out of bounds at Saxon Woods. We wouldn't adopt this rule, because the course would become a lot harder for some of us (myself included) if we couldn't play from an adjacent fairway.
If adopted, players can get relief from the apron or fringe if an immoveable obstructions, such as sprinkler heads, is on their line of play. The current rule only allows for relief when the obstruction interferes with a player's stance or swing.
I can't think of a lot of situations at Saxon Woods where this might come up, but I'm currently sitting in my house and not out on the course. Some of us treat the apron as fairway, and will apply the same "roll 'em in your own fairway" rule mentioned above.
The pros can replace a club that's been damaged mid-round, assuming the damage wasn't caused by abuse. This doesn't apply to us, but if it did, good luck getting Robbie to bring you a club from the Pro Shop mid-round.
When preferred lies are in effect, the relief area is reduced to scorecard length (11 inches). Previously, it was a club-length, but since everyone has different club lengths, this measurement is now a standard length.
If a player knowingly causes a ball at rest to move and does not put it back to its original location before being played, they get a two-stroke penalty. This change applies when the player is unaware they moved the ball, and it reduces the penalty to one stroke. This one will be tough to enfore at Saxon Woods since we don't have cameras or markers following each group.