684
Opinion of the Court
is still reflected in the very first of the Rules of Golf, which declares: "The Game of Golf consists in playing a ball from the teeing ground into the hole by a stroke or successive strokes in accordance with the rules." Rule 1-1, Rules of Golf, App. 104 (emphasis in original). Over the years, there have been many changes in the players' equipment, in golf course design, in the Rules of Golf, and in the method of transporting clubs from hole to hole.40 Originally, so few clubs were used that each player could carry them without
"4. You are not to remove, Stones, Bones or any Break Club for the sake of playing your Ball, Except upon the fair Green/& that only/ within a Club's length of your Ball.
"5. If your Ball comes among Water, or any Watery Filth, you are at liberty to take out your Ball & bringing it behind the hazard and Teeing it, you may play it with any Club and allow your Adversary a Stroke for so getting out your Ball.
"6. If your Balls be found anywhere touching one another, You are to lift the first Ball, till you play the last.
"7. At Holling, you are to play your Ball honestly for the Hole, and, not to play upon your Adversary's Ball, not lying in your way to the Hole.
"8. If you should lose your Ball, by its being taken up, or any other way, you are to go back to the Spot, where you struck last & drop another Ball, And allow your Adversary a Stroke for the misfortune.
"9. No man at Holling his Ball, is to be allowed, to mark his way to the Hole with his Club or, any thing else.
"10. If a Ball be stopp'd by any person, Horse, Dog, or any thing else, The Ball so stop'd must be play'd where it lyes.
"11. If you draw your Club, in order to Strike & proceed so far in the Stroke, as to be bringing down your Club; If then, your Club shall break, in, any way, it is to be Accounted a Stroke.
"12. He, whose Ball lyes farthest from the Hole is obliged to play first. "13. Neither Trench, Ditch, or Dyke, made for the preservation of the Links, nor the Scholar's Holes or the Soldier's Lines, Shall be accounted a Hazard; But the Ball is to be taken out/Teed/and play'd with any Iron Club." K. Chapman, Rules of the Green 14-15 (1997).
40 See generally M. Campbell, The Random House International Encyclopedia of Golf 9-57 (1991); Golf Magazine's Encyclopedia of Golf 1-17 (2d ed. 1993).
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