Quote:
Originally Posted by ntnBO
Rules are rules, you don't have to agree with them, but you do have to follow them. And this is what separates golf from other sports in a good way.
I'm not saying any rules should be broken, just that this shouldn't be a rule in the first place. Clearly it should be followed as long as it is a rule.
What separates golf from other sports is that other sports do not penalise athletes for meaningless details that does not improve or change the athletes position and/or chances and that the athlete in many cases has little or no possibility of knowing happened at all.
You're not going to find out the next day that Barcelona lost a game they won on the night because someone later found that the ball moved imperceptibly before Messi took a penalty, causing them to lose the resulting goal and get an extra goal against as punishment.
Golf is different from many other sports in that the players are expected to, and usually do, try their very best to uphold the rules themselves rather than, as in other sports, have grey areas where it's somewhat considered ok to break them if they can get away with it.
Rules like these seem more designed to see just how far they can push players to test their integrity rather than have any actual reason for existing based on keeping the game fair and avoid cheating.