[PHOTO: Icon Sportswire]
Craig Winter, USGA senior director of Rules of Golf and Amateur Status, wants to make things perfectly clear: do not call this the Matt Fitzpatrick rule.
For one thing, Model Local Rule G-9 has been in place since April 2019, a subtle clarification to the equipment rules after the R&A and USGA implemented its sweeping modernisation of the Rules of Golf that January. More importantly, discussion between R&A and USGA officials on changing things even further had been ongoing since the beginning of 2024, turning the incident involving Fitzpatrick at the BMW Championship last August into an unfortunate coincidence.
That said, Fitzpatrick has gotten his wish – and so have others who questioned why MLR G-9 allowed for the replacement of clubs that were broken or significantly damaged but notably considered a crack in the clubhead or face to be an exception.
As of January 1, 2025, in competitions where the Model Local Rule (MLR) is in effect, visible cracks to the face and clubhead now also constitute “broken or the damage significant” enough to allow the club to be removed (providing it was not caused by player abuse).
Here’s the specific instances spelled out in the new MLR where replacements are allowed:
- The shaft is in pieces, or it is bent, dented, kinked or splintered.
- The clubhead is visibly cracked or substantially deformed (but when it is only scratched, chipped or has a minor dent).
- The clubhead is loose or no longer attached to the shaft or a part inside the clubhead is loose (such as when there is an audible rattle).
- The club face is visibly cracked or deformed (including when it has a chip or minor dent but not when it is only scratched).
- The grip or part of it is loose.
During the final round of BMW Championship, a PGA Tour FedEx Cup Playoff event held at Castle Pines Golf Club outside Denver, Fitzpatrick noticed a crack in the face of his Titleist TSi3 driver on the eighth tee. Asked for a ruling to see if he could replace the club, PGA Tour rules officials denied him, using the exception on cracks previously written in MLG G-9 as the reasoning.
Suffice to say, Fitzpatrick was not happy. “This is outrageous. It’s an absolute joke,” he said to the official who denied his request. He continued, “There’s an obvious crack there, that’s causing a defect of the ball flight… So, I’m going to have to use 3-wood the rest of the day?”
Matt Fitzpatrick, 36th in the FedExCup entering the week, called for a ruling for a driver crack.
Under the USGA’s Model Local Rule G-9, a club is not replaceable solely because of a crack, and he was not permitted to replace it at the time due to lack of significant damage. pic.twitter.com/X5kEPkee1q
— PGA TOUR LIVE (@PGATOURLIVE) August 25, 2024
Fitzpatrick did just that, making bogey on the eighth hole and double-bogey on the 10th en route to shooting a two-under 70 (his best score of the week), finishing T-28 in the event but failing to move up in the FedEx Cup standings to advance to Tour Championship. He continued to voice is displeasure weeks later about how things played out.
It was frustrating for USGA officials, too, knowing that they were working on changing the rule, with draft language written but not finalised and with no way to accelerate the process in time to help Fitzpatrick.
According to Winter, discussions about changing the language had progressed throughout the northern summer. “Really kind of coming out of the Olympics [two weeks before Fitzpatrick’s issue at the BMW],” Winter said. “We felt really good about be idea that that G-9 needed to be revised, allow cracks and let’s figure out if there’s anything else that we can do.”
Indeed, Winter said they wished they could have helped more but “the draft wasn’t yet at a comfortable spot to go public”. Said Winter: “This isn’t the only time something like this has happened where we have in the background the next cycle and we already have some changes that we’re super comfortable with and unfortunately in the game of golf, it’s not just golfers like Matt, but it’s also club golfers that run into situations like this as well.”
The new MLR also comes with one other subtle modification that was not previously accounted for. The new language specifies that “to ensure the progression of the set is maintained, the replacement club must fill the gap created when the player took the broken or damaged club out of play”. In other words, you can’t replace the broken driver with a wedge because you only have two holes remaining and that new club might come in handier than the driver.
So why the change in language? It’s important to remember that when the MLR first came out, it was four months after the 2019 Rules of Golf update that prohibited changing out any of the 14 clubs a player had in his or her bag during a round for any reasons. Winter acknowledged that USGA and R&A officials had “some buyer’s remorse” in not allowing replacements for accidentally breaks during a round. Creating the MLR provided a lifeline to players who, through no fault of their own, were suddenly without a driver by allowed for exceptions that tournament committees could account for, including the PGA Tour.
But why not include a crack in a club to warrant replacement? According to Winter, the part of the original reason for the exception for cracks stemmed from the fact that at the elite men’s professional level, tour pros playing drivers with slight cracks was not an unusual thing as those drivers often offered a bit more distance. As Winter noted, using those drivers was perfectly within the Rules of Golf, although players who knowingly kept those clubs in their bags risked the potential that the crack might get worse and eventually cause the club to lose distance while still being playable enough to not be allowed to be replaced.
Meanwhile, the USGA and R&A continued to discuss the fairness of its 2019 rules and decided in 2023 to essentially change their minds entirely, allowing in the Rules of Golf replacement of clubs. With that the MLR, rather than providing relief from a restrictive rule put a few more guard rails on a fairly relaxed standard regarding replacing clubs. As Winter notes, that falls in line with other Rules of Golf generally now operate, such as the ability for players to use distance measuring devices as explained in the overall Rules of Golf, but having model local rules that let pro tours restrict them for their competitions.
Long story short, the USGA and R&A believe they’ve got everything in place to allow for quick and clear rulings that limit the ambiguity of what is and isn’t damage significant enough to warrant replacing a club. And as for Fitzpatrick, well we’re guessing the Englishman will likely settle for: better late than never.