Get it right, Nick!

Nick Faldo has joined the long list of announcers (and others) who have misused the term Rub of the Green. In today’s second-round Buick Invitational telecast, Faldo described a ball rolling on a putting green knocked offline by a tuft of grass or the condition of the grass as a “rub of the green.”

Bogey, Nick!

Rub of the green is not a synonym for bad luck. In The Rules of Golf, it has a specific definition: “A rub of the green occurs when a ball in motion is accidentally deflected or stopped by any outside agency (see Rule 19-1).”

And, as so often happens, one Rule or Definition leads to another. An outside agency in stroke play “is any agency other than the competitor's side, any caddie of the Side, any ball played by the Side at the hole being played or any equipment of the Side. An outside agency includes a referee, a marker, an observer and a forecaddie. Neither wind nor water is an outside agency.”

Nor, it should be added, is the ground.

— Robert D. Thomas
SCGA Senior Director of Communications