The Rules of Golf have certainly come under some intense scrutiny this past week. First we get the ruling at the PGA Championship that Dustin Johnson grounded his club in a sand trap on the 72nd hole incurring a two-stroke penalty that knocked him out of a playoff.

On Saturday LPGA Tour veteran Juli Inkster gets DQ’d from the Safeway Classic for using a weighted ring to warm up after a rain delay. Inkster was in second place at the time.

And closer to home, Jose de Jesus Rodriguez, one of the hottest players on the Canadian Tour, fired a course record tying 61 on Saturday at the Seaforth Country Classic but left the scoring tent before signing his card. Instead of taking a three shot lead into Sunday’s final round, Rodriguez will be heading on down the road muttering something like, “what a stupid I am!”

There is no doubt in any of these examples that the players clearly breached the rules. The web traffic, blogs and editorials are pretty divided on the issue, especially about Johnson’s bunker gaffe. The video evidence is clear – he did ground his club. However, what is unclear is whether he or anybody else could tell if he really was in a bunker. On TV it looked like hard packed dirt. Spectators were walking all over the area, kids were building sand castles.

The Rules of Golf are very specific and in case there is any doubt about their application, there exists an even bigger book called the Decisions of the Rules of Golf that accounts for virtually every scenario that has been encountered in assessing the Rules. Already there’s probably a new Decision for the Johnson ruling.

What is unclear and what has never been explained to my satisfaction is the part about the Rules of Golf being equitable. OK, so Johnson grounded his club in a bunker – technically a breach. However, it’s clear from the video that he didn’t test the sand, didn’t drag any material away from the back of the ball to provide for a cleaner hit and in fact didn’t do anything at all to gain an advantage over his fellow players. So how is it “equitable” to assess him a two stroke penalty for something he wasn’t even aware was a bunker.

The Inkster situation is even weirder. Inkster could have taken a couple of wedges from her bag to warm up if she wanted to swing additional weight. Instead she uses the lead donut and gets the bum’s rush from the premises.

Not signing a scorecard is something probably every competitor has done once in their lives. And just once, because forever after, in every tournament you play, it will be indelibly etched on your brain to sign the damn thing before you get up from the table. I don’t know the specifics of the Rodriguez situation but he was undoubtedly excited after shooting a 61 and breaking the course record, he would be thinking about having a three shot lead and there would be a pile of media people waiting to talk to him. However, his caddie would be there, his fellow competitors and at least two officials of the Tour would be at the table, yet not one of them checked to see if his scorecard was signed.

It happens and I get it but it’s another golf technicality that makes no sense. It’s certainly not equitable. Rules purists will blame the player alleging that it’s his responsibility. They’re correct but that doesn’t make it right.

All of these rulings stir the pot and make for great debate but if you read the input from casual golf fans and players you’ll note an almost unanimous sentiment that they think the rules are stupid and should be changed. Most casual golfers play by their own rules so these infractions are very curious to them.

In the case of Sarah Brown, a month or so ago, the officials at a Duramed FUTURES Tour event were so convinced that Brown was using wedges with illegal grooves that they DQ’d her mid round. Turns out they were wrong and the grooves were OK. Too late for Sarah though.

To me it seems like the Rules of Golf have resulted in a lot of players being penalized for things that didn’t give them an advantage over their fellow competitors. There’s nothing equitable about that.

Someone once said, and I’m paraphrasing here a bit, “if the law results in one innocent man being hanged then the justice system is not working.” Maybe it’s time the Rules of Golf had a do-over.