Rules of Golf Trivia
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48 free Rules of Golf trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Golf is the one sport where a champion can call a penalty on himself, a television viewer can decide a major, and a pencil slip on a scorecard can cost a green jacket. The rulebook the R&A and USGA share is where those stories come from, and every question here is built on it. The 48 questions cover penalties and relief, drops and lost balls, how many clubs you may carry and what your gear may look like, the difference between match play and stroke play, how handicaps and course ratings work, the etiquette that never carries a penalty, the big 2019 rewrite and the 2023 tweaks, and the rulings that undid champions at Augusta, Oakmont and the ANA Inspiration. It suits a club night, a society dinner or anyone who wants to stop arguing on the 4th tee. Play on your phone with instant answers and a one-line explanation for each, or print it for the table.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many clubs may a golfer carry in a round under the Rules of Golf?
14
14. There is no minimum, so a golfer who starts with fewer may add clubs during the round until the bag holds 14, but a 15th has to come out of play before the next shot.
Q 02Since 2019, how long may a golfer search for a ball before it is lost?
Three minutes
Three minutes. The limit was five until the 2019 rewrite of the Rules, and the clock starts only when the player or caddie begins to look, not when the ball disappears from view.
Q 03From what height must a golfer drop the ball under the Rules of Golf rewritten in 2019?
Knee height
Knee height. Until 2019 the ball was dropped from the shoulder, and a player who forgets and does it the old way must drop again correctly, however many times that takes.
Q 04Which colour of stake marks a penalty area where golfers may take lateral relief?
Red
Red. A red area adds a third way out, a sideways drop beside the point where the ball crossed the edge, and since 2019 such areas need not contain any water at all.
Q 05Which old match-play rule let an opponent's ball block a golfer's line to the hole until 1952?
The stymie
The stymie. Unless the two balls lay within six inches of each other the blocker stayed where it was, so the player behind had to chip over it or bend a putt around it.
Q 06What is the standard penalty for most rule breaches in match play?
Loss of hole
Loss of hole. It covers most breaches in match play but not all: a lost ball or relief from a penalty area still costs a single stroke, exactly as it would in stroke play.
Q 07Who conceded his opponent's final putt at the 1969 Ryder Cup, leaving the contest tied at 16 points each?
Jack Nicklaus
Jack Nicklaus. In his first Ryder Cup he picked up Tony Jacklin's marker and said he did not think he would have missed, but would not give him the chance, while his captain, Sam Snead, was furious.
Q 08Which Argentine signed for a 4 on Augusta's 17th after making 3 at the 1968 Masters, handing Bob Goalby the title?
Roberto De Vicenzo
Roberto De Vicenzo. His playing partner Tommy Aaron wrote down the 4 and he signed without checking, told the press 'what a stupid I am', and prompted Augusta to put up a private scoring tent the next year.
Q 09Who won the 2016 U.S. Open despite a late one-shot penalty for a ball that moved on Oakmont's 5th green?
Dustin Johnson
Dustin Johnson. Told on the 12th tee that he might be penalised after the round, he played the last seven holes not knowing his score, while fellow professionals attacked the USGA on social media.
Q 10Who lost the 2017 ANA Inspiration playoff after a TV viewer's report brought a four-shot penalty for a misplaced ball?
Lexi Thompson
Lexi Thompson. She was leading with six holes to play when officials told her, and within weeks the governing bodies ruled that video could no longer convict a player of a breach the naked eye could not see.
Q 11In stroke play, a shot that hits another ball at rest brings a penalty on which part of the course?
The putting green
The putting green. Both balls must have been lying on it before the stroke, and the rule bites only in stroke play: in a match the same collision goes unpunished.
Q 12How long may a golfer wait for a ball on the lip to drop, after which a late fall costs a shot?
Ten seconds
Ten seconds. At the 1985 U.S. Open Denis Watson was judged to have waited 35, watched the putt drop, and still took a two-stroke penalty that left him one shot behind the winner.
Q 13What do the Rules of Golf call the whole course outside four defined areas such as bunkers and penalty areas?
The general area
Q 21What term describes a match-play side leading by exactly as many holes as remain, needing only one more half to win?
Dormie
Dormie. It is only a guarantee where a match can end level, as in the Ryder Cup: elsewhere a tied match goes to extra holes, so a side that loses every remaining hole can still be beaten.
Q 22In which Ryder Cup pairs format do partners share one ball, one driving on odd-numbered holes and the other on evens?
Foursomes
Foursomes. The order is strict: a penalty stroke does not change whose turn it is, and a partner who plays out of sequence lands the side with a penalty of its own.
Q 23Which scoring system, devised to stop golfers quitting after a few bad holes, debuted at Wallasey Golf Club in 1932?
Stableford
The general area. Of all the tees and greens, only those of the hole being played are left out, so every other hole's tee and green count as part of the general area too.
Q 14What must a golfer announce before replaying a possibly lost tee shot, or the new ball becomes the ball in play?
Provisional
Provisional must be said out loud, or clearly signalled, because otherwise the new ball is in play and the original is abandoned even if it turns up sitting in the fairway.
Q 15How deep is the teeing area behind the tee markers, the rectangle from which every hole's first shot must be played?
Two club-lengths
Two club-lengths. The markers fix the front and sides of the rectangle, and only the ball has to be inside it: the golfer is free to stand outside the teeing area to hit.
Q 16Which one-shot relief sends a golfer back to replay the last shot after a ball is lost or out of bounds?
Stroke and distance
Stroke and distance. The penalty is as old as the rulebook: golf's first written code, drawn up at Leith in 1744, already sent anyone who lost a ball back to the spot of the last stroke.
Q 17Which club alone may have a non-circular grip, a bent shaft or two striking faces under golf's equipment rules?
The putter
The putter. A chipper is swung like one but has more than ten degrees of loft, so the Rules class it as an iron, and a chipper built with two faces or a flat putter grip is illegal.
Q 18What is the maximum driver-head volume under R&A and USGA equipment rules, a cap that pushed makers toward square heads?
460 cc
460 cc, plus a 10 cc tolerance, is the ceiling, and even World Long Drive competitors must stay under it, chasing yards with 48-inch shafts instead; the 'plain in shape' rule was bent to allow squares.
Q 19What was the smaller golf ball, legal under R&A rules until 1990, commonly called?
The British ball
The British ball. At 1.62 inches across it was a shade smaller than the American 1.68, which gave it extra distance in a wind, and it stayed legal outside the United States until 1990.
Q 20Which putting method did golf's rule-makers ban from 2016?
Anchoring the club to the body
Anchoring the club to the body. The ban hit the stroke, not the equipment: long putters stayed legal, and Bernhard Langer and Adam Scott kept using theirs with the butt held clear of the body.
Stableford. Frank Stableford had first tried the idea at a Welsh club in 1898, and it speeds a round up as well: a golfer who can no longer score a point on a hole simply picks up and moves on.
Q 24What is a golfer with a handicap of zero called, the standard against which a Course Rating's 'good score' is set?
Scratch
Scratch. Zero is not the bottom of the scale: golfers better than scratch carry 'plus' handicaps and have to give strokes back to the course.
Q 25Which rating, with 113 as its standard value, tells higher-handicap golfers how much harder a course will play for them?
Slope Rating
Slope Rating. A single course rating could not show how much faster a weaker player's scores climb on a hard course, so the USGA added a second number devised by naval officer Dean Knuth, the 'Pope of Slope'.
Q 26For handicap purposes, what is the most a golfer may record on any one hole since 2020?
Net double bogey
Net double bogey. The cap stops one disastrous hole from distorting an index that is worked out from the best eight of a golfer's last 20 scores.
Q 27Who picked up a short putt, assuming it was conceded, at the 2015 Solheim Cup, for Suzann Pettersen to claim the hole?
Alison Lee
Alison Lee. The match was all square with two holes left, Europe took that hole and then the match, and the stung Americans came from 10-6 down to win the Cup before Pettersen apologised.
Q 28What may a match-play opponent do when a golfer plays out of turn, a slip that goes unpunished in stroke play?
Cancel the shot
Cancel the shot. The opponent has to decide at once, before anyone plays again, and cannot take the decision back, so a poor shot played out of turn can simply be left to stand.
Q 29After the first hole, who has the 'honour' of teeing off first under the Rules of Golf?
Lowest score on the last hole
Lowest score on the last hole. A tie leaves the order as it was, and in stroke play nobody is penalised for ignoring it: the Rules now encourage 'ready golf' to keep a round moving.
Q 30Which question to another player breaks golf's ban on asking for advice during a round?
Which club they just hit
Which club they just hit. Club choice is advice, which only a caddie may give, while distances, wind direction and the Rules are public information, and there is a twist: a golfer may look into a rival's bag but not touch it.