I’ve had a lot of golf questions come in recently, so I’ve strayed away from my series on the basic rules of golf. I had a few minutes breathing room and wanted to get back to this series. I’ve had a lot of good feedback from all of you other Golf Nuts out there, so here we go.

Here are some simple basic rules of golf that are easy to remember and very helpful when you are on the golf course. A lot of golfers, even more experienced ones, a lot of times don’t know these or choose to ignore them.

•You don’t get relief from out-of-bounds posts or fences.
•If your golf ball plugged in its pitch mark in a closely mown area of the course, pick it up, clean it and take a free drop as close as possible to where it was. There is no penalty for this.
•If the wind moves your golf ball and you haven't addressed it, then play it from its new position (no penalty). If you had addressed it, add a penalty stroke, replace the ball and play on.
•Before you swing your golf club, do not break branches, uproot shrubs or remove anything fixed. But if something is loose, you can remove it (except in a hazard).
•If an animal, or a golfer in the next foursome, picks up your golf ball, you can replace it with another ball without penalty. Just put it where the original ball came to rest.
•If you play a wrong ball (except in a hazard), you lose the golf hole in match play. In stroke play you incur a two-stroke penalty and must then play the correct ball.
•When you are on the putting green, you may repair ball marks and old hole plugs on the line of your putt, but not spike marks.
•If your ball is deflected or stopped while in motion by you, your partner or your caddie, in match play you lose the hole

Just some quick tidbits that might help you avoid trouble on the golf course this weekend or even help you nail that one guy who keeps stretching and breaking the rules of golf. Have fun out there!