New golf rules: You can move a ball and get away with it

Thanks to the new rules, you can move loose impendiments in a bunker.

Happy New Easier Rules Year! By the time you read this article, the newly revised golf rules will have kicked in.  Starting January 1, 2019, golfers are now literally being allowed to break what in the past were rigid cast-in-steel golf rules, in ways that were unthinkable and sacrilegious for ages.

The first beneficiary of the new rules, at the world stage, was PGA Tour player Web Simpson. While playing the par-5 fifth hole during the third round of the Sentry Championship last week, Simpson was in the process of searching for his ball inside thick rough, when he stepped on a clump of grass and out popped his ball.