The USGA received more than 20,000 rules questions in 2025. One rule accounted for 10% of them, and it wasn’t about water, bunkers, or wildlife. It was about cart paths. Rule 16.1, governing relief from abnormal course conditions, triggered approximately 2,000 inquiries to the USGA this year alone. The confusion centers on a question golfers encounter almost every round: How do you determine the nearest point of complete relief from an immovable obstruction?

Todd Stice, the USGA’s manager of rules, content, and education, fields these calls daily. The volume is so consistent, the response has become automated.

“We have a copy-and-paste type of thing we do because we get the same question a lot,” Stice said.

The problem isn’t the rule itself. It’s what golfers expect relief to mean. Most assume relief equals improvement—a better lie, a cleaner angle, a friendlier stance. The rules guarantee no such thing. “Nearest point of complete relief” requires finding the closest spot where stance, swing, and ball position are all free from interference. That spot might be in thick rough. It might be behind a tree. It might be worse than the cart path itself.

Golfers instinctively resist this. They spend hours chasing swing tips, dissecting equipment specs, and memorizing yardages, but skip the rulebook entirely. When the moment arrives, and the nearest point lands them in a hedge, they call the hotline.

Yet Stice doesn’t spend all his time on the mundane. Among his favorite 2025 inquiries: a golfer who smacked an alligator in the forehead, the ball ricocheting into a penalty area. Another involved a four-ball match where a player shanked a shot out of bounds from the fairway. His partner sprinted over for a mocking chest bump—and accidentally kicked his own ball.

“This is pretty funny,” Stice said. “I was just visualizing the guy going up for the chest bump and then coming down on the top of his ball.”

The verdict? Penalty. Rule 9.4 doesn’t care about intent. Even accidental motion in the fairway costs a stroke. Had the celebration happened on the teeing area or putting green, no penalty. The rules are more lenient there.

“This is a little bit of gas on the fire for the side because you know, there was a penalty here,” Stice explained. “Even though it’s an accidental motion, he caused his ball to move in the fairway.”

The alligator and chest-bump stories make for great content. But they represent a fraction of the hotline’s volume. The bulk of Stice’s workload remains stubbornly ordinary and avoidable.

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The USGA’s real problem isn’t the cart path

The 2,000 Rule 16.1 inquiries expose a deeper truth. Golfers invest countless hours perfecting mechanics, but treat rules education as an afterthought. The assumption that “everyone knows” cart path relief persists—until they don’t.

Craig Winter, the USGA’s Senior Director of Rules, argued that expanding relief situations would create “grey areas” and complicate the game—a philosophy that helps explain why the governing body relies on standardized responses rather than rule changes to address the flood of cart path inquiries. The USGA isn’t rewriting the rulebook. It’s waiting for golfers to finally read it.

The tools exist. The USGA’s Rules of Golf app is free on iOS and Android, offering instant access to every rule, clarification, and video explanation. The hotline operates seven days a week. Yet confusion persists. Stice maintains a simple philosophy for navigating even the strangest scenarios.

“The way the rules work and the way we answer them, once we get a fact, the rule is pretty straightforward,” he said.

The alligator calls will make headlines. The chest-bump stories will circulate on social media. But the cart path confusion will persist—quietly, repeatedly, and expensively. Next year, the USGA will field another 20,000 questions. Roughly 2,000 will be about the same slab of concrete golfers drive past every round.

The solution isn’t a rulebook rewrite. It’s golfers finally opening the one they already have.