GOLF:THE Royal Ancient (RA) is taking a fresh look at its rulebook after recent high-profile incidents involving Pádraig Harrington, Camilo Villegas and Ian Poulter, a leading official has said.

Harrington was disqualified from last week’s Abu Dhabi Championship when he signed for an incorrect score after a television viewer noticed he had accidentally moved his ball on the green.

Villegas was also disqualified this month in Hawaii for a rules violation spotted by a TV viewer while Poulter was penalised one shot after his marker touched his ball in Dubai in November.

“We need to assess whether, at times, these penalties are still appropriate,” the RA’s rules of golf director Grant Moir said. “We have been discussing this aspect of the rules and obviously our focus is fairly sharply on it at the moment in the light of these incidents.

A new edition of the RA rulebook is brought in every four years and the next one is due to be published in January 2012. Moir, though, said rule alterations could be made in special circumstances.

“It isn’t always necessary for a change in policy that the rulebook itself has to be changed,” he explained. “There is a decisions book which provides an interpretation of the rules and that is also a means of altering policy.”

Moir said one possible way forward was to offer a compromise whereby a retrospective penalty could be given to a player after he had signed his card, without being disqualified from a tournament.

“There are a number of alternatives in terms of looking at these aspects of the rules,” he said. “Whether we look at a penalty applying and then an additional penalty for the card not being correct. This is all forming part of the discussions we have been having.

“These were very different situations because the penalty has escalated because of the scorecard error. The principle is the scorecard is sacrosanct, the scores have to be right,” added Moir.