BY THE RULES:THEY'RE A recent phenomenon, so it's still early days. They were allowed by Decision in 2006, and via a note to Rule 14-3 in 2008.

The feeling was that a Local Rule permits a flexible approach, so committees and courses can choose to allow them or not, as they see fit. The downside with the flexible approach is that it can present difficulties with consistency.

People go to one course and can use them, then go to the course next door and can’t. But, on balance, we don’t feel it’s that much of an imposition to have players check with a particular course or club as to whether their use is permitted.

With regard to pace of play, for everyone who says they make a huge difference, there’s someone else who says they don’t, or that they perhaps even slow things down. Any time- or labour-saving device not used properly is not going to speed you up.

How do you counter “inconsistency” claims over Local Rules for stones in bunkers or relief from roads, where some clubs take a liberal stance and others a stricter approach?

We govern 126 countries, and the Rules that apply here in St Andrews have to apply to desert courses in the Middle East, jungle courses in Asia, throughout South America and so on. There’s a huge variety of courses, climates and traditions and Local Rules give us an essential flexibility.

They allow traditional courses that have bridleways or roads crossing them to keep them as integral parts of the course, and indeed the strategy of playing certain holes.

Those on the 17th and 18th at St Andrews are just that. To be able to treat them differently from a modern course’s maintenance roads or cart paths that are not intended to be part of the strategy is, I think, entirely appropriate.

Rule 17-1 says anyone standing near the flag is deemed to be attending it. How near is near?

Decision 17-1/1 addresses that question. The short answer is “close enough to touch it”. It’s a good question that has been asked many times, which is why we have a Decision on it.

Is there not a temptation to clarify such things within the pages of main Rules book?

We do look at that. The trouble is if you do that often, the Rules book gets even bigger, and people sometimes balk at the size of it now. It’s always a balance as to what goes in the Rules book, and what goes in the Decisions book.

Another flag one – why should you be penalised if someone tending the flagstick for you lets your ball clatter into it?

Again, we have a Decision 17-3/2 on just this scenario, with a variety of answers depending on “motive”. We talk about the rarest but most serious situation, where failure to remove the flagstick was intended to cause a penalty to player A, the one putting. In those circumstances in both matchplay and strokeplay, player B, the person attending, is going to be disqualified, and in strokeplay player A gets to replay the stroke. But that’s assuming player B is going to admit to it, which may be unlikely. If B’s failure to remove the flagstick was for the purpose of preventing A’s ball going beyond the hole – he’s now trying to help – again, the person attending has a problem in matchplay.

Should Tiger have been allowed so much help to move a boulder in that famous incident?

The relevant Decisions – 23-1/2 and 23-1/3 – were both in the Decisions book before the Tiger incident, which occurred in the 1999 Phoenix Open. Tiger’s ruling was right on the basis of these published Decisions, but we did look at Rule 23 and these interpretations in light of that case, and another one shortly after on the European Tour.

We certainly talked at committee level about a possible limit – two people, the player and his caddie, the player’s “side”, everyone in the group? And we ultimately decided to leave it alone. I think the feeling was that the Woods case was an extreme example, and as the old saying goes, “hard cases make bad law”.

You could have a very strong caddie able to move something, and a weaker caddie not. It did seem strange, but is it fair, is it equitable? Well, it’s just how it is. We felt that the Rules ended up being right – a stone is a loose impediment and it’s down to whether you can move it if it’s not embedded.

If you think of a big branch, where it may not be its heaviness as much as its awkward shape that’s the issue, getting a number of people to move that perhaps doesn’t seem so unreasonable.

David Rickman is director of rules and equipment standards at the R and A. For further information visit randa.org.