Larry Dierker thinks that some of baseball’s rules are absurd, but even the most arcane of baseball’s rules don’t hold a candle to several of golf’s rules. This James Achenbach/Golf Week column describes the byzantine manner in which U.S. Golf Association officials penalized 17-year old Esther Choe of the Scottsdale, Arizona in her recent third-round match during the U.S. Women’s Amateur over — you guessed it — a divot:

After winning her first two matches over the Witch Hollow course at Pumpkin Ridge, Choe was bidding for a third-round victory and a spot in the quarterfinal round. Suddenly and decisively, she was derailed by a divot.

A what? Yes, that’s right ñ a divot. Choe lost the 18th hole as well as the match, against 26-year-old Katarina Schallenberg of Germany, because she replaced a divot. [. . .]
As Choe took her stance to hit a shot to the 18th green, an old dried-up divot stuck to her right shoe. She instinctively shook the divot off her shoe and replaced it in its original position. She again assumed her stance, hitting her ball onto the green.
Oh, the heavens sometimes unleash such terrible fury on the innocents among us.
USGA officials immediately surrounded Choe. They didn’t beat her with sticks, or anything like that, but they did rule that she lost the 18th hole because she was guilty of improving her stance.
Whattt?
That’s right ñ improving her stance. The official reasoning went like this: When the divot came out of its resting place, she had worsened her stance (no penalty). When she replaced it, she thus had improved her stance (from worse to better, as it were).
What Choe should have done was simply kick the divot aside without replacing it. There would have been no penalty.
However, replacing it was a violation. In match play, the penalty was loss of hole. In stroke play, it would have been two strokes.
“Well, it doesn’t make much sense to me,” Choe said, “but I guess I understand what they are saying. I shouldn’t have put it back.”
All our golfing lives, beginning when we are junior golfers, we are told to replace divots. We are told to keep the course neat and tidy. We are told that we can be a golf course superintendent’s best friend.
And what happened here? Choe was penalized for doing exactly what we are always instructed to do. There is something very wrong. This rule (13-2) needs a little finetuning.

Note to my golfing buddies — Be careful replacing those divots. I’m watching you.