Rozner: How long will PGA allow USGA to ruin golf?

The USGA wants you to hate golf.

That's the only possible explanation for what it does.

Those who create the rules want you to hate golf. They want the players to hate golf. They want the networks to hate golf.

This is a terrific model for growing the game.

Each year the USGA creates new regulations it claims are designed to make it easier to follow the rules, to speed up the game, and instead it manufactures controversy in areas where there wasn't any.

Players make mistakes and they own up to them, but when people who have played the game for decades don't understand the new rules, you have created some truly idiotic rules.

We're 10 days away from The Players Championship, considered the fifth major by Tour pros. It's a month to the Masters and with the PGA moved to May, there will be - essentially - a major in each of the next five months.

It's more than two months since the new rules of golf were implemented and it has been a disaster.

Welcome to the world of the USGA.

Players want the PGA Tour to come up with its own rule book and here's a vote in favor of such an idea. The players hate many of the new rules and they hate the USGA, like the rest of the free world.

You need not ask Dustin Johnson or Lexi Thompson what they think. Or, for that matter, anyone who watched the insanity at Shinnecock on Saturday at last year's U.S. Open.

Take your pick of what's most absurd, but dropping from knee height and preventing caddies from standing behind a player once a stance is taken have caused the biggest problems.

J.B. Holmes can stand over a shot for an hour and there's no penalty, but Adam Schenk was docked a pair Friday when he and his caddie were discussing where to hit a bunker shot. He had an impossible stance, from which - by the way - he hit a miracle shot.

His caddie did not line him up, nor was there any intention of lining him up. Schenk was trying to figure out how to not hit it into the water. They were having a conversation, something caddies are now afraid to do.

It's insanity, yet the man in charge of clown cars and donkey rides, Mike Davis, thinks it's been wonderful for golf worldwide.

At a USGA meeting in San Antonio recently, CEO Davis said, "From my perspective I would say by and large the (rules have) been a huge success. They did exactly what we wanted them to do, which was really simplify the understanding and make them easier to apply."

The greatest players in the world, and their caddies, have a different view of the absurdity.

Jack Nicklaus called the drop rule, "Silly."

Justin Thomas has been on Twitter since the start of the year with constant criticism, and said a few weeks ago to reporters, "The (rules) didn't do anything to make the game better or simplify it at all."

On Friday he bent his 9-iron while hitting a tree. The new rules say he is unable to replace the club, so Thomas played the final eight holes with 13 clubs.

"You can just add that one," Thomas said, "to the list of rules that don't make any sense."

Rickie Fowler, playing alongside, watched it happen and merely shook his head.

"Are you telling a baseball player that breaks his bat that he's out?" Fowler asked. "Or a hockey player? His stick breaks during the course of play, he's done?"

After Thomas got upset again Saturday, noting Schenk's penalty, the USGA - in its infinite wisdom and possessing all knowledge of what's best for humanity - fired back at Thomas on Twitter Saturday night.

Smart, trashing one of the world's best and most popular players. Good way to grow the game.

But that's typical USGA behavior. The USGA believes it is the star of golf, witness the hysterics at the U.S. Open every year.

Fowler called the rules, "Terrible," and Jordan Spieth has been vocal as well, wondering what the point is of some changes.

Tony Finau said in Phoenix, "This is not what the integrity of the game is about."

Admitted R & A chief Martin Slumbers, "I think it's fair to say that it hasn't gone as smoothly as I would have liked."

Slumbers sounds embarrassed. Davis, being the politician he is, would never admit a mistake.

Every year it gets worse. Every year the rules change. Every year they create controversy. Every year they take focus away from the athletes and put it on the rules committee.

Seriously, it's as if they're trying to destroy the beauty of the game with every decision they make, as if they're trying to make the players and fans hate the game.

It's time for the PGA Tour to break from the incompetence of the USGA and come up with its own rule book.

In the meantime, it would be appropriate if Justin Thomas spoke for the rest of us and delivered a message to the USGA.

He wouldn't need many words. Two would probably suffice.