Golf, Rules and Women

My women's golf association had its Informal Coffee this week.  We like to get together in the dead of the winter with the informal coffee to meet new members, cajole possible new members and harass old friends.  We don't spend a lot of money on the coffee and just provide said coffee and muffins.  I'm going to digress for a moment. 
We're renovating the downstairs of our club i.e. the ladies' card room, locker room, the mixed grill, men's grill (yes, we still have one of those and it's the only place in the club where smoking is allowed.  If they want a place for themselves where they can go scratch, fart and curse and complain about the wife, they can have it), kitchen and pro shop.  Anyway, we had a credenza in the card room that housed years of stuff concerning our women's association.  I found around 750 loose pics plus our scrapbooks from 1993 to the present.  So, I went through the loose pics and threw out about half and the rest I brought to the coffee and let the ladies go through them.  It was nice to remember members who have since left our club or unfortunately, departed.  We also wanted to have some program so we broke the ladies into groups and I used some multiple choice rules questions from the game The Worst Case Scenario Golf game.  I gave each group cards, one had a A on it, another had a B, and another had a C.  I would then read the possible scenario and give the 3 possible answers.  I would then say, everybody at the same time, hold up your answer.  You just know you're going to have one group who will wait till everyone else answers and then sees what the consensus is before holding up their card.  For example, one scenario, you're on a new course, no GPS and you find you've driven yourself into a bunker.  How do you get out?  Or, you're in a match play competition and you hit your ball into the woods.  You see your competitor looking for your ball, lean down and then put something in her pocket.  You believe she pocketed your ball.  What is the ruling?  Can you use your putter to mark a ball on the green?  Can you remove your golf ball located in a swarm of bees? 

Women and rules.  That could be an oxymoron.  We've actually got three womens' groups at our club.  Our organization, which is the 18 and 9 hole group and then a "social" group of 9 holers.  Their desire is to go out and play 9 holes on a week day morning, have a bloody mary and lunch and get raucous.  They like their play because they don't have to count every stroke.  Now, does every golfer who goes out to play a round always count every stroke?  No.  There are the breakfast ball mulligans (a mulligan off the first tee on a non-tournament day). One day I played with what we affectionately call a rules' Nazi. Affectionately, ladies.  It was the first tee and I hit my ball into the woods.  I yell mulligan and she says, "well, it's your handicap."  Yes, yes it is.   Golf is indeed about the rules and about handicaps.  And they're there for a reason.  These ladies who play loose with the rules will one day decide they want to play in a tournament and their handicaps will be falsely low and they won't understand why they don't have a lot of strokes. Count the whiff, count the stroke and penalty when you pick your ball out of the shrubs and throw it into the fairway.  Golf is a game of honor after all.  Mulligan!