Most of us know the main points of the rules... but it is also easy to run into a situation during your round where neither you or your playing partners are quite sure how to proceed... or that you are all very sure how to proceed but dont agree with each other!
This is partly because all of us could be a little better in our knowledge of the rules... and partly because of the millions of different situations that you can find yourself in during a round of golf. Every golfer occasionally needs a bit of help in these situations... even the guys on the PGA Tour will speak to rules officials during many of their rounds.
In most of the rounds played at Kytäjä there will not be a rules official nearby... so every player needs to have a way to resolve these situations. The rules state that each player is personally responsible for adhering to the rules... you can be penalised or disqualified for breaking rules that you did not know about just the same as the rules that you did know about!
Many of us will have had a book of rules in their bag at some point... but it only takes a few thunderstorms to turn those books into mush... given the weather we have "enjoyed" during 2012 I would be surprised if there are many of those books still surviving! Another problem is that printed books can also go out of date.
One alternative to the printed rules is to take a more technological approach... the R&A has published apps for Android, iPhone and Windows Phone which contain the rules of golf and the related decisions in an easy to use format. Why not download those to your smartphone and always have that to hand in your golfbag? Maybe it even makes it a bit more fun to be checking the rules... everyone loves to play with their gadgets :)
Below is a screenshot from the iPhone app... and under that screenshot there are download links for iTunes, Windows Marketplace and the Google Play Store. You can download these excellent Apps for free.
Andy