Most golfers associate Rule 18.1 — the stroke-and-distance rule — with a familiar sinking feeling: a tee shot or approach sailing into oblivion. Reload, take your penalty and move on, muttering to yourself along the way.

But stroke-and-distance isn’t just for lost-ball disasters, as one of the year’s viral golf videos makes plain for all to see.

The star of the snippet below is Jay Roberts, the USGA’s senior manager of technology, content & education, who has emerged as the game’s Alec Trebec: if you’ve got a rules question, he’s got a clear-headed answer. In 2023, he began posting short rules-explainer videos, demonstrating how the Rules of Golf play out in real-world situations. The most-watched of those videos from 2025 revolves around Rule 18.1, deployed in a way most golfers probably never considered. You could say that Roberts’ post helped raise awareness. The video received nearly 9 million views.

The setting helped. Roberts filmed the video at Pinehurst No. 2, a course whose famously treacherous greens have inspired an alternate stat. Instead of greens in regulation, Pinehurst staffers refer to greens visited in regulation. Balls land on the putting surface, then trickle off. Putts rolls past the pin, and just keep on keeping on. In the film, Roberts experiences a very Pinehurst problem. He attempts a curling, mid-length putt, only to watch it run past the cup and down a slope into a bunker. Short-sided in the sand, at risk of turning a small mistake into a big number, Roberts opts for a lesser-known option under Rule 18.1: he takes a one-stroke penalty, replaces the ball on the green exactly where it was, and replays the putt.

It’s an instructive demonstration with a bigger lesson. If you don’t know the rules, you not only can’t play by them. You also can’t use them to your advantage. Sometimes, saving strokes is as simple as familiarizing yourself with the letter of the law.

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