I do not remember ever to have read a book by smeone who suppressed his name from the front cover, like Yves Thon-That, Master of Law and Golf Rule Official with handicap 4, did with his Golf Rules & Etiquette Crystal Clear (http://www.golfrulesmadeeasy.com). That made me, golf newcomer, only recently down to handicap 18 at the decisively off Broadway Jinja Club, Uganda, think it would be worth studying carefully, and it was. It made clear to me that I am down to handicap 22 only. I am grateful.

Picture 1: Dress code. One of the most notable aspects in which the golf course is not to be confused with the Garden of Eden.
Left is right, right is wrong!!, despite the joy Yves visibly took from borrowing his right side outfit from the outer fringe of his wide circle of connections, and the ease his photo partner obviously had in finding something on her own shelves.

The pictures reproduced above relieve the newcomer from quite some doubts but unfortunately there is no satisfactory dealing in Thon-That's with a case I was personally informed of, one that actually occurred on a respected golf course, of golfers having sex in the dense rough (what if of same group? ...different groups? ...if ball moves?...5 minutes rule?), but to the avoidance of injuries Yves inserts graphical pictures involving his photo-partner (in proper dress!) with whom every reader by now surely has fallen in love...impossible to forget never to do such things!

Picture 2:  Yves Thon-That (Hcp 4) in some hard-core scenario's

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Picture 3: left Yves Thon-That in distress after hitting another player's ball on the green (2 penalty strokes),
right: sheer horror, this ball peeps above ground, hence is not classed as holed. For the solution: buy Yves' book NOW (http://www.golfrulesmadeeasy.com).

Picture 4: Etiquette. After missing an easy put and yet

1. not having broken your putter over your knee you
2. greet players on other fairways, even if
3. you do not know them, but
4. only with a waiving gesture.
5. no verbal greetings exchange, that might disturb players.

Markers.
If your ball touches the extreme fairway-side line connecting out of bounds markers you are NOT out of bounds, but if it touches the extreme fairway side line of hazard markers you are IN the hazard. Easy once they tell you.

Where to drop?
Do not look around where to go to drop. Where = where to ball comes to rest after you dropped it (hence there is a short time span in which you have dropped but do not yet know exactly where!). How: your body posture and initial movement of ball and hand when the ball leaves your hand, from where: irrelevant. You are totally free to choose where to stand and in which direction to stretch your arm. Easy once they tell you.
Shit in your way.
First of all: it is not shit and you certainly should not call it so. Loose impediments may be removed but which impediments are "loose" and which are not? One should not move anything "growing, fixed or firmly embedded". Where does that leave the fallen 300 kg branch? In the "loose impediments" class? Are you allowed to employ your golf cart for a removal operation? Are you allowed to use your shovel as a golf cart? Golf carts themselves are surely among the moveable obstructions (artificial objects, no parts of nature). Through the green, it costs you a stroke if your ball moves while removing a loose impediment (and you have to put it back), but not so with  moveable obstructions. The course markers' pins in the ground do not classify them as fixed, you can put them aside, except the out of bounds markers. Ajajajajaj.

Be fast

Everybody should play fast. After putting, before any conversations, first leave the green. Do not look for balls out of bounds, you are not allowed to play them anyway and you can afford buying another. Not too many practice swings (they take energy!!). Weaker players, if they still have breath, are allowed to say something but should ensure that they do not praise good players for shots that they themselves are totally unsatisfied with. In a 2-ball do not use more than 3 hrs 45 min, "only a fast game is a good game", and after all (not in Thon-That's book), the club's tee-off schedule makes clear it needs more green fees than only yours even though it surely was a bloody lot. After having recovered your breath in the club house, it is not unusual to ask other players how they did, even though absolutely everybody assumes you are not, as transpires from Yves Thon-That's book, interested at all: "If someone asks you how the game went it is advisable only to answer with your result (number of strokes/ number of Stableford points). It is better not to relate the story (....), experience has shown that absolutely no one is interested"

Handicap

Yves Thon-That quite satisfactorily explains the handicap system, so I will misuse this paragraph for a digression on the handicap system in general, even if absolutely no one is interested.

Imagine there would be handicaps in marathon running (serious runners: 2 hours). 200 000 people start and finish. We wait for an hour. Then comes the announcement: the winner is....Peter Jones from Iowa (because he ran his last five races in 4:50 hrs on average and today made it in 3:59!). This is the basic idea of a handicap based on past performance, as opposed to objective handicaps based on body weight, age etc (what an objective golf handicap could be like).

Imagine a father is regularly seen with his little daughter dancing from the hole to the next tee with her junior set. On Card Date 1 she starts with her first handicap, calculated as the average of the five cards (nrs. -4 to 0) previously submitted.

From card date -4 to 3 the little daughter grows, starts to use adult clubs, naturally improves (from 40 over to 27 over- do not try to linearly scale card dates in real calendar time, we could do it, but it does not matter, card date numbers are just numbers). At card date 3 daughter has become, say 16 years old, father has been stimulated to get his strokes down from 20 to 17 over, but that has never been enough to win any game from his daughter: she improves too rapidly. Then comes card date 4. Daughter has her first boyfriend, her father does not know about it. She plays 37 over. Father, as always: 17 over. For the first time ever, he wins, even by 7 "net" strokes! On the next card date (5) she tells him about it at the tee of the 4^th hole and recovers remarkably the rest of the game. Father drags himself from hole 4 to 18, and ends 27 over, one gross stroke below his daughter. His net loss (-12) even falls below our graph.
At card date 6 things get back to normal: father constant on 17 over or so, daughter getting 2 or three strokes off every card date. With both of their handicaps now raised, daughter wins again as usual around 2 net strokes. Father realizes it is competition time and starts checking web sites. Daughter's competition time runs until card date 9, after which date her dip score will fall off her handicap calculation, and his own will end on card date 10. Fortunately he finds a competition on card date 8. Both daughter and father win and celebrate on the club house veranda with daughter's boyfriend, a promising teen age tennis player. Back on their home course at card dates 10 and 11 they experience the retarded effect of the boyfriend jitters five card dates earlier: on card date 10 father even has an isolated win. He may be proud having scored 2 gross strokes lower than normal, but his win was due to something else: his daughter's boyfriend jitter's dip score is now 6 cards ago and for the first time today OFF her handicap calculation, so she was back on low handicap. Father's jitters were on the next card, hence still IN his handicap calculation. Next time he will have to be better to win, even if his daughter will be equal to today.
Then father's game gets worse a bit. He gets older, and actually starts to need (gross) more strokes than his daughter for the first time on card date 12, but things reverse when at card date 16 he retires, starts to play 36 holes a day, and at the same time his daughter gets busy jobs and children, joining him only 18 holes every other weekend. Two card dates later father's day score dives under his handicap again, partly because his score goes down while his handicap is still going up. His reward is a series of wins with more than 4 net strokes. Father's and daughter's gross scores stabilize at card date 22 but father has another 5 wins before the handicaps have stabilized as well (at card date 27). Then draws start to set the tone. On card date 28 they decide they now can afford caddies. This saves both of them a shot (father saves energy, daughter saves on lost balls). Five score cards later both their handicaps are a shot down, but against each other they keep playing draws during this one stroke handicap dive.

Daughter requested to suppress the period after she separated and retired at 49 with half of her husband's tennis fortune, liberally paid some top pro's to have a  look at her swing while her father, in his late 70^s and early 80^s, still going strong on the course, still was among her favourite company. Exercise for the reader: work out plausible score, handicap and father-daughter competition timelines for the suppressed period. (How is your result altered if father, 91 years old, in his last game is taken to hospital from the fringe of the 18th hole, while his ball after a magnificent long put is in the position as in the right of picture 3? (you may assume father will survive to sign a score card but will do so only if this is conforming the rules).