A good reason to bring your cell phone to the golf course

This falls under the category of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

The folks who brought you the easy-to-understand, illustrated “Golf Rules Quick Reference” now have an electronic version that you can load on your iPhone. It’s not like we’re ever going to win the battle against cell phones on the course anyway, so we might as well take advantage of them.

Is it just the guys I play golf with, or do most recreational players have a fairly poor understanding of the Rules of Golf? I’m not just talking about the obscure stuff, but also the basic rules like where to drop when you enter a water hazard, the penalty for out-of-bounds or what constitutes grounding the club.

Well, if you have the iRules on you iPhone, you don’t have to call the golf shop if you have a rules question; you can simply dial it up on your phone. Now you can find out quickly if you’re entitled to free relief because of the ant pile your ball landed in and how to proceed.

There are more than 200 illustrations and animated slide shows on the application, and it comes in three languages – English, German and French

“We have extended the content of ‘Golf Rules Quick Reference’ a little bit and have taken advantage of the technical possibilities that the iPhone offers, such as animated images, but other than that we keep close to the successful concept of our little booklet,” says Yves C. Ton-That, “Golf Rules Quick Reference” author and an international rules official for more than 10 years.

You can get the “iGolfrules” application for a song, well, sort of. It’s available from the iTunes App Store for $9.99. The price includes all rule updates until the end of 2011 as well as new language versions that are added during the same period.