[Photo: Keyur Khamar]

The PGA Tour is changing one of its most controversial rules ahead of the 2026 season, and golf purists should be at least a little bit happy about it.

There are few things that get Golf Twitter fired up more than pros playing preferred lies during tournaments. To many, the “Lift, Clean, and Place” rule equates to lift, clean and cheat as players in the fairway are allowed to move their golf ball within one club-length (no closer to the hole) in wet conditions.

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But as PGA Tour winner Michael Kim revealed this week, the tour has made an alteration to this local rule that will lessen how much relief a player can take. Have a look:

Great new rule change to the pgatour lift clean and place rule. Instead of a full club length relief, it’s only scorecard relief. Experienced it during DP world tour and thought it was much better. A full club length can really change the angle of a chip shot some times pic.twitter.com/cJveuldcI1

— Michael S. Kim (@Mike_kim714) January 6, 2026

As Kim explains, only being able to move your golf ball the length of a scorecard and not a full club-length is “a great new rule change”. Kim adds, “Experienced it during DP world tour and thought it was much better. A full club length can really change the angle of a chip shot some times.”

In a follow-up tweet, Kim confirms that, yes, all scorecards used on the PGA Tour are standard length so there can be no shenanigans with players using bigger ones.

Yes on the pgatour

— Michael S. Kim (@Mike_kim714) January 6, 2026

To the “Play it as it lies!” crowd including those at the USGA, this still isn’t a perfect solution. And it still doesn’t address the PGA Tour’s seemingly generous invoking of this rule. But this small modification will make many – including the players themselves – feel better about it.

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