Beem Unplugged

Rich Beem, after round 1 of the Funai Classic talking about the rules and the Wie incident before a rally killer stepped in:

Q. Throughout history golfers have been penalized, DQ'd for signing incorrect scorecards. I'm just wondering in the Internet age, do you think that rule is a little archaic now?

RICH BEEM: Actually there's a guy I played golf with on Monday. I played with a guy who's a member of the R & A on Monday. Everybody knows what we shot, on the Internet, TV, everybody. But the rules of the game are you've got to sign your scorecard, and it's not that difficult. I mean, to be honest with you, I think the instance where it happened at the British Open a couple years ago, I don't think that's fair. I think you ought to be given your opponent's scorecard, not your own, but that's how they do it over there, it's a little bit different. You're in charge of your own scorecard and it's not that difficult to write down 18 numbers in a row about what you shot and then sign your scorecard, double check it, end of story. There's been some tragic instances in the past, but I don't think it's archaic. I think it's part of the game, and you ought to be able to do that.

Q. What about some of the other rules like the direction you take a drop?

RICH BEEM: There's so many rules, we can sit here and talk about rules but we're not going to because it's silly and I'm going to go eat here soon.

There are some rules out there the funny thing is that the rules are made by guys, the governing body, USGA, and I'll say it out loud, a lot of these guys can't break an egg, they're not players. They don't understand the rules they have in place, or some of them are outdated and some of them don't make common sense. Like the rule that happened to me at the PGA where I swept debris on the green but I was only this far off, but yet if you're on the green you couldn't do it. So they changed that rule, so that's my rule, I'll take credit for that.

There's a lot of rules that don't make sense. But that's what they like to do. They like to sit around and drink scotch and come up with new rules or old rules and don't want to change them, I don't know. It's their prerogative, man.

Q. You talked about the whole new approach with the putting. Is that because of the change in putters, or were there other changes you made or adjustments putting wise?