|What does it take to be a golf rules official?|
|Around the Academy:
Rules Secretary, Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews.
Most golfers might spend a lifetime playing the game but never learn all of golf's thousands of rules.
But some people have to memorise every single one off by heart.
The rules official.
It's their job to tell players in tournaments the correct rules.
And that can happen quite a lot in a sport played over the largest and most varied playing surface out of any sport.
When you add weather to the equation, there are thousands of situations that might confuse a player.
David Rickman is the Rules Secretary at the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews.
The R&A is the world's leading authority on golf and provides guidance to over 125 countries worldwide on the rules of the game.
His job is to help with the organisation of major tournaments such as the Open Championship and the World Amateur Golf Championship.
He spoke exclusively to the Academy about life as a leading official with one of the world's oldest sporting organisations.