The former rules are irrelevent.
I disagree with this.
In the former rules, any player is gone from the game. With the new rules, if the player wants to try to take a little leeway and doesn't fess up to doing it, if caught, he's not gone from the tourney, he's got a stroke penalty.
Golf is about honor and your word. This ruling opens up the game to players thinking breaking the rules will at worst, cost you a stroke or three. In the past it was your chance to continue in the tourney. To me, it goes to the integrity of the game.
This is golf. You follow the rules and you are the only one policing the rules unless your group happens to be one where a course official is near.
To me, its apples and oranges because you don't have officials trying to prevent you from "cheating" and this rule hurts the integrity of the game almost leading to the "its time for officials to be with every grouping in a tourney" type thing which I think is awful.
Golf is about playing honorably not about playing to win at all costs, even if every other professional sport is about that.
Old fashioned opinion? Yeah maybe. But its the way I see it.
But why shouldn't there be a rules official in every group? There were in some groups on Friday, which is how that 14 year-old got penalized for slow play. Seems unfair that other players, who did not have a rules official, might have done the same, rather innocuous, thing, with no penalty at all. Likewise, some players had rules officials nearby to confirm they were dropping it in the correct place, or entitled to a drop at all (in the case of obstructions) while others didn't. I've seen Tiger and a host of other players consult with officials while making a drop, because the rules of golf are confusing, and sometimes open to some interpretation. Tiger may "know the rules", but knowing them and thinking about how they apply when you're focused on recovering from having just hit it into the water in a major are two different things.
I'm also glad that Tiger didn't WD (which, also, would have made him ineligible for various postseason awards), and that the new rule was applied somewhat loosely, in a major, with Tiger. It's bothered me for years that players get DQ'd for signing an incorrect scorecard because someone called in a possible violation at the end of or after the player's round. Now that it's been used on Tiger, other players will be sure to get the benefit to nip the Tiger got special treatment argument in the bud. And if Tiger has withdrawn, then every other player would be under the same pressure to withdraw for time immemorium, and the what's the point.
Also, as a Tiger fan, I hope he comes one shot short of winning, so that the two stroke penalty will have had a major effect, and we can drop the talk of whether he should have continued. If he wins, it won't go away, which would be unfortunate.