What is the etiquette of golf, and is it in the Rules?

What the Rules expect:

• Integrity: following the Rules, applying all penalties and being honest in all aspects of play.
• Consideration: playing promptly, looking out for others' safety and not distracting another player. A player who hits towards someone should at once shout a warning, such as the traditional "fore".
• Care of the course: replacing divots, smoothing bunkers, repairing ball-marks and not causing needless damage.

What backs it up:

• Serious misconduct is behaviour "so far removed from what is expected in golf" that removal from the competition is justified. The Committee decides.
• A Code of Conduct, adopted as a Local Rule, can set lesser penalties such as one stroke or the general penalty.
• In stroke play, a player who knows another has broken a Rule should report it. Failing to can itself be treated as serious misconduct.
• A marker who knowingly certifies a wrong score should be disqualified.
• Deliberately altering the ground to affect another player's ball or stroke is the general penalty.

Most golf is played without a referee. The game works only if players can be relied on to call penalties on themselves and to look after a course that the next group will play.