Andrew Biggadike ’02 remembers the long van rides to tournaments with his Guilford golf teammates when coach Jack Jensen would break the silence of the trip by asking a question about the rules of the game.

“Coach Jensen would just pop out this question about a situation on the course and ask us what the rule was,” says Andrew. “It wasn’t like a trivia contest to pass time. He was doing it to make sure we all knew as much about the rules as we could. He wanted us to be prepared so if the situation ever happened, we’d be ready.”

Those pop quizzes in the van made Andrew realize just how much he didn’t know about the rules of golf. Safe to say Andrew knows the rules these days. So much, in fact, that last month, the United States Golf Association, the governing body for golf in the U.S. and Mexico, elected him to serve on the association’s executive committee. He’s the second Guilfordian to serve on the executive committee, following O. Gordon Brewer ’60 (1997-2001).

As part of his job Andrew is on the rules committee at the Masters next month and will be in that role at the U.S. Open in Pinehurst, N.C., in June, as well as the U.S. Senior Open, U.S. Amateur and U.S. Mid Amateur later this year.

Andrew’s job at those events is pretty easy until it’s not. He’ll be assigned a hole and will watch the world’s best golfers compete. If an issue arises on the hole, Andrew will help the golfer interpret the rules.

Andrew says golf’s rules are one of the few things that connect the average weekend hacker with the PGA Tour’s best, and the game’s elite players sometimes struggle with following, or simply just understanding, the rules as much as we do.

He says the kind of people who know the intricate (sometimes arcane) rules of golf have a common thread. “The kinds of people who seem to gravitate towards the rules are often engineers, lawyers, those kinds of folks who deal with a lot of, maybe, coding, or like working through things logically and enjoy problem solving. A lot of people look at golf’s rules and hate them or find them not very interesting. I’m one of those people who find it really interesting.”

He remembers growing up and watching golf with his father, who, like Andrew, is a stickler for the rules. “Whenever there was a rules incident, he’d pull out the rules book and we’d start going through it and it just kind of was a neat, fun thing that we talked about,” says Andrew.

Andrew, a software engineer and manager for a New York City-based company, was a three-time All-American at Guilford and a member of the Quakers’ 2002 NCAA Division III National Championship team. He’s been a USGA committee member since 2016, and has served as a rules official at 13 USGA championships and six international team matches, including the 2017 and 2021 Walker Cup Matches. He's also served as vice president of the Amateur Golf Alliance since 2015.