Americans don’t like rules much. Generally, we follow them but we gripe along the way. They’re usually written in fine print or in legalese or in laws that we didn’t even know existed, so we don’t bother following them to the letter. We look for ways around them, hoping that our infractions are so miniscule that no one will notice. In sports, there are penalties for breaking rules. In football you can lose yards or have touchdowns canceled; in basketball there are foul shots; in baseball you can get thrown out of the game; in soccer there are penalty kicks; in horse-racing you can get disqualified; and in golf there are penalty strokes.
In golf, I’ve seen amateurs, including myself, break the rules in friendly games, like giving oneself a preferred lie on occasion
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The Mindful Golfer 