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I'm no expert, but I'll give it a try. This may be more than you never wanted to know about golf rules. (Mountaineer---help me out if I get this wrong.)

First, consider the routine "sand trap". A sand trap is more intricately designed and maintained than most people realize. Drainage, slope, good quality sand are all important...because the rules are so specific regarding play out of the trap. Suppose there's a rock in the sand trap, lying right up against your ball. Tough...you can't move it. (You COULD move a cigarette butt because it's a "man-made" obstruction...as long as you don't move any sand.) Further, you are not allowed to ground your club on the sand prior to your shot. The intricacy of the rules explains why you see caddies carefully raking the sand after their player hits out of a trap...it's a courtesy to leave the trap as immaculate as you found it.

Now. A waste area looks exactly like a sand trap....it's white. But it's NOT sand and it's not subject to sand trap rules. The very reason for calling it a waste area is because it usually can't be designed or maintained up to sand-trap standards. At Hilton Head it runs the entire length of the course. It's swampy ground. The golf course brought in crushed oyster shells and pebbles to fill the area...not sand, because there's no way they could drain and maintain it as a "sand trap". Unlike a sand trap, carts drive and spectators walk right on the waste areas, leaving them a mess. The course makes no effort to remove "impediments" (small pebbles and shells). Thus the sand trap rules don't apply.

Before he hit his shot, the PGA rules official confirmed to Stewart that, unlike a sand trap, he could remove any and all impediments and he could ground his club. Stewart considered EVERYTHING (pebbles, ground shells) as impediments...as he carefully removed them he didn't worry about leaving depressions in the surface. The "depression" behind his ball is now the controversy because it left the ball kind of "teed up". Many critics think they saw him move "sand" and are, therefore, judging Stewart by rules which govern sand traps.

As for the rules:
1) legally removing an impediment
versus
2) not being allowed to improve one's lie.
Think of it this way. If your golf ball lands on a pile of pine straw you are allowed to remove the impediment...as long as your ball doesn't move. A player will get down on his knees and carefully remove needle after needle in order to remove anything which might come between his ball and the club face. The result may leave his ball "teed up" on the remaining pine straw. Result: It's legal AND it improves the lie of the ball.

Likewise, what Stewart did improved the lie of his ball AND it was legal under the rule allowing him to remove impediments. I hope the PGA official can explain it a lot better than I did on tonight's Golf Central.