What relief is actually for
Relief exists to neutralise abnormal course conditions — things like temporary water, burrowing animal holes, or man-made obstructions — not to rescue a player from ordinary difficulty such as a divot or an awkward stance on a slope. The distinction matters because it is easy to assume any inconvenient lie qualifies, when the rule is deliberately narrower: it protects against interference nobody could have anticipated, while leaving the ordinary bad luck of the game intact.
Why the drop has strict boundaries
When relief is granted, a player must identify a specific reference point and drop within a clearly defined area measured from it, rather than simply moving the ball somewhere more comfortable. This precision exists because relief could otherwise be quietly abused to improve a lie well beyond what the interference actually justified, so the rule trades a little procedural fuss for a guarantee that the advantage gained matches the problem it was meant to solve.
The logic behind the oddities
Rulings that look bizarre from outside, such as penalties for accidentally moving a ball at address or for testing the surface of a hazard, almost always trace back to preventing an advantage that would otherwise be easy to claim unfairly. The rulebook reads as strange because it was built shot by shot around real disputes rather than designed cleanly from first principles, but nearly every clause has a fairness question sitting quietly behind it.