Does the Euro Tour play lift clean and place in soft conditions?

Does the European Tour play lift, clean and cheat like the PGA Tour does? Obviously, the wording of the question reveals how I feel about the practice.

Of course and when the conditions dictate its a fair practice. Some of the mud balls at Medinah were insane. I've played in these conditions and I've never thought of it as cheating as it applies to everyone.

> @CROUSE99 said:

> Does the European Tour play lift, clean and cheat like the PGA Tour does? Obviously, the wording of the question reveals how I feel about the practice.

Of course. See Model Local Rule E-3, Preferred Lies.

https://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/rules/rules-2019/rules-of-golf/rules-and-interpretations.html#!ruletype=cp&section=rule&rulenum=8&subrulenum=5

Lol. Obviously. And you must’ve never played in real wet conditions if you think lift clean and place is cheating. Serious wet conditions where mud sticks to the ball can inflate scores by 8-12 strokes a round bc of the inability to control the ball in the air. Golf without lift clean and place, especially on the Euro Tour where weather conditions tend to be worse, would become A completely different game for the worse. I’ve played in tournaments where it starts raining during the round and stopped quickly so there were no lift clean and place rule in affect and me and my fellow competitors would purposely try to miss fairways because a ball that lands in the rough has less chance of mud sticking to it for some reason. Mud on a ball= no control= death, especially when courses have hazards or ob near greens.

Hope OP gets to play mud balls all winter and tell us how easy it is. Wet conditions are one thing, mud balls/plugged lies are a whole different animal.

Of course I have played in really wet conditions. Have you ever read "The Greatest Game Ever Played" or seen the movie? At some point, the point the rules were changed; most likely as result of the grousing of players who think the game should be fair. I'm one of those cranks who think golf wasn't designed to be fair ("get off my lawn!"). You take the bad breaks with the good. I guess I think the best players in the world should be required to play the ball down. In another discussion, people are bemoaning the low scores at Medinah. Well, those scores would certainly be higher without lift, clean and place.

Full disclosure: in my regular group, we play lift, clean and cheat in the fairway and take free drops from tree roots. But our game is like tournament golf in the same way 3 on 3 half-court basketball at the Y is like the NBA.

A plugged ball is one thing, mud on the ball is rub of the green imo. Just like all the other things that we are slowly removing from the pro game (judging of distances, seeing break on putts for yourself, etc) it removes the skill or knowledge of knowing how a mud ball effects the flight of the ball.

> @smashdn said:

> A plugged ball is one thing, mud on the ball is rub of the green imo. Just like all the other things that we are slowly removing from the pro game (judging of distances, seeing break on putts for yourself, etc) it removes the skill or knowledge of knowing how a mud ball effects the flight of the ball.

When it becomes advantageous to miss fairways, something is wrong. And yes, mid on the right makes it go left and vice versa but it isn’t that simple. Size and shape of the mud on the ball can make u huge difference which is tough to guess and the ball mud can sit on a weird angle on the ball which could require a calculator to make a good calculation lol.

But you had the experience and knowledge to know that hitting it in the rough was one way to cope. You had an advantage over the poor schmucks who were still hitting high cuts into the fairway picking up clods.

> @smashdn said:

> A plugged ball is one thing, mud on the ball is rub of the green imo. Just like all the other things that we are slowly removing from the pro game (judging of distances, seeing break on putts for yourself, etc) it removes the skill or knowledge of knowing how a mud ball effects the flight of the ball.

Under normal conditions, a ball that has mud on it is played with the mud in place. Even the most skilled pros do not know how a glob of mud is going to affect ball flight. LCP is played when a course is soaked, not just when it is soft.

I believe the 3rd round of the 2016 PGA Championship is the only time lift clean and cheat has been used in a major championship.

> @farmer said:

> > @smashdn said:

> > A plugged ball is one thing, mud on the ball is rub of the green imo. Just like all the other things that we are slowly removing from the pro game (judging of distances, seeing break on putts for yourself, etc) it removes the skill or knowledge of knowing how a mud ball effects the flight of the ball.

>

> Under normal conditions, a ball that has mud on it is played with the mud in place. Even the most skilled pros do not know how a glob of mud is going to affect ball flight. LCP is played when a course is soaked, not just when it is soft.

When I play a course that is soaked, I end up with the bottom few inches of my pants muddy and wet. I don't notice that on TV when they are playing LCP. I remember Sergio Garcia complaining about getting mud balls one year at the Masters. Given, that was a complaint by someone who has made a career of complaining, but I think it was indicative of the attitude of many, if not most, golfers.

Lol. Easy to call it Lift, Clean and Cheat when you can just say “nah, it’s too wet, I’m going shopping instead”.

Lift, clean and cheat...honestly?! Let's get rid of rakes in bunkers, stymies on the green and cups on the green.

You ever played a course with no rakes in the bunkers? Or better yet they were not bunkers at all but just sandy waste? You get the pleasure of playing out of foot prints or cart tracks. Its golf, overcoming bad lies is part of the charm of the game.

Not raking bunkers and playing stymies would be ok with me. Might as well make it a penalty for the pros when they hit in the bunker. Harvey Penick said the same thing about bunkers. He said then you'd never again hear a pro say, "get in the bunker".

> @CROUSE99 said:

> Not raking bunkers and playing stymies would be ok with me. Might as well make it a penalty for the pros when they hit in the bunker. Harvey Penick said the same thing about bunkers. He said then you'd never again hear a pro say, "get in the bunker".

Stymies would be great to watch in match play.

I went to watch the Euro pros play at the Hong Kong Open a few years back. I watched the pros mark, lift and clean the ball and asked my neighbor what was going on, as the fairways were obviously dry. He told me the Local Committee liked low scores and even hoped someone would shoot 59. Becoz this increased the 'buzz', more folks looked at the news and thus advert revenues went up.

I was really miffed when GMac contemplated a putt from off the green but had a big deep hairy pitch mark, off the green, on his line of putt. He marked, lifted and moved the ball 6 inches off that line and drilled the putt home.

I have played in USGA qualifiers where the ball was played down when there was absolutely no business doing so. There was absolutely nothing "fun" about not being overly confident that you were going to get the math right on what the ball was doing given almost every hole there was at least 2 balls that had large clumps on them. When you start having that kind of situation, it is stupid to not be able to mark, lift, clean, and place. It's far too random and doesn't necessarily give you a winner/qualifier that isn't the guy who got the most lucky that day with mud. I have also played in events that they are doing LCP because of a morning wave where it was right on the edge and need to continue it through the day. Scores in the afternoon were lower, but that's part of what the draw can do for you.

Our club has started lift and clean last weekend as it's not stopped friggin raining in 7 weeks! The mud on the balls prior was ridiculous, same will happen at Wentworth if this crappy weather carries on. And it's not cheating on any way, just winter rules in bonkers summer weather months

Of course they do it when the circumstances call for it. It is in the rules of golf.

LOL, start a thread that already has an obvious answer just to get in the "lift, clean and cheat" - just another sign the season is ending too soon.

You keep using that word, “cheat.“ I do not think it means what you think it means.

> @ray9898 said:

> Of course they do it when the circumstances call for it. It is in the rules of golf.

Even under the new 2019 Rules of Golf this factually incorrect. You can still only lift clean and place on the greens.

It is a rule in place by the various pro tours. That's why you never see it happen in the majors or USGA events as mentioned above.

> @CROUSE99 said:

> Does the European Tour play lift, clean and cheat like the PGA Tour does? Obviously, the wording of the question reveals how I feel about the practice.

Very rarely and only in extremely wet conditions. I believe pros do not like it because if they happen to go low and beat the course record it would not be official.

> @"Darth Putter" said:

> > @ray9898 said:

> > Of course they do it when the circumstances call for it. It is in the rules of golf.

>

> Even under the new 2019 Rules of Golf this factually incorrect. You can still only lift clean and place on the greens.

>

> It is a rule in place by the various pro tours. That's why you never see it happen in the majors or USGA events as mentioned above.

It is a Local Rule allowed in the Rules of Golf. There are also other such Local Rules which are not in core Rules, but used in e.g. majors. For example TIO. To not use or use LCP is a choice of the committee.

> @"Darth Putter" said:

> > @ray9898 said:

> > Of course they do it when the circumstances call for it. It is in the rules of golf.

>

> Even under the new 2019 Rules of Golf this factually incorrect. You can still only lift clean and place on the greens.

>

> It is a rule in place by the various pro tours. That's why you never see it happen in the majors or USGA events as mentioned above.

It's a local rule which has to be approved by the local governing body, which in our clubs case is West Lancashire.... So you can lift and clean on the fairways as part of the rules.

> @smashdn said:

> A plugged ball is one thing, mud on the ball is rub of the green imo. Just like all the other things that we are slowly removing from the pro game (judging of distances, seeing break on putts for yourself, etc) it removes **the skill or knowledge of knowing how a mud ball effects the flight of the ball.**

do tell ...

> @CROUSE99 said:

> Full disclosure: in my regular group, we play lift, clean and cheat in the fairway and take free drops from tree roots. But our game is like tournament golf in the same way 3 on 3 half-court basketball at the Y is like the NBA.

do you record those scores for handicap purposes?