What is the one rule you wish could be changed

[Sean2]

There appears to be some disagreement on the stroke and distance penalty. I personally think the penalty is too harsh. The average drive is around 216 yards. Let's take a 440 yard par 4. Guy hits his tee shot OB. Now he is three off the tee. His 4th (let's say he hit a good one), is 210 yards from a green that is protected by water and bunkers. Not much chance of him getting on the green with his fourth shot...so he lays up. Now he is hitting his 5th shot, hits the green and two putts for a triple.

Yes, you can argue if he can't "even" keep the ball on the course he should be penalized, but perhaps some of those holes with OB are extremely narrow, with little margin for error...heck, even professionals have trouble keeping their ball in the fairway off the tee, let alone your average recreational golfer.

Just don't get PO'd on a very busy Saturday when a guy in that slow group in front of you trundles back to the tee because his tee shot went OB and he has to hit another...after spending all that time looking for his first tee shot...and then not hitting all that great a third shot, and spending time looking for that one.

You won't convince me of the efficacy of stroke and distance, and I won't convince you of the opposite. You think it's a good rule, I don't. No biggie. :-)

On a final note, why can't people have a disagreement without it turning personal? It's as if the person disagreeing with someone has insulted that person by not having the same viewpoint as him.

[Newby]

"perhaps some of those holes with OB are extremely narrow, with little margin for error.."

Perhaps a more conservative shot/club would be the intelligent approach. Play the course as you find it.

[Newby]

When was OB first mentioned in the Rules? I couldn't see it in the first 150 years of published rules. It boiled down to Lost Ball and lost hole.

[Vindog]

In a distance penalty, your progression towards the hole is broken, either by losing a ball, by hitting it outside of the course boundary or something else that prevents you from having a reference point from which to play. Thus you must hit from your last position of progress.

 

Distance penalty, while harsh I agree, is 100% logical. Sorry.

[LICC]

Sorry, that doesn’t fly. Your reference point is the point the ball went OB. Just like if you hit it into a pond.

[davep043]

Actually, from 1744 (when the first rules were written) and 1886, Out of Bounds didn't show up in the rules. During that time, the ball was simply Lost, and for most of those 142 years, the penalty for a lost ball was stroke and distance. And in 1886, the initial penalty for OB was stroke and distance. For 36 years it wavered, with distance only being the most common penalty, with S&D being an acceptable local rule. OB could also be defined as Lost Ball (S&D penalty) under acceptable local rule. Since 1920, the penalty was S&D for most of those years.

And again, most penalty situations require you to put your next ball into play from a specific location. Is it logical that you have to stay within 2 clublengths when taking unplayable lie relief? Isn't that the same kind of double penalty? Perhaps you should retain all of your distance, take a penalty, and play it from the fairway, no nearer the hole. The same with water. Maybe you should just drop it to the side, even with where the splash was. Forcing you to play from behind the water is another double penalty.

There's another solution to this issue. There are 4 situations where you cannot play your ball from the spot you've hit it. OB, unplayable lie, lost, and in the water. Similar situations should be treated similarly. I suggest the logical and consistent thing to do is to play every one with a one-stroke penalty (the price of "erasing" the shot you hit) and play the ball from its last KNOWN at-rest location. Every one. Consistency! Why should you get to "keep" the distance you've achieved, if you cannot play your next shot from that spot? Some of you more well-read folks may recognize where this comes from.

 

[Vindog]

Sorry maybe for you, but yes it does fly. Your "reference point" is not actually on the course. You maybe disagree with this fact, and I respect your opinion on the matter, but it is a fact. It's not up to us to convince you, nor do we agree with your belief that you are entitled to an explanation that suits your end.

 

Enjoy!

[Vindog]

And to add. There are times when you hit it into a defined area of the course (like say red staked PA) but still cannot find a reference point which satisfies the relief procedures. In such a case, where you have no reference point from which to play, stroke and distance is your only play left. Your progression toward the hole is broken.

 

Logical

[LICC]

I respect the consistency of that approach. It acknowledges the illogic of having a different harshness of penalty for a ball in the water vs a ball OB.

I don’t see how dropping within two club lengths for an unplayable is a double penalty. You are moving a ball from an unplayable spot to a playable spot as close as you can to where the ball originally landed. You take one stroke for the drop. Instead of hitting two you are now hitting three from pretty close to the same spot.

Beyond the water v OB inconsistency, we can agree to disagree that being penalized twice for one badly executed swing is a bad rule. One penalty for one bad swing seems entirely fair to me.

[bulls9999]

OK, I'll play this one since I just went through several frustrating rounds over this:Maximum number of 'lost balls' (for handicap score calculation) due to excess leaves (I guess that will require what defines 'excess leaves'?). A month or so ago I played several rounds during the time most of the trees on our course (almost all are the same, blackjack oak) dropped their leaves. Every bit of grass in the 'tree lined areas' were solid leaves, ankle deep. I lost 6-8 balls on each of several rounds because I could not find them in an area where they would normally be visible and after about 5-6 lost balls, I stopped keeping score and converted the round to a 'practice round'; I can tolerate several lost balls due to 'conditions', but when I approach 5, 6, 7, sorry, I can't take it, that is, keeping score any more (after several weeks, our club's ground crew got in and sucked up the leaves all over the course with a large vacuum cleaner....immense job, they did great....but it took a while). What do others do in that situation? I'm not sure if it was extremely bad this year where we had a cold spell come in at the right time and seemingly synchronized the trees to drop their leaves at the same time, more so than usual.

[Sawgrass]

Institute Local Rule F-14, or stop playing until the course is reasonably cleaned up.

[rogolf]

It's possible that the course's handicap committee can request the authorizing handicap authority to temporarily suspend posting of scores on that course.

[LICC]

What in the world are you talking about??? Please be specific how you can hit it OB or into a PA and not have a point where the course meets or bounds the PA or OB.

[HitEmTrue]

 

What is the reference point for hitting the ball into the woods or rough and not finding your ball?

[LICC]

Are you asking about penalty areas? If not, then you have to re-tee. Hit a provisional and in my opinion your provisional should be your second shot (assuming you don't find your first ball). If you didn't hit a provisional and can't go back and re-tee, then you are out of the hole (but I would be fine with a rule that allowed a penalty drop in the location where you best estimate the ball went). Also note that the current rules use a reference point for a lost ball, to allow a drop in the fairway with a two-stroke penalty rather than re-teeing.

[sui generis]

You Cannot Reason People Out of Something They Were Not Reasoned Into You Cannot Reason People Out of Something They Were Not Reasoned Into – Quote Investigator

 

[CaseyC]

I don't have a problem with S&D penalties.

But, to throw another item out there....

How about a yellow water hazard on an island green? If you ball carries the hazard, but rolls back into the hazard, there is always some sort of "distance" penalty along with the stroke

 

 

[LICC]

 

Point A is your reference point. As stated in the rules. Pretty simple.

[CaseyC]

Depending on the location of the penalty area markings, the nearest point of relief area could be in a location that would be unplayable.

[davep043]

He won't answer that, he ignored the same issue when I posed it a few posts back. He also ignored my correction of his version of the history of the rules.

[LICC]

I won't answer what?

Your version of the history of the rules is noted. I was referring to the first common set of rules from the R&A, which a poster set out earlier in this thread. But even going back further, there as been inconsistency and change with respect to this rule. The Rules of 1744 had a stroke and distance penalty, the Leith Code of 1775 had it at stroke only, and on and on.

From Golf Digest. It seems that Gene Sarazen and I and 90% of Southern California golfers thought alike:

Stroke and distance was part of golf's original list of rules, in 1744, but during subsequent decades and centuries it was repeatedly modified, dropped, resurrected, and modified again. Sometimes you counted only the bad stroke and the do-over; sometimes you added a penalty but got a drop. The most severe version was adopted by the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews in 1842: three strokes and distance, meaning that if you hit a ball out of bounds your next stroke, played from the spot where you struck your first, counted as your fifth. That lasted until 1846.

In 1951, the R & A and the USGA agreed to apply the single-stroke-and-distance penalty universally. But there was still plenty of grumbling, and in 1959 the Southern California Golf Association, with the support of 90 per cent of its members, adopted a local rule eliminating what it described as the "unfair penalty stroke in connection with ball out of bounds, lost ball and unplayable lie." Thenceforth, in Southern California, if you did something stupid the assessment was "stroke only." You counted the bad shot and the replay (from the original spot), but nothing in between.

The California revolt had some prominent supporters -- among them Gene Sarazen, who told Golf Digest, "Golf is a game of luck. The stroke and distance penalty gives luck extra value. A guy gets into trouble at the wrong time or on the wrong hole and it is the equivalent of two strokes added to his card. The population is growing and taking up more space, so out-of-bounds holes are increasing. The double penalty rule is entirely unnecessary."

The USGA relented for a year, in 1960, but the stroke-only faction ultimately lost out, and the current rule, with minor tinkering, has been in place all over the world since 1968. But who knows? Maybe the governing bodies will come around to Sarazen's point of view.

[HitEmTrue]

That local rule is not typically used in competition, and shouldn't be. So someone playing in an amateur, stroke-play event loses his ball and had not hit a provisional, he gets DQ?
It is quite common for one bad swing to COST two-strokes. Hit it into the woods into a difficult or unplayable spot, and two shots to get back to the fairway. One of those might be an unplayable penalty, or maybe a failed first attempt to get back to fairway.
What you are proposing would be a fundamental change in the way the game is played. Hit a shot into the woods, hit a provisional into the fairway, and ignore the first ball knowing that you are laying 2 with a chance for par or bogey. Par 4 with a risky line to the green, perhaps over OB and houses, or whatever, that MIGHT result in an eagle putt with a perfectly hit shot? Go for it! Then hit provisional onto the fat part of the fairway, knowing that worst case you are laying 2.
My understanding is the USGA/RA did consider changing stroke-and-distance for balls hit OB. But they couldn't justify making an OB shot LESS penal than the results of hitting other bad shots that are still on the course.@sui generis, I'm hoping @Sean2 is swayed in his opinion of stroke and distance.

[LICC]

I'm pointing out the local rule solely to your question about how to find a reference point. You asked how to do so as if it were impossible. The rule tells you. I don't agree with the 2-stroke penalty aspect or dropping in the fairway, but there you have how to find a reference point.

To your question, in an official competition, it shouldn't be an issue to go back and re-tee. If you are playing a casual round on a crowded local muni, that is all but impossible.

If a bad swing leads to a terrible ball position that ultimately costs you two strokes, then that is a reflection of the course, not an illogical bad rule. The rules shouldn't be placing illogically harsh penalties on golfers.

What I'm proposing is actually consistent with how most golfers actually do play. That Golf Digest article I cited above also stated that most average golfers either ignore or refuse to abide by the stroke and distance rules. Most just drop, take one penalty stroke, and move on. And this wouldn't be a fundamental change in the way the game is played. It would be a change in the way the game is scored. My version would still give a penalty for OB, it just wouldn't give two penalties. No one here has yet to be able to give any reasonable explanation for why still being "on the property" should count for less of a penalty than a ball that bounces a foot past a white stake when your ball "on the property" is at the bottom of a pond or otherwise unplayable anyway.

[Vindog]

Exactly. Or closer to the hole, or in a PA or in an area not in an area that satisfies the drop procedure.

 

There was a pretty famous drop at the Masters involving some player that nobody has ever heard of. Kinda specific maybe sorta.

[HitEmTrue]

@LICC said: No one here has yet to be able to give any reasonable explanation for why still being "on the property" should count for less of a penalty than a ball that bounces a foot past a white stake when your ball "on the property" is at the bottom of a pond or otherwise unplayable anyway.
You do realize there are situations besides a ball sitting at the bottom of a pond? Golf balls that aren't in a hazard penalty area, but still on the course, can result in really bad scores. And the ball on the bottom of the pond may only be in an inch-of water, and the player may actually choose to play the ball. The pond is on the course, and hitting into it is not as "bad" as hitting it OB.

If a bad swing leads to a terrible ball position that ultimately costs you two strokes, then that is a reflection of the course, not an illogical bad rule. The rules shouldn't be placing illogically harsh penalties on golfers.Your proposed bad rule gives the player an easier out for what would have been a bad-result (costing two strokes) because of the "reflection of the course" as you call it. You are wanting to take the risk out of taking risk.

[CaseyC]

I apologize if this has been posted already.

 

Link to 8 page PDF of "Rules Modernisation: Discussion Relating to Stroke and Distance Relief.

https://www.rules.golf/~/media/Files/RulesDotGolf/New/Consideration-of-Alternatives-to-the-Stroke-and-Distance-Relief-Procedure-for-Balls-that-are-Lost-or-Out-of-Bounds-FINAL.ashx

[CaseyC]

Excerpt from the document I posted above:

a.    Stroke and Distance in PrincipleThe stroke-and-distance relief procedure was established long ago in recognition of the fundamental principle that, when a ball is lost or out of bounds, the player cannot play the ball as it lies, which breaks the progression of playing from the teeing area until the ball is holed.

 

There are specific situations where the Rules allow the ball to be played from a different spot (with or without penalty) if the player knows where the ball ended up on the course and thus has a reference point. When the ball is lost, however, there is no reference point for taking relief. When a ball has been hit out of bounds, the player has failed to keep the ball on the course. The logical outcome in both cases, consistent with the nature of the game, is to count the stroke, give a penalty for losing the ball or hitting it off the course, and have the player try the stroke again.

 

Although there have been many attempts over time to find alternatives to the current stroke-and-distance procedure, the inability to resolve several concerns has led to no such changes being made. The basic concern in allowing the player to avoid proceeding under stroke and distance is that this would conflict with the fundamental challenge of the game: the player must play the ball so that it comes to rest on the course and can be found, or face having to play the stroke again.

 

[HitEmTrue]

@LICC said: I'm pointing out the local rule solely to your question about how to find a reference point. You asked how to do so as if it were impossible. The rule tells you. I don't agree with the 2-stroke penalty aspect or dropping in the fairway, but there you have how to find a reference point.That local rule is mainly for play in non-formal events, or perhaps low-level competitive play (children?), to keep things moving on the course. Like you said, the way most people play. By making it 2-strokes, they at least made it similar in results that may happen after hitting bad-shot, but removed the time (and risks of another bad shot) of hitting another shot from the previous location.

[HitEmTrue]

That's what I was referring to in post #382, but didn't know where it was located.

 

[KevCarter]

Good find, thank you. Cool that the USGA has a place for alternative ideas to be heard. I had not seen that paper...