Breaking the rules when you lose a ball

[Drumdog]

Off season or practice round that isn't posted, I pick it up, clean it and drop it in a good spot.
In season and posting the round...I'll play it as it lies or follow the correct rule or local rule.

 

[Templet0n]

I understand all that, but I'm saying if you didn't see it stop, then there's no way to know for certain that it's still in play. It's a lost ball until you find it.

fair enough. I guess with limited sets of eyes to watch and look. I give myself a little latitude when on my own that it would not be lost if I had more help. Right or wrong, If I am playing with someone or it is a score I am going to post I hold tighter standards.

I guess I could keep walking around looking for it while the group behind me wonders what I am doing. I would rather say "it should be right around here" and move on.

I mean, I have 5 min to look for it according to the rules right? I could be that guy. I choose not to.

 

[Golfer000]

I lost my 2 balls this week

 

[Scorp]

Penalize yourself twice? You mean a two stroke penalty or two separate times during one round?

Let's say I'm playing a course with thick rough. My shot winds up in the rough and I can't find it. I'm in the area i saw it go in but it's buried. I'll take a stroke and drop a ball and play on. If my ball gets lost in the rough a second time or on another hole during that round, I'll take another stroke. Anything more than that and I'm not counting that as it's just an exercise in futility from then on.

 

[OGputtnfool]

Let's say I'm playing a course with thick rough. My shot winds up in the rough and I can't find it. I'm in the area i saw it go in but it's buried. I'll take a stroke and drop a ball and play on. If my ball gets lost in the rough a second time or on another hole during that round, I'll take another stroke. Anything more than that and I'm not counting that as it's just an exercise in futility from then on.

Gotcha.

 

[BigMac]

As long as there is no money on the line go out and have fun, make your own rules. Who cares.

If you are going to put that score in your handicap you will have a vanity cap as you are not counting the appropriate scores. If you add all the penalty shots then the score probably wouldn't count out of your 20 scores so there is no impact to your handicap.

^ This pretty much sums up my feelings on it.

[ETA:] This is one area where, whether I'm right or wrong, I've always felt the rules aren't equitable for pros and amateurs. Pros have galleries and forecaddies, they virtually never lose a ball in the rough. There's a crowd gathered around it, or a forecaddy runs over there and sticks a red flag in the ground next to their ball. We don't have any of that, and if you hit a ball into the rough, grass clippings, pile of leaves, etc., it's up to you to go find it.

 

[Stryker]

If it is a casual round not for handicap purposes and all are in agreement on how to play it, then I don't have a problem with it. We do that sometimes as it is not cool to be penalized for a ball you know was hit dead center to a fairway but plugged a foot deep or something.

 

[HarlettoScara]

If it's just a regular bounce game with pals then I take the stroke and move on. If it's a competition or for any kind of handicap purposes then if it looks anything like being a lost ball then it's a provisional just in case. Couple of times I've not played a provisional and not been able to find my ball, so have just put in a nil return score. Courses are always busy and I'm dammed if I'm trudging back to the tee or wherever I hit the last one from to try again. I'm not playing professionally, so a nil return won't keep me up at night one little bit.

 

[Smiter]

Ahhh, nothing will make us forget the chaos around us as vigorously as a rules debate. Kudos to the OP.

For me it all depends. The last round I played (wasn’t for posting purposes) there was tons of casual water and we had several balls in the FW that we spent some time looking for prior to finding as you had to be on top of it before you saw it due to plugging. We agreed that lost balls that we agreed on that shouldn’t be lost, we’d just drop as close as we could agree on the spot with no penalty.

If that round was played in the same conditions during official posting season I’d have declared it a practice round prior to teeing off and played it however the group decided to play it prior to teeing off.

I know there is a plugged ball rule on the book but when it’s a plugged ball that you know to be plugged that you can’t find, to play it as a lost ball would artificially elevate HC’s to a level that you have no true idea of the golfer that you are facing.

I play in such an adverse climate and such horribly maintained courses that it’s hard to get a round in that you could post and have it truly reflect your abilities. The courses that I can afford to play with my 3 sons with me, conditions are so bad all the time, even outside of weather, you really don’t know your true ability. I wish I could afford to play more courses where I’d feel good about posting all scores. Im not talking about the occasional bad break of being in a divot or having a ball mark in your line on the green. I’m talking about being in the fairway and being on a hundred square yard patch of bare earth with not a blade of grass.

My middle son played the county Jr (won it outright, but lost in a playoff-rain shortened it to the 27 hole score even though all the leaders were done through 11 on day two where he had a 1 stroke lead-but was tied at the 27 hole score. 3 putted from 12 feet in a monsoon and the declared winner got up and down for par). It was played on courses like I’ve described. Where he took the lead on the 28th hole, both he and the other kid were on the back of 10’s green. Due to conditions the actual puttable green was 15 yards wide and 5 yards deep. Going steeply downhill he hit a flop shot from the back of the green to about 3ft. The entire back 80% of the green was longer than the rough. Those are the conditions of the courses that I typically play. That’s an extreme example but it’s not uncommon to putt from good grass, over bare earth for 4ft, and have the last 10ft be on grass again. Or be in a patch of fairway with no grass at all for 15ft in any direction.

Whenever it’s just those type of conditions we play by the rules and post our scores. But when you throw in balls plugging in the fairway that you can’t find or fairways being so long you can lose a ball in them, we play more casual rules.

So it’s a real treat the couple times a year when I play on a course that’s conditions are a true and fair test of golf. You’ll never hear me complain because my ball is in a FW divot. It gets a whole helluva a lot worse from there.

But I’d rather play 50 rounds on a crappy course than 10 rounds on a decent course, and that’s the economics I’m faced with with my foursome made up with youth golfers I have to pay for. GN hot deals for 10 bucks are my friend.

 

[donny475]

always take the stroke, When i lived in Virginia, them group could involve the leaf rule if someone else was sure you were not OB

 

[InTheRough]

Unless you're in a tournament, you can use this practice. They call it a local rule, but it's been in practice for decades in casual play. The USGA just decided to formalize it in 2019.



In a tournament, unless this local rule was stated to be in play at the start, you must make the walk of shame for a lost ball. Better yet, you should play a provisional.

 

[JonMA1]

They call it a local rule, but it's been in practice for decades in casual play. The USGA just decided to formalize it in 2019.

Yep. I've used this since well before they made it an option as a local rule. It's for those occasions when I haven't hit a provisional because I believed the ball was still in play.

For me, a ball lost in the rough is a 2 stroke penalty and drop. So if the ball was lost from off the tee, I'd be playing my fourth from that drop just as I would if I'd played a provisional.

I used to do the same thing for a ball lost in leaves on the fairway, but I've lightened up a lot with the ROG recently. I play solo rounds (that I post, btw) and my vision sucks. So it's not that hard to lose track of a shot. I'm now a dirty, rule-breaking, vanity-capping cheater... and no one really gives a #$@$.

 

[DataDude]

We always play drop in an agreed location for a 1 stroke penalty. That's the rules we all play by in my circles so we keep our caps by those rules also.

 

[PatsFan]

Rough is there to penalize errant shots, either due to lost ball or a lie which makes the next shot more challenging than a fairway lie.

I don't think the concept of The Rough is for people to lose balls in it. It's supposed to harder to hit out of NOT Swallow balls whole!

 

[Nate<80]

During a casual round on the weekend, even if we are playing for money, free drop for sure. It is kinda an un written rule with the guys I play with. That is if most of the group saw it go down in that area.

 

[OGputtnfool]

I've said before that everyone should play the game however they derive the greatest pleasure from it. My question is, when the subject of best scored comes up, would you compare a score played fast and loose to a score put up by someone playing strictly by the RoG?

 

[golfinnut]

It's not entirely analogous but we have native grass areas that get quite long mid-to-late season. There's a local rule for our league that says they're to be played as laterals not as a lost ball.

On the weekends if we lose a ball that is 1,000% not OB, not in a hazard, etc. we don't take a penalty. If there's doubt or uncertainty from anyone in the group, we play it as lateral and take a penalty. I guess we're not really playing Golf. *shrug*

this is the way I say to play ALL the time. Why go all the way back to where the shot originated from? That's senseless for us general hackers. I believe it's all in the essence of speeding up play.
Now in competition, that's another story. I had to take the stroke & distance penalty many times back in high school & college. Especially at my home course, where I was even on the grounds crew & I would plead with the Superintendent to let me cut the rough.

 

[DG_1234]

I don't think the concept of The Rough is for people to lose balls in it. It's supposed to harder to hit out of NOT Swallow balls whole!

Now you know, it's both.

 

[fuffle master]

Casually playing, I would just drop a ball close to where I thought it should be and add one stroke. Unless playing in a tournament or a match I am just having fun. I don’t like slowing things up for a group behind me.

 

[zbeekner4]

If it’s not an official competition, you can play whatever you want. We’re out there to have fun right?

For me personally, if I’m aiming for a score, I’ll play by the rules. Don’t want to break 70 for the first time and have to say “yea well I didnt Follow the rules on this one hole.” Otherwise, I’ll just throw one down and move on!

 

[PuffChippy]

I've said before that everyone should play the game however they derive the greatest pleasure from it. My question is, when the subject of best scored comes up, would you compare a score played fast and loose to a score put up by someone playing strictly by the RoG?

The subject of best scores is another one where there’s a lot of gray area to me. Is your best score from the tips or the reds? You play a course with manicured fairways or a goat ranch where half is hard pan? Is it a par 72 or something else? Was it on the day when the tees were a good 20 yards up from normal? There are a lot of variables here. A couple of these are also examples where a pro could have an advantage that the regular golfer does not. For example with spotters you won’t ever lose a ball in play. On the tour you won’t play a third of your shots off hard pan, or out of a squishy mud hole that don’t drain right. You won’t be putting on a plugged green or one with huge dead spots. Discounting length, I’ve played many courses that I know I’d shoot better if it was in the same shape as the pros play. I’m only talking a couple strokes a round but it makes a difference. A common counterpoint I’ve heard is the speed of the greens but I’ve played plenty that were so fast a missed putt will roll right back to your feet so I’m not convinced the pros are playing greens that are so much faster than what we see. That’s one thing I’ve always wanted to see posted each a day at a course - what’s the average stimpmeter reading that day? You could even use the slow/medium/fast ranges per the USGA. Just give me some sort of clue if for nothing else than comparison purposes.

 

[RealPretendPsychic]

I’m not good enough to take things that seriously. It’s a gallery ball for me unless my playing partner says otherwise.