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Playing Out of a Divot?

Canadan said:
There are SO many rules that could be exploited. All of them were implemented with the understanding that golfers would need to get them validated by their group or a rules official, and plenty of cheaters take advantage of them.
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Absolutely. I also think a divot relief rule could be written understanding that there would be those who apply the rule fairly as intended, and those that will take advantage of it.
 
During my last round I hit a green with a 6i from a crappy divot lie. It was the only useful shot on the entire hole.

I know this doesn't really add anything useful to the conversation. Carry on.
 
Just because you hit the fairway doesn't mean you've earned a good lie, what's next? rolling the ball off a hill? or maybe there's a tree in your way so you should get relief?

Nobody likes being in a divot, but it's not game over, it's not even a lost stroke, so man up and move on! golf is all about overcoming adversity.
 
JayB said:
The satisfaction of problem solving the lie and the shot and making it work was worth it.


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Yes, playing shots from challenging lies is a (good) part of the game. Improving a lie makes the game less interesting and less satisfying.
 
I had to play out of one today. I don't think moving it would have changed to outcome. At all. I default to my rule is unnecessary position.
 
Canadan said:
I think there could be a rule written that makes it much harder to roll out of a simple variant in the grass, but I want to circle back on the one most obvious thing... and that is that cheaters are going to cheat regardless. They'll probably wait until you're not looking and roll it out of there anyways.

There are SO many rules that could be exploited. All of them were implemented with the understanding that golfers would need to get them validated by their group or a rules official, and plenty of cheaters take advantage of them.
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"and that is that cheaters are going to cheat regardless." - Yes. Yes, I will.

"They'll probably wait until you're not looking and roll it out of there anyways. " - No. No, I'll do it in plain sight of God and everyone.
 
Play it down...has always been that way and TBH, it doesn't come up that often. To say move it if it hasn't healed would bring in way too much subjectivity...at the amateur level that probably wouldn't be an issue, but at the professional level where they all play to spots, and rather successfully, there would be 10-20 plus additional calls for rules officials a round. Then you'd have your "Kuchars" (my ball's bounce created a pitch mark) who would argue that any blemish they found their ball on is a previous divot...it would get out of control.

On a lighter note, I don't find the fairway often enough to have this problem? ;) OR I hit it so far that I'm way beyond where the majority of the divots are to begin with! :)ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO: not)
 
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This picture illustrates the problem perfectly. Why do you get no relief from the divots upper left? The one on the far right of that group certainly looks like people would argue for relief.

Why do you get relief from many of the places in the divots on the far right? If you're at the extreme back of any of them, there's no real issue. For the one in the middle, you could be almost anywhere in it and not have an issue.

Finally, I'd be willing to bet where the proposed relief position of the balls has been pictured, a ton of people would argue that the divot still interferes with their swing and they need more relief.
 
My club has implemented a bunker rule whereby you can move the ball up to 6 inches due to there being no rakes (covid). Definitely helps when landing in a footprint!


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Annually I play approximately 65 rounds of golf (mostly all average condition public courses) and guess I find my ball within a divot lie two or three times , on average, each year. So, it's very rare to have a lie within a divot and of the two or three lies I get like that each year it seems at least one of them is clean enough that it makes for an easier shot than would be from a fairway lie.
Also, I've noticed some courses will have a fairway landing area that includes a bowl which collects and inordinate amount of tee ball shots. In this case the course will periodically
rope off the entire 10-15 square yard "bowl area" and mark it ground under repair (until the ground has had sufficient time to heal. And better skilled locals at these courses usually club themselves off the tee box to avoid bowl/ball collection areas.
 
DG_1234 said:
Also, I've noticed some courses will have a fairway landing area that includes a bowl which collects and inordinate amount of tee ball shots. In this case the course will periodically
rope off the entire 10-15 square yard "bowl area" and mark it ground under repair (until the ground has had sufficient time to heal. And better skilled locals at these courses usually club themselves off the tee box to avoid bowl/ball collection areas.
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I play at approximately 15 different private courses in tournaments, and probably 20 other public courses and have never seen any area roped off because of divots in a collection area.
I don't have a problem playing out of a repair divot, but when playing out of an unrepaired divot your ball can be submerged almost entirely below the surface of the turf. This is when I think there should be a relief, in an unrepaired divot. There are a lot of ass wipes that don't repair their divot due to laziness or hitting a bad shot.
 
When you see the divots trenches taken out by the cavemen here in Cleveland, you'll definitely be rolling your ball. It's like they are hitting with a backhoe.
 
I'm sure this has been said already somewhere in the 21 pages, but I don't get why we can't roll it in the fairway anyway. Make it a scorecard length relief from the divot. If you hit a good shot in the fairway, you should be rewarded for it. Not have to deal with an unlucky break, it's BS. This is exactly why they allow us to fix pitch marks in the line of our putt now. There's just no reason to penalize a good shot.
 
Hamfist said:
"and that is that cheaters are going to cheat regardless." - Yes. Yes, I will.

"They'll probably wait until you're not looking and roll it out of there anyways. " - No. No, I'll do it in plain sight of God and everyone.
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Is it really cheating if you're completely honest about it?
 
Tried to play it down today, but had to take my ball out of a fairway divot that was deeper than my RXS. Thought of @Canadan immediately haha
 
WICHITAREJECT said:
Tried to play it down today, but had to take my ball out of a fairway divot that was deeper than my RXS. Thought of @Canadan immediately haha
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I hope you took it out of that divot with extreme prejudice.
 
Doesn't show up well, but what's the verdict on this.

Was at least 1/3 of the ball deep where it had settled. Still healing but lot of grass. I told partner to roll it out and hit it.
 
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