With cold weather here in many parts of the country and handicap posting season over, what are some of your winter golf rules that you and your group use?
Preferred lies is common during this type of year. Be it from frost or ice or just areas of the course that are not as maintained due to the climate. Generally speaking, these are just things you and your group do for fun. With that said, bringing them to course committee, etc could land them as official for all groups as local provisions.
What does your group use for winter golf rules?
I agree, may as well make them combined. It’s not like hitting a clean ball off the sog is more viable than a normal ball off an actual good, dry lie.
Maybe a lift, and clean in muddy conditions.
If the greens are frosted up pretty good, some courses will delay starting times to allow a little thawing. Other courses, not so much.
We don’t have much of a "golf interrupting" winter out here. It’s a "dry cold"…lol
Basically any condition caused because of the time of year can be remedied. Lift clean and place, if the traps are horrible, I will move in the trap, or just take it out and away, but I do my best to play where it lies, unless it woudl hurt me, equipment, or just has no chance of success.
depending on the course, we may allow rolling the ball because the grass can be super bare. Those rounds don’t really get counted or bragged about score wise. Just fun match play type days.
Yeah lift clean and place in the fairway/drop in the rough is definitely in play during the offseason. With you on the grass issues for sure. Not sure why it’s such a big deal around here, but even in the summer some of the fairways can get so bare. Only thing I’ll add is the leaf rule. Once the mowing stops/lessens, there’s leaves everywhere. If you lose one in a wide open space I won’t knock you a stroke if we’re playing a side game or something. What you do with your scorecard is your business.
My home course isn’t good about posting rules for adverse conditions (as in, they never do it), so we become "the committee" for ourselves when we play. On Saturday mornings, when we usually play our money game, any special rules are announced at the first tee box and modified as needed by group consensus. During daily casual rounds, we make it up as we go depending on what we encounter.