6/8/2019 - Mount Woodson GC

Our club played Mount Woodson this weekend, and I had several interesting encounters with the rules.

The first encounter involved hitting my ball into a hazard penalty area.  I found the ball, but it was not in a position that I wanted to play it.  It was in between several large rocks.  I was pretty sure that it was a penalty area, but there were no stakes or markings.  In retrospect, I looked at the scorecard, and there is a Local Rule at Mt. Woodson that all native areas are hazards.  But I wasn't certain at the time.  I thought about taking an unplayable, but I'm not sure two club lengths would have gotten me to a better position.  So I decided to play it.

I'm not sure exactly what the ball hit, but it flew up and skimmed my face before dropping down the ground and bouncing across the cart path, out of the penalty area.  Previously this would have been a penalty.  But not any more.  2019 Rule 11 says that if this is unintentional, then there is no penalty, and you must play the ball as it lies.  It didn't really bounce off of my face, it just sort of whizzed by, spinning, and barely grazed me.

The lesson here is that you should be aware of the Local Rules.  I could have taken relief outside the penalty area without the risk of the ball taking a horrible bounce.

The second encounter also brought up a few rules.  I should start out by mentioning that our club has adopted the optional local rule E-5 Alternative to Stroke and Distance for Lost Ball or Ball Out of Bounds, which can be found at the link below.  This is a great local rule for improving pace of play.  It came up again later in the round when another member of our foursome couldn't find his ball (which may have been hit by the group in the opposite fairway).

https://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/rules-hub/rules-modernization/major-changes/golfs-new-rules-stroke-and-distance.html

I missed the fairway badly in the vicinity of a penalty area.  In searching, I found several other balls, but not my ball.  Another member of our foursome found a ball that was the brand I was playing (Kirkland), but it was not my ball.  Finally, I found my ball massively embedded in the mud.  A quick look determined that the ball was within the hazard.  The new rules allow for relief for an embedded ball on the green, in the fairway, and even in the rough, but not in a penalty area.  My ball had crossed the hazard 150 yards back, so if I was going to take relief from the penalty area, I would have needed to go almost all the way back to the tee.

So I took advantage of the new local rule.  Basically you're allowed to take a two stroke penalty, and drop up to two club-lengths in the fairway.  So I was laying three in the fairway.  Under the old rule, I would have had to go back to the tee (or near the tee) and hit my third shot from there.  It's 50/50 as to whether I would hit the fairway.  Actually, I average 5.4 fairways per round, so it's much less than 50/50.

With this rule in place, I may never hit another provisional ball.

Another lesson - make sure you can positively identify your ball, not just by brand and number.

The third encounter was uncertainty about a potential rules violation.  After lipping out a putt, I pulled the flagstick with my left hand, and putted the ball in with my right hand.  As I was doing it, I was thinking that maybe that used to be a rule, but I wasn't sure.  Our esteemed Tournament Director pointed out that it could be a violation, but no one was sure.  Later in the round, we had a chance to look it up, and it was formerly covered by Decision 17-1/5, which explicitly says that this is not a penalty.  2019 rule 13.2 covers the flagstick, and only indicates a penalty in the above scenario if the ball had hit the flagstick.  It did not.