Welcome

My name is Nick Doran, and I am the former president of the UCSD Casual Golf Club.

I am going to post rules decisions as I encounter them on the golf course. I am pretty sure that I will be able to come up with at least one rule nugget for each round that I play.

Sunday, September 13, 2020

9/12/2020 - Vineyard

People often mess this one up, so I thought it was worth noting - Order of play in stroke play is determined by who is further from the hole.  This means that if you're in a green-side bunker, and another player is on the green, but further from the hole, then the player on the green should play first.  People seem to think that the player in the bunker should play first, but that's not the case.  This is covered by rule 6.4.

Of course there is no penalty for playing out of turn in stroke play (it's different in match play).  And the rules explicitly acknowledge pace-of-play and ready golf.  So it probably makes more sense for player in the bunker to play first.  But that's not the rule.

I also learned something when I looked this up - If you and another player agree to play out of turn to give one of you the advantage, then you both get the general penalty (two strokes).  This is the actual context under which this came up.  I was playing terribly.  Another guy in the group had put up a great score on the front.  His ball was just inside mine on a putt that was just long enough to make you nervous (~3 feet).  He went to putt, but I intervened, indicating that it was my turn (and he might learn something from my putt and continue his good round).  Had his putt been outside mine, then we both would have been penalized.  As it was, I missed the putt, but gave him the read to make his.  But he was not able to repeat the score that he had put up on the front.

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