Course design that minimalizes cheating

[John Kavanaugh]

I recently had to take our pro out on the course at LCCC and explain to him how he had marked the course in a way that promotes cheating.  He agreed and changed his ways. (He had marked a lateral hazard as yellow which left no drop execpt stroke and distance so 99%, everybody but me, were taking illegal "line of flight" drops.)

Are there methods of design that either promote or discourage cheating.  I think it is important to count on a majority of players not knowing the rules except for the most basic fundamentals.  As much as I hate ob I will say that everybody "gets it".

[Tom Huckaby]

JK:  I completely disagree that everyone "gets" OB.  I'd venture to say at least 50% of my non-GCA golf friends wouldn't know what a provisional is if you hit them in the face with one, and have no clue what stroke and distance is either.  In their world all OBs are played like lateral hazards, and well... more power to them.  They do not play competitively except against each other, and very few have official handicaps.

SO... when it comes to OB - or lost ball - I'm not sure how any design could discourage cheating, other than to try to eliminate each of these possibilities as much as possible given such a large number of golfers either have no clue how to apply the correct rule, or do know and blatantly disregard it.  (Which btw I have no issue with, as on a crowded public course outside of competitive play, who wants to see someone marching back to the tee to re-load after a lost ball?)

I will say this - in my course rating duties, I see a LOT of mismarking of hazards, pretty much as you described, but also what's very common out here is marking something red that has about as much connection to water as does the Mojave Desert.  They do this for speed of play... so you can't fault them too much - but one thing a designer could do is eliminate these extraneous high rough areas that are so tempting to be marked red.  That would pre-empt a lot of cheating....

TH

[Jim Franklin]

Huck -

Funny you should mention that. Sand Ridge had red stakes all over the course near their high grass and trees. So red means water hazard only and not just hazard in general?

[Tom Huckaby]

Jim:

Yep.  The rules of golf are pretty specific about staking, red and yellow and white - each means a different thing - but red most definitely applies only to lateral water hazard, and the definition of that is very specific also.  Water has to be present currently or at one time... It's all at usga.org if you're interested.

I'm sure Sand Ridge, like so many courses, stakes these high grass and tree areas as red for speed of play.  But if the course raters did their job correctly, the holes in question are not rated with these as water hazards... but rather as what they correctly should be under the rules of golf.

So Sand Ridge members would have artificially low handicaps... best to bet against them heavily.

 

[Richard Choi]

Perhaps USGA should consider updating the Red Water Hazard Rule with the popularity of tall grasses which seems to be the fad right now.

I just cannot stand these tall grasses. If you don't have a reasonable chance of finding your ball in five minutes (which is impossible with these grasses as they are thick and well fed - you can roll the ball in by hand and you cannot find your ball), then it should be either a hazard or ground under repair.

I don't mind getting punished, but I should be able to find and play the ball if it is in bounds.

[Tom Huckaby]

Richard:

I think a better answer is cutting back the tall grasses... don't you?

Changing the rule seems like a very slippery slope to me.

TH

[Richard Choi]

Richard:

I think a better answer is cutting back the tall grasses... don't you?

Changing the rule seems like a very slippery slope to me.

TH

Tom, I totally agree. I think thick tall grasses are fine if you hosting a US Open and there are marshalls everywhere to look for your ball, but for everyday play it is ridiculous.

But don't you agree that every Tom, Dick, and Harry courses these days feature these tall grasses? At least 1/2 of the courses that I play regularly have these grasses. I actually refuse to play Reserve Vineyard North Course (near Portland, the South course is awesome) ever again because they have these darn grasses surrounding every hole.

I mean, look at the pictures from Erin Hill. All I can think from looking at those pictures are how many balls I would lose if I played there and how 99% of the people who play that course will be cheating at some point in their round.

[Tom Huckaby]

Richard:

Like I say, I too see this all the time - hell yes it's becoming quite vogue for newer courses.  I really don't know why.

But I still think changing the rule would be a very bad idea.  If courses don't want to cut back these areas, then they know the consequences... they mark them incorrectly, and have their regulars achieve artificially low handicaps.  If that goes on long enough, hopefully the regulars complain, and the grass gets cut back.

TH

[Ken Moum]

As bad as marking tall grass with red stakes is, I recently played a tournament at a local course with a new nine that was bulldozed out of a very hilly, heavily forested piece of property.

Not long after it was built, the narrowness of the corridors, combined with the density of the surrounding woods forced them to run red stakes down both sides of almost every fairway.

Without them, a wild-hitting 20 handicapper might not be able to carry enough golf balls to finish the back nine.

Ken

[Tom Huckaby]

Ken - that's sad.

But man, bet HEAVILY against a regular at that course.  Good lord is that one artificially low handicap.

 

[John Kavanaugh]

I don't so much mind the red stakes because usually when the guy who is in love with "line of flight" takes his drop it is very close to the two club length drop.

I had the argument with my pro at LCCC that it was his responsibilty to mark a course according to the intelligence of his membership and not his utopian world of thinking that people just should know the rules.

[Kalen Braley]

Hey Huck,

Couldn't one water the red-staked hazard everyday and thus making it an area where water exists at one point or another??

I too think the long grasses everywhere is overkill, but it doesn't usually bother me.  But it does look like crap when they stake them as red hazards on either side of the fairway hole after hole after hole.  Let the grass be long, and let people learn how to play golf by the lost ball rule.

[Tim Bert]

JK:  I completely disagree that everyone "gets" OB.  I'd venture to say at least 50% of my non-GCA golf friends wouldn't know what a provisional is if you hit them in the face with one, and have no clue what stroke and distance is either.  In their world all OBs are played like lateral hazards, and well... more power to them.  They do not play competitively except against each other, and very few have official handicaps.

TH

I've played with a few single-digit handicappers who clearly don't understand the OB penalty.  I don't know them well enough to care to set the record straight.  As long as I'm not putting money on a game ith them, then it just doesn't matter to me what they do.  I've seen tee shots go clearly out of bounds where markers are obvious, and heard the comment, "Well, that's OB - that's going to cost me."  Not as much as it should cost, apparently.

Huck - I'm not sure that this actually makes someone that plays at this level an easy win in match play.  Depending upon the course they play, it may only matter once (or less) per round, and it may have an impact of 0 or 1 strokes as the resulting score is often a double bogey anyway, and that caliber golfer can't take worse.

It doesn't make the lack of understanding any less frustrating.

[Doug Siebert]

Ken - that's sad.

But man, bet HEAVILY against a regular at that course.  Good lord is that one artificially low handicap.

 

How so?  He's paying a full stroke for every wild shot.  On most courses, you might pay two strokes here and there where there is OB or a place you can lose your ball, but most of the time you can find and play those wild shots and they'll cost you much less than a stroke.  Sometimes the shots from the wrong fairway turn out to be pretty easy if you can correctly guess your distance.

My home course is way overtreed, and they aren't "limbed up" like the tour courses, so its a crapshoot what opportunity you get.  Sometimes there's a play at the green, sometimes the "vicinity of the green" is the best you can hope for, sometimes you just try to advance it 50-100 yards and try to make par the hard way.  But unless I try a shot and fail to execute it and leave myself in a similiar position on my next shot, its never a full stroke penalty like a lateral hazard.

If the treelines on my home course were marked with red stakes and the option of playing from amongst the trees was removed, without a doubt my handicap would go up several strokes.  It'd probably induce me to play an iron off the tee on some holes I don't now, especially par 5s.  Right now if I drive it in the trees on a par 5 I can waste half a shot getting out and still have a short approach to put it on in regulation and get a look at birdie (converted on that twice on par 5s in yesterday's round)   With a lateral hazard I'm hitting from the rough from 200+ on three of the four par 5s, so its likely no longer worth the risk of hitting driver.

Yeah, if a course has dense trees and brush, rather than at least trying to maintain grass under the canopy and mowing down the volunteer trees and weeds before they can get big enough to eat balls, or tall ball eating grass, the red stakes are saving you some strokes.  But I'll take a guy who plays at that course, whether it uses red stakes or not, against any other random golfer in a handicap match on a tight penal course like the one he plays on.  Whether a guy is scratch or a 20 handicap, if it was established at a GCA "dream course" with lots of width where everyone can play one ball the entire round, you really have no idea what the hell he's going to do if you put him on a crazy tight penal course.  The scratch might shoot a 90, the 20 handicap could run out of balls.

[Richard Choi]

Let the grass be long, and let people learn how to play golf by the lost ball rule.

So, I guess you have no problems with 6 hour rounds...

Also, if a ball is in-bound, shouldn't you have a reasonable expectation to find that ball and play it? Most of these faux-link courses have fertilized and watered long grasses where it is impossible to find any ball (even if it just dribbled in). In that case, shoudn't those grasses be marked a out-of-bounds? How could a golf ground where you cannot play the ball be in-bound?

[Tom Huckaby]

Guys, all I meant about the "bet heavily against him" comment was this:

if someone is playing a course all the time with areas marked lateral that are supposed to be (under the rules of golf) either marked white or not marked at all, well... he's taking two club lenght drops quite often from places where he ought to be reloading from the spot from which the ball was previously hit.

That fractured sentence means he's saving a lot of strokes against the course raters' calculations; they do such under the real rules of golf.

So the result is regulars at such a course are achieving lower scores than they should, on a course rated higher than they are actually playing it as.  That means artificially low handicaps.  

I'd bet against such people.

TH

[John Kavanaugh]

Let the grass be long, and let people learn how to play golf by the lost ball rule.

So, I guess you have no problems with 6 hour rounds...

Also, if a ball is in-bound, shouldn't you have a reasonable expectation to find that ball and play it? Most of these faux-link courses have fertilized and watered long grasses where it is impossible to find any ball (even if it just dribbled in). In that case, shoudn't those grasses be marked a out-of-bounds? How could a golf ground where you cannot play the ball be in-bound?

Richard,

I can't tell you how simple it is to evaluate that hitting your ball in the high grass is a poor option.  Do you also want all heavily wooded areas marked ob...I prefer hitting the provisional and taking a chance on getting lucky and finding your ball.  In your world you would also not allow someone to hit a found ball out of a hazard.

[Richard Choi]

I can't tell you how simple it is to evaluate that hitting your ball in the high grass is a poor option.  Do you also want all heavily wooded areas marked ob...I prefer hitting the provisional and taking a chance on getting lucky and finding your ball.  In your world you would also not allow someone to hit a found ball out of a hazard.

If it was that simple, then we wouldn't have the problem in the first place.

In many courses, the grasses are out of view from the tee box. So you may not realize you just hit a lost ball until you get to the long grasses. Worse yet, you hit a pretty good drive, you even saw it bounce but it just happened to trickle into the long grass which you couldn't see.

I know you are a member at private courses, but on the public courses where I play, going back to the tee box to re-tee is not going to go well with the group behind me. If I do that more than once, there may be fistacups.

I don't mind wooded area as much (especially if the underbrushes are cleared) since you have a fighting chance in finding the ball. But if you hit ten drives into the long grass and there is 0% chance that you will find any of them. How could you say that ground is in-bound? To me, you might as well mark it out-of-bound so that it encourages people to re-tee.

[Kalen Braley]

I can't tell you how simple it is to evaluate that hitting your ball in the high grass is a poor option.  Do you also want all heavily wooded areas marked ob...I prefer hitting the provisional and taking a chance on getting lucky and finding your ball.  In your world you would also not allow someone to hit a found ball out of a hazard.

If it was that simple, then we wouldn't have the problem in the first place.

In many courses, the grasses are out of view from the tee box. So you may not realize you just hit a lost ball until you get to the long grasses. Worse yet, you hit a pretty good drive, you even saw it bounce but it just happened to trickle into the long grass which you couldn't see.

I know you are a member at private courses, but on the public courses where I play, going back to the tee box to re-tee is not going to go well with the group behind me. If I do that more than once, there may be fistacups.

I don't mind wooded area as much (especially if the underbrushes are cleared) since you have a fighting chance in finding the ball. But if you hit ten drives into the long grass and there is 0% chance that you will find any of them. How could you say that ground is in-bound? To me, you might as well mark it out-of-bound so that it encourages people to re-tee.

Richard,

I agree with JK on this because there are many ways to lose your ball on the golf course, not just in the tall grass.

As for courses where there is unseen tall grass and other such hidden trouble, it'll only be a problem the first time you play the course.  On all subsequent playings, you will know that your ball could be OB or in the tall grass and can easily play a provisional off the tee.  Its my experience that many local weekend hacks won't hit a provisional, because they know if they go down there and can't find thier ball, it'd be too impractical to go back to the tee, and can therefore easily justify just taking a drop where they are. And there are the igornant ones who think a lost ball means 1 stroke penalty and a drop.

Either way, if I hit my ball into the thick stuff on the carry, I don't even bother looking for it.  But if it rolls in maybe I'll spend a minute or two.