[SPDB]

What is the oddest local rule you have come across? Extra points if it concerns the design or architecture of the course.

My submission, #16 at Burlingame CC a dogleg right seen HERE

A local rule states:

"On the 16th hole it is not permitted to intentionally hit a tee shot to the right of the Cypress trees"

The tee shot is very awkward as you have to fit a hybrid/3 iron into a small section between the stand of trees and the road, which leaves a long iron in. The more direct route would obviously be a driver to the right of the trees down the 17th fairway leaving a fairly simple shot into the green.

It makes for a very strange play, replete with head-scratching on the tee.

Do you know of any similar local rules?

[mike_beene]

So if unintentional it is OK?

[Ken Moum]

There are at least four courses in South Dakota that have similar in-the-air OB rules.

Each of them have a pole that identifies the inside of a dogleg, and if your ball passes the pole on the wrong side, it's OB regardless of where it lands.

On three of them the penalty it normal stroke and distance. On the other, you had to play back around the pole, like a sailboat that missed its mark.

In one case the hole doglegged around a school playground, so cutting the corner was dangerous. Safety was also a concern at one where the shortest route to the hole was playing backwards up the previous fairway.

The other two were only a matter of adding yards to the holes.

There's another where several holes have centerline hazards in the form of a gravel cart path that's almost dead center in the fairway.

Ken

[Jimmy Chandler]

Caverns Country Club in Luray, VA has a local rule, if I remember correctly, that you can get relief for any golf ball that comes to rest in a cave opening.

http://www.luraycaverns.com/things/golf.html

[SPDB]

Mike -
Exactly. The subjectivity element is crazy.

[Anthony Fowler]

These are pretty strange ones.  I can't believe that someone would actually write down that you cannot intentionally hit it to the right of a tree!  What must that board meeting have been like?


Since we don't talk about this course enough, I'll offer up Merion's local rule regarding the wicker baskets.  If I remember correctly, if your ball come to rest inside the wicker basket, you can place the ball on the edge of the cup.  

Why not respect the 3D world and suggest a free drop from a man-made obstruction no closer the hole, meaning the stick's length distance from the cup?

[Mike Boehm]

At Tidewater, which has many holes surrounded by housing, white stakes, etc., there is a local rule that there is no out-of-bounds.  A ball hit into a yard or a sold lot is given a free drop on the other side of the cart path.  The starter explained to our group that a ball hit into an unsold lot is to be played as a lateral hazard.  Of course, this brought questions of property law that my group was simply unable to answer.  The rule really didn't feel  much like golf and probably better off to just play the white stakes as the OB they should be.

[Ian_L]

I'm pretty sure most of those local rules aren't allowed under the USGA/R&A!

At a golf club in Chile, the scorecard says you are penalized for not raking a bunker: one stroke the first time, two the second, and DQ the third.  I recently read somewhere in the decisions book that this is not allowed.

At Achill Island Golf Club in northwestern Ireland, the course (except for the greens) is mowed by sheep.  Do denote the fairway they have white stones.  Inside the stones you get to lift and place, outside you play it as it lies (all the greens are fenced off to keep the sheep out).  The wind was so strong when I played there I hit driver, 3-iron, 9-iron on the 400-yard closing hole. http://www.visitachill.com/en/golf.html

At Pan de Azucar in La Serena, Chile, many of the greens are a dark, firm sand rather than grass.  After reaching the green, you mark your ball by drawing a line on both sides of the sand.  You (or your $5 caddie who finds you $10-worth of balls during your round) then take a mop with sandbags at the bottom, and smooth your line to the hole about  a yard wide.  It rolls true!

[Brad Tufts]

Holes 5 and 6 at Pacific Grove have the "line rule," where you bring the ball back to the correct side and drop if you end up over the line on the other hole.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Ian,
Your mention of a penalty stroke reminded me of a local 'rule' that was in effect at Hob Nob Hill GC (Emmet, NLE after WW11) in Salisbury, Ct.
It was owned by I.K. "Kent" Fulton and his rule: if he saw walk away from a shot withou replacing your divot he would ask you to leave (in no uncertain terms I'm told) and you would never be asked back again. This was a severe 'penalty' as he never charged anyone to play in the first place.
Ken Weir (an old friend) used to caddie at HNH and he says that he cannot remember ever seeing  a loose divot. No kidding 

[Tony_Muldoon]

Long before Cape Kidnappers there was a golf course on the narrow spit of land above the Needles on the Isle of Wight : NLE.  High above the sea it was completely exosed to the wind and so severe were the fall offs, that the local rule decreed, anyone finding their ball within 7 lengths of the cliff edge had to take a free drop that distance from the edge.  You can still make out some greens and tees on Google Earth.

[John_Cullum]

Richmond Golf Club Temporary Rules, 1941

1. Players are asked to collect bomb and shrapnel splinters to save these causing damage to the mowing machines.

2. In competitions, during gunfire or while bombs are falling, players may take shelter without penalty for ceasing play.

3. The position of known delayed action bombs are marked by red flags at a reasonable, but not guaranteed, safe distance therefrom.

4. Shrapnel and/or bomb splinters on the fairways or in bunkers, within a club's length of a ball, may be moved without penalty, and no penalty shall be incurred if a ball is thereby caused to move accidentally.

5. A ball moved by enemy action may be replaced or, if lost or destroyed, a ball may be dropped not nearer the hole without penalty.

6. A ball lying in a crater may be lifted and dropped not nearer the hole, preserving the line to the hole, without penalty.

7. A player whose stroke is affected by the simultaneous explosion of a bomb may play another ball. Penalty one stroke.

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