The other day I was reading one of Bernard Darwin's golf essays from Country Life (part of the collection Darwin on the Green). In it he recounts an unnamed course possessing a hole where a "watery ditch" was situated across the width of the fairway, as about the distance in which a good drive from an accomplished player might finish. The course's Greens Committee, concluding that such a hazard unfairly punished a well-executed shot, erected two white posts at the edge of the ditch; and passed a local rule that any player whose ball went between the posts and into the ditch on his drive could remove the ball and play from behind the ditch without penalty. Darwin used the occasion to decry the tendency of Greens Committees to remove perceived "unfairness" from their courses. Surely most here would agree that Darwin was right.
Or was he?
We don't know enough to know (at least I don't), but could it be that the hole Darwin describes was just poorly laid out? Are there situations in which constraints in the property, limitations of or errors in the design, or other factors justify extreme "unfairness" being corrected by local rule? Or is doing so just contrary to the spirit of the game, properly understood?
How do you feel about the local rule at Brora allowing for replay without penalty if one's ball hits the electric fences surrounding the greens, erected to keep out the livestock? Or a local rule (not at Brora, but I've seen elsewhere) that allows one to replay without penalty if one's ball strikes an encroaching overhead powerline?
Get rid of the sheep? Reroute away from powerlines? Or leave up Darwin's white posts?