Consistency, rub of the green and Jagged edge bunkers......

[Lloyd_Cole]

Lloyd,
Let me put it this way.  Should an architect try to design some areas into his designs where the player cannot put the club on the ball?  And if this is the case could you give me some examples you would use.  

Mike
We were synchronous.. is that the word?

Of course not. No. That is why excessive use of water hazards is so loathsome. Especially for the 10 handicapper.

[John_Cullum]

John
I don't want to get pedantic here....

Then you shouldn't.

So let me correct for you by saying that if  a player elects to not play his ball from a water hazard, he can get out with 1 stroke, just as if he played it out.

Do you see the difference? That was my point.

[Lloyd_Cole]

John
I don't want to get pedantic here....

Then you shouldn't.

So let me correct for you by saying that if  a player elects to not play his ball from a water hazard, he can get out with 1 stroke, just as if he played it out.

Do you see the difference? That was my point.

John,
No need to correct me, thanks, I merely pointed out that there are no unplayable lies in water hazards.

I see the difference. It is stroke compared to stroke and distance, or the crap shoot of dropping in a bunker.

Other issues dealt with above, I believe. And then again, maybe not.

[Chris Cupit]

Tom,
I still don't think I am doing a good job of getting my point across so let me try again.
I certainly don't agree with proportional penalty for bunkers or anything in golf.  Even though DR has it in his book....
and i agree that the game is not required to be fair so I have no problem with unfairness.
But I do think there are times when certain conditions need to be maintained.  for instance at my home course it is not uncommon to have several lies during a round in the trees where the ball will rest between several roots where the roots are taller than the ball.  I don't by that.  I say either cover the roots or rid the trees.  But because most people play the "root rule" we just live with it and the club doesn't even consider it a problem until we have a state tourney or something and all of these areas have to be marked with white paint.
The bunker condition I am speaking of would be similar to the root problem....
In summary All I ask is that one be allowed to swing the club..whether forwards, backwards, in a gorse bush, in a bunker, in a grass face BUT not where something is intentionally built where one cannot take a swing at the ball.  AND I don't mean no swing because of backswing or follow thru..i mean no swing because the ball is almost below ground in a rut covered with 12 inch bermuda grass.....

Mike,

For what it's worth I can't believe our state golf association would mark tree roots (in any situation) as ground under repair.  True "Ground under repair" is an "abnormal ground condition" not a bad or unfortunate one.  Did someone from the GSGA actually mark roots as ground under??

How about trees planted so close to bunkers that the roots creep into them and create more unplayable lies!!

[TEPaul]

"Lloyd,
Let me put it this way.  Should an architect try to design some areas into his designs where the player cannot put the club on the ball?  And if this is the case could you give me some examples you would use."

Mike:

You should probably take a good close look at Pine Valley for some good examples to answer that question. Historically, there've been plenty of places you might be able to put the club on the ball but you pretty much had to do it in some very creative and very imaginative ways. If you think about it it's that way to a fairly large degree in most of the greatest OLD golf courses in the world.

[Aaron Katz]

Isn't there a compromise position here?  I think that the USGA should simply reconsider the rule that a player can't treat a bunker the same as any other lateral hazard and take a drop outside of the bunker.  This would allow architects to make bunkers highly penal, yet give players an option that won't leave them hacking for 10 minutes (thus slowing down play).

[Jon Wiggett]

Isn't there a compromise position here?  I think that the USGA should simply reconsider the rule that a player can't treat a bunker the same as any other lateral hazard and take a drop outside of the bunker.  This would allow architects to make bunkers highly penal, yet give players an option that won't leave them hacking for 10 minutes (thus slowing down play).

Aaron,

you can drop it outside the hazard if you go back to the last place you hit it from. However, I believe you are referring to dropping within two club lengths of the margin. Yes, that might be an idea but wouldn't that require us to mark bunkers as either frontal or lateral?

This thread has been a very interresting one and hopefully not the last. But, we shoudn't loose sight of the fact that golf is a game of 'play it as you find it' and that the unplayable ball rule is there to alleviate the situation when a player finds himself overwhelmed by a shot. It would be wrong and not in the spirit of the game to try and remove all elements of chance.