In Course Out of Bounds

[Paul Jones]

I was playing last weekend and made it to the last hole, hit a bad drive to the right and found myself OB between 2 holes 18th and 10th  .  

It appears that the OB is their to protect the golfers on the 10 tee, from people trying to cut the corner oo the 18th dogleg.

When is In Course OB acceptable?

[Rob_Waldron]

The basic premise of the game of golf is hit it, find it, hit it again until the ball is holed. In course OB along with the ridiculous Green Staked Environmentally proctected areas goes against the basic principals of the game.

As a rule official marking a course, in course OB is often ignored for competitive events. It is too bad this protocol is not adopted for local rules.  

I can see where safety should be given consideration however planting OB stakes are a typically a cop out.

[Steve_ Shaffer]

I think there will be in course OB at Hoylake at The Open this year. Tune in and see.

[TEPaul]

In course OB has never been a particularly acceptable philosophically. Some clubs and courses just find it to be the best solution to some fairly unresovable problem. In my opinion most problems that have to do with interior OB begin with routing mistakes or later thoughtless redesign mistakes. My own course sort of has one of each.  

[JohnV]

I'm not a big fan of it, but in-course OB is needed where the basic concept of the hole would be severely compromised by not having it as well as endangering the players on other holes.  Beaver Lakes CC is the only course around western PA that I can think of that has it.  Without the in-course OB, the dogleg-left par 5 fifth hole would allow the player to hit their tee shot over the fourth tee and third green, shortening the hole by a substantial amount, removing the challenge of a water hazard that runs down the right side and putting players at risk on both the areas mentioned.

We have had a couple of events there and never considered removing it.  Neither has the local PGA section.

The hole might not be great architecture, but it is what is there and the OB is needed.  

Rob, your comment about the basic premise of the game, is true, but there is also the premise that you play the course as you find it.  There is plenty of room to play the hole without hitting into the OB area, the players all know it is there and they deal with it.

If you have a course with a public road running through it, do you mark the road OB?  If so, is a ball which comes to rest on the other side of the road, but back on the course, in-bounds or out-of-bounds?

[Bill Weber]

Four of the five quarry holes at BDR have OB. I believe it is to discourage both search and trying to play from extremely hazardous conditions.