‘Fair’ lies in the fairway and ‘rough’ lies in the rough

[Thomas Dai]

The other day I heard someone complain about getting what he considered to be a poor lie in the rough.


Would it be reasonable or unreasonable to respond - “hit it in the fairway and you should expect a fair lie, hit it in the rough and you should expect a rough lie.”


Thoughts?


Atb

[Kalen Braley]

Reasonable?


Hard to make a case for that, given you can't even expect a fair lie when you hit in the fairway...

[Ian Mackenzie]

Golf is not supposed to be "fair".
It's supposed to be fun.


- Loosely paraphrased from Jim Urbina

[Rick Lane]

Similarly, I hear folks complain in the fairway about divots, uneven lies.  I frequently hear people complain about bunkers not being consistent, to which I reply, the river bank is also not consistent. Its a hazard....oops, penalty area.
  IMHO, and maybe thinking back to the origins of this game, being in the fairway means you are not in the rough!   Fairways are places where the grass is mowed shorter than the rough to give you a better chance to control the ball.    Its not supposed to be a guarantee.   Its just supposed to be more desirable than the rough. 

[Kalen Braley]

And once on the green, people expect to be able to repair spike marks, ball marks, leave the pin in, pick up thier ball,  etc..

The audacity of it all!!

[Tom_Doak]

The other day I heard someone complain about getting what he considered to be a poor lie in the rough.

Would it be reasonable or unreasonable to respond - “hit it in the fairway and you should expect a fair lie, hit it in the rough and you should expect a rough lie.”

My response would be that the Rules of Golf did not historically distinguish between fairway and rough - because the sheep didn't mow things that evenly - and that golfers of yore were happy to take whatever they got.


Expectations lead to disappointment.

[Thomas Dai]

Expectations and disappointment.
Nicely put and very much along the lines of where the question arises from, ie the modern expectation that folks should automatically get a good, rather than rough, lie in the rough, which these days seems to be considered (expected) by many to be a manicured area equvalent to the fairway but with longer grass.
The use of the very term, rough, surely came about because rough ground and foliage conditions are exactly what you’d once-upon-a-time have encounted if you strayed from the fairway, where ground conditions were generally somewhat fairer thanks initially to the more easily traversed terrain and the grazing of sheep etc all as then gradually improved, smoothed out, made a bit fairer, by man.

Atb

[Peter Pallotta]

There was a Sicilian saying among the old peasant-farmers, ie 'Hope is death'.
I know what they mean. 
So, while not hoping, there is one thing I'd *prefer*, the only thing I'd ever hope for (if I allowed myself to hope):
that if I'm in the fairway it's not (at least for a great part of the season) mushy underfoot or a muddy, sogggy slog.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Or, we just start calling the areas adjacent to fairways the "smooth."

[Matt_Cohn]

Or, we just start calling the areas adjacent to fairways the "smooth."

I was just thinking yesterday, it shouldn't be called the "rough" but rather the "thick".

[Kyle Harris]

Most roughs are maintained in a very fair manner - in the sense that everybody hitting into it gets more or less the same result. It may be a difficult result, but so is a 200 yard carry from the fairway or tee.

Sameness = Fairness.

Therefore, roughs might be random and somewhat unpredictable.

[jeffwarne]

at more and more high end courses you get far better lies in the rough than the "fair"way-especially if your handicap is above 1

[James Brown]

A large proportion of my most memorable and enjoyable shots have been from divots in the fairway and terrible lies in the rough.

[Kyle Harris]

A large proportion of my most memorable and enjoyable shots have been from divots in the fairway and terrible lies in the rough.

No good golf story ever has the statement: "So, I rolled the ball out of the divot."

[Sam Andrews]

Or, we just start calling the areas adjacent to fairways the "smooth."

That's great! Or we could call it the unfairway...

[V. Kmetz]

Like all the conditions you receive in Golf, these are "change of surface" problems to be solved...


off a tee...in a good fairway with a level stance...in the fairway out of a divot...out of sand...out of long gnarly grass... out of greasy, flyer rough grass...


All I seek from a golf experience is the equivalent variable to how well I did to get there...