USGA rules govern no play

[Jason Thurman]

A few days ago, I played golf in a group of friends who are solid and well-traveled players with a very casual wager. On a course in perfect condition, I watched as they picked up their ball in fairways and wiped morning dew off of it before placing it where they preferred, lifted it up in the rough to identify it and then moved it into a better position, gave themselves extremely generous drops from lateral hazards, and requested mulligans on multiple occasions (which others in the group were eager to grant).

I've also, in the last few days, seen a blog post asking readers what rule they most regularly ignore, and also seen someone post on a golf forum that the course he played a few days ago had untended bunkers and he would recommend taking a "free drop" to anyone in one, as they'd most likely otherwise find themselves in a footprint.

I don't point any of this out to pass judgment on anyone who doesn't play by all the rules all the time, but I did have a thought as I was watching a guy in the aforementioned group fluff his lie for the 74th time in the round...

The course we were playing was a uniquely awful residential course. It was built by Nicklaus Design, and flaunts as much despite the fact that Jack never set foot on the property during construction. There are multiple cart rides between holes of 1/4 mile or so, and multiple holes with OB lining both sides of the fairway with housing not far beyond. The greens are unusually narrow and the rough is extremely thick. Simply put, it's a cart-required "championship" course that's almost a guaranteed five-hour round if you don't get out in one of the first groups. It's the kind of design that bludgeons most recreational players - you know, the people who actually play most courses...

Except it doesn't really bludgeon them, because most of them don't play by the rules. They roll the ball into preferred lies and give themselves putts inside 5 feet. They walk into adjacent lawns to retrieve balls that are OB and put them back in bounds without penalty (or just play from the neighboring lawn in more egregious cases). They take free drops if they hit the ball into an iffy lie IN A HAZARD(!!!). They take mulligans and stop counting after reaching a certain number on a hole.

How does the culture of cheating in golf influence architecture? Would a more "by the rulebook" culture be a boon to courses that offer playability and a minimum of situations where rule interpretations are required? Would residential cartball torture tests exist if recreational players actually played by the rules, or would they be so difficult that they'd be economically unviable? Are crappy, one-dimensional, highly penal courses enabled by the fact that most players ignore the rules that otherwise would make them unplayable?

[Steve_ Shaffer]

1. A "Nicklaus Design" course is NOT a "Jack Nicklaus" course.  Applecross in Chester County, PA is one and GC of Estrella in PHX area is another. If you want Jack to "design"a course and show up for groundbreaking, site visits and the grand opening, you pay more than a "Nicklaus Design"

2. The most commonly ignored rules in casual recreational golf are: Out of Bounds, using Mulligans on the first tee only, not playing out of divots and conceding putts "within the leather" of a traditional putter. If it's by agreement, no big deal IMO. I don't think these influence architecture one iota.

[Adam Clayman]

Steve, If an owner of a course doesn't respect the rules of the game, it most certainly can affect the architecture and especially maintenance.    In the same way those Lake Michigan north shore snobs ingnored core principles, and, C.B. MacDonald's protests against their tweaking of the spirit of the sport, effected architecture to this day.

[Sam Morrow]

Let them have fun, if you don't like how they play then don't play with them.

[Peter Pallotta]

J - I think you've just answered the question as to how and why these supposedly tough, overly-long championship tests came to be and to flourish: i.e. the clients' astute awareness and understanding of their clientele's:
1. almost infinite ingenuity in finding ways to make the course playable, regardless of the rules or the basic spirit/meaning of the game;
2. almost endless capacity for disguising this fact from themselves, and for lying to eachother in this regard; and 
3. almost bottomless pockets when it comes to paying for the right/privilege to happily engage in points 1&2, as long as the course appears to encourage/require such engagement and does so in a highly manicured and polished environment.

Not that there's anything wrong with that....

Peter 

[Carson Pilcher]

If the turf is firm and mowed tight, there is no lie better then the other.  No opportunity to "fluff" you lie.  If you leave an avenue to access the pin through a run up shot, there is no need to prop up your lie either.

I am not much a fan regarding OB, but understand it is necessary in some cases.

[Jason Thurman]

Sam, you've missed the point completely, and I want to call it out because I think a lot of people's initial reaction will be similar to yours.

I don't care what rules anyone plays by, unless they're wagering money in a game with me. I'm not the tightest rule-stickler in the world by any stretch. I play it down in virtually all circumstances, but I've been known to hit "breakfast balls," practice on the course, accept gimmes, and drop instead of going back to retee when a ball is lost.

My question isn't whether golfers should follow the rules, and the point isn't to take a dump on players who don't. I simply wonder if there's a relationship between golf's culture of rulebreaking and the proliferation of highly penal, water and OB laden, overbunkered, rough choked courses with greens slicker than snot on a glass doorknob. Conventional wisdom around here says those courses are less fun to play because they beat players up. But if players take drops from bunkers, take free drops when OB or in hazards, fluff their lies in heavy rough, and pick up within five or six feet of the hole, then they aren't nearly as tortured by those miserably sloggish courses.

I believe that golf's culture of ignoring rules is exactly what has enabled those penal torture tests to become so commonplace. Or maybe I have it backwards, and the proliferation of torture tests is what led to golf's culture of ignoring rules. But I'm convinced there's a relationship there.

[Sam Morrow]

I think one of the great and unique things about this game is that it can be played in any form that will make folks happy. If someone wants to play modified rules they are hurting nothing. If it makes someone happy then I'm all for it and I think the game is better.

[Richard Choi]

Jason, I think this is a very interesting hypothesis on why courses are getting harder and harder. I hope we get some opinions from architects on this.

[William_G]

Jason,

excellent thought on the possible correlation between design and the habits of golfers

[BCowan]

housing development courses and cartballer courses have nothing to do with it.  They exist because of fed res. interest rates which enable houses to go for more and because the homes are on courses (hence OB and water hazards).  Even at my parents traditional golf course they no longer play in club couples tournaments because people now give putts.  The Sunday tourneys are just for fun, but requiring people to put the ball in the hole is too much.  Even a former Senior tour player from their club is all about growing the game, everyone have fun, do what ever the hell you want mentality.  Which goes hand in hand with the MJ play a 10 some mentality.  Progressivism is just great.    People have been conditioned to just go along with the program, everyone must go along to get along.  Courses are harder because selling championship courses was and is a trend.  Not following the rules has to do with culture and entitlement society.  

[Tim Gavrich]

Jason--

I am inclined to think you may be onto something. Do you think the propensity to do things like improve lies and concede putts of a larger-than-normal (say, inside-the-leather) length would decrease at a course that was less taxing in the negative ways you describe?

Frankly, I think an even bigger influence causing most people to play by a less stringent set of golf rules is that the complexity of the Rules is out of sync with most people's zeal for playing golf. I'm not saying that to advocate for wholesale changes to the Rules of Golf, because I do think they should be more or less necessary for people who play high-seriousness tournament golf. That's far from the only form of the game, which is okay.

Yeah, there are people who adhere to the rules with fervor even when they're playing casual rounds, but a lot of times that fervor, and the way they wear it like a badge of honor and use it to look down at (or go out of their way to accuse of being "entitled") golfers who don't play by the Rules, is just a turn-off and further evidence of the gulf between the intricacy of the vaunted Rules of Golf and most casual golfers' level of attentiveness to the deeper levels of the game.

[Steve Lapper]

I think one of the great and unique things about this game is that it can be played in any form that will make folks happy. If someone wants to play modified rules they are hurting nothing. If it makes someone happy then I'm all for it and I think the game is better.

I wholeheartedly agree, save for $$ wagering.

[Steve Lang]

   jason,  were they bragging about their scores at day's end or merely who had to buy?  USGA Rules only go s far as unmodified by the committee, local rules apply, right?

[Brent Hutto]

I just got back from vacation and played a couple rounds at the only golf course within an hour's drive of where we were staying. It is one of those wetlands-plus-housing Florida layouts. Just about ever Par 4 and Par 5 involved hitting over wetlands/scrub and laying up short of more wetlands/scrub then hitting another shot over more lost-ball junk, etc., etc. Nobody with a handicap over 5 could possibly play that course without averaging 3+ lost balls per round. Just ridiculous.

Their scorecard had a elaborate set of local rules listed. Basically any ball that goes OB or into the wetlands/scrub should be played as a lateral hazard. Drop two clublengths from where it entered the hazard, one stroke penalty. An additional rule says anyone not playing from the back tees should take their penalty drop across the hazard on the side nearer the green. Also special rules for a couple of particular holes.

I don't know if those procedure are followed by the regulars there. It makes a mockery of the Rules of Golf but geez, as a 20-handicapper I've got to say I sure as heck ain't playing that course by the real Rules. Actually I'd never play it again under any circumstances although it had the best set of Bermuda grass greens I think I've ever played on in my life.

But anyway, to answer Jason't question I do not think any golf course would have been built in that spot if they did not envision wholesale ignoring of the actual Rules. Also it could not be played by a tourist like me without the big-screen GPS mounted in the golf carts. Practically every hole has one or more semi-blind shots where you can't even tell visually what general direction to aim your shot, much less how far you can hit it to get over the forced carry and short of the forced layup. Very strange deal.

[Ken Moum]

Jason,

I think you're right that there's a connection, but I think it is probably a little of both in terms of which came first.

I find it hard to believe that builders of Stupid-hard courses actually think about the players bending the rules, but I am more certain that the behavior of golfers you describe has aklowed those courses to succeed. It is an absolute fact that the golfers in play with have.somehow gotten the idea that high slope ratings are an indicator of quality.

I've heard Pete Dye talk about how golfers love to be tortured using PGA West as an example.

But now that you mention it, damned few of those players could finish a round under the ROG.

I resisted the urge to participate in the recent thread about Brauer's's courses because the two nearest me here in Topeka are good examples of what you describe.

Not one of the guys I play with can get around  Colbert Hills playing by the rules. Now, Jeff's mission there was to challenge college golfers so it had to be hard. The fact that people drive significant distances to play there is, IMHO, proof of your theory.

Firekeeper is a different animal. I've played it a few times and find it too much, even from reasonable tees. I have also scored a State High School tournament and a Symmetra Tour event.

The number of provisionals hit in those rounds was astounding.

And last year one of the rounds of the Topeka City Stroke Play was held there last year and it took them 7 1/2 hours to play 18 holes. The lowest scorers went off first, so it wasn't bad golfers holding up the parade.

Courses like these seem to survive, and even thrive, as daily fee courses. But they struggle if they are incinclined to be member's courses.

[Sean_A]

Jason

I always the thought the mentality of casually not playing by the rules was accepted because "the pros always get a great lie and find their ball". 

Ciao

[Jason Thurman]

I find it hard to believe that builders of Stupid-hard courses actually think about the players bending the rules, but I am more certain that the behavior of golfers you describe has aklowed those courses to succeed.

Ken, that's exactly what I think. These courses would struggle mightily to make money if the rules of golf were followed. No one would pay upscale fees to shoot 150 with a risk of having their round ended prematurely by an impossible forced carry.

Colbert Hills is an interesting example. I played it a few weeks ago and started the thread on it. I thought it had a lot of room to play and a general lack of long forced carries. I played about as well as I've ever played though, hitting 13 greens and shooting 78 (we don't need to talk about my short game) from the 6500-ish yard set of tees. Even then, I needed a few lucky bounces to get away with a shot or two. I very nearly ran out of room in the fairway on 4 after what I thought was a perfect shot. It ended up in a great spot, but another yard and I would never have found it. I thought my tee shot up the right side at 6 was a goner, but it carried just far enough to catch an unseen edge of fairway that kept it from falling down the ridge on the right. And I stupidly hit driver on 7 trying to see if I could hit it far enough to get down into the swale between fairways. I pushed it and it was going to be OB or a lost ball, but hit the cart path and got a great bounce or two that left me a 200 yard approach. If those shots and one or two others go a little differently, I could have been working to break 85 or 90. Either way, it's easy to play by the rules when you're hitting it well and shooting in the 70s. It gets a lot tougher when you're losing balls where you think they should be found, or figuring out where to drop after hitting another hazard.

Jason--

I am inclined to think you may be onto something. Do you think the propensity to do things like improve lies and concede putts of a larger-than-normal (say, inside-the-leather) length would decrease at a course that was less taxing in the negative ways you describe?

That's an interesting question, and one worth studying. My own guess is that the culture of cheating is just part of the recreational game at this point, and that golfers habitually improve lies and concede generous putts regardless of where they're playing. But it would be interesting to watch. It'd be really interesting to study a course like Pinehurst #2, where lost balls are almost impossible. It should be one of the easiest courses in the world to play by the rules, and a place where rulebreaking pays off the least - after all, it's not like you can fluff a lie in the rough out there! But I would bet the guys who habitually fondle their ball with their club to get it in an ideal lie before every swing would do the same at #2, even if it's objectively pointless.

[Niall C]

At the risk of sounding holier than thou, taking preferred lies at every opportunity is not a habit I've got into. Perhaps its the Calvinist in me but I generally try and play the ball where it lies, whether that means its on a metalled road or gravel path, or even when preferred lies are allowed. I think I'd feel guilty taking preferred lies (as opposed to taking a drop for an unplayable) and think it kind of defeats the purpose of the game. It is after all a game of skill and not a little chance where the object is to play as few shots as possible. Where's the sense of achievement in scoring well when you've only done that by taking preferred lies, irrespective of whether its a bounce game or not.

The first time I became aware of this habit was playing with an American pal (not a GCA participant I hasten to add). We were playing a nice old parkland course over here with fairly benign rough. On the first he hit his ball into the rough where it settled down and even though it was visible from the tee, he still picked it up to identify it and replace it with a better lie. He proceeded to do that until one of the other guys in the group who is a bit less diplomatic than me made a caustic comment.

I assumed he was in the habit of doing that and presumably didn't see anything wrong with his actions until pulled up about it, and certainly it wasn't a monster course as described in other posts so no excuses there. I suspect that its just one of those bad habits golfers get into, like 5 hour rounds, that has more to do with attitude than architecture.

Niall 

[Mike Hendren]

Is this not yet another casualty of American stroke-play's predominance?

Bogey

[Benjamin Litman]

I think Jason raises a very interesting question, but my gut tells me there is no correlation at all. Players who break the rules--whether through willfullness or ignorance--will do so no matter the course. Even on an easy, pancake-flat, roughless course, lies can always be improved and free drops can always be taken. And, of course, the player remains the same player.

At the root of the question is why players break the rules in the first place. For the overwhelming majority of golfers, the answer is surely that the game is hard enough without the rules and nearly impossible with them--again, irrespective of the course. At some point, moreover, most golfers learn the adage, "I don't care if you're bad, as long as you're fast." Rulebreaking is a necessary consequence of that adage, which--rightly, in my opinion--prioritizes pace of play above all else. Pace of play also explains why at least I don't spend much time on the greens anymore; treating every putt with equal seriousness just takes too long.

Of course, a big caveat to the entire debate is the type of golf being played. If I'm playing competitive golf of any kind (including a "casual wager" round with friends, or even a match-play round with friends with no wager whatsoever), I'll putt every single putt like it matters. If not, I'll spend less time on four-footers to ensure that things move along as smoothly and as rapidly as possible for me and everyone in my group.

[Jon Wiggett]

Is this not yet another casualty of American stroke-play's predominance?

Bogey

I suspect you are right. On top I suspect having to return a score and little concept of a sporting challenge to boot.

If you are playing a friendly then the rules can be whatever you decide in the group but the USGA insanity of return scores for HCP every round make this impossible whilst if I understand the system correctly makes the handicap far less a reflection of the players ability than if just competition rounds would count.

Jon

[Andrew Buck]

If there was one thing I would change about my golf experience growing up, it would be to follow the rules and play the ball down at all times.  Unfortunately, I grew up at a semi-private course that did not get watered fairways until the early 90's, and the custom was to roll the ball, by all players, in all formats and tournaments. 

Playing in regional (and national) junior tournaments, as well as in college, I obviously played the ball down and had some success at times, but it's clear my formative years killed my touch around the greens, as I was always able to have a perfect lie.  I have no idea why it didn't occur to me to play the ball down on my own, except I didn't want to be at a disadvantage in money games with the best golfers at the club, but it frustrates me to this day.

Unfortunately, the club in questions now has watered fairways that are manicured at a high level, but still today, the entire membership rolls the ball on every shot. 

[Ken Moum]

At the risk of sounding holier than thou, taking preferred lies at every opportunity is not a habit I've got into. Perhaps its the Calvinist in me but I generally try and play the ball where it lies, whether that means its on a metalled road or gravel path, or even when preferred lies are allowed. I think I'd feel guilty taking preferred lies (as opposed to taking a drop for an unplayable) and think it kind of defeats the purpose of the game. It is after all a game of skill and not a little chance where the object is to play as few shots as possible. Where's the sense of achievement in scoring well when you've only done that by taking preferred lies, irrespective of whether its a bounce game or not.

The first time I became aware of this habit was playing with an American pal (not a GCA participant I hasten to add). We were playing a nice old parkland course over here with fairly benign rough. On the first he hit his ball into the rough where it settled down and even though it was visible from the tee, he still picked it up to identify it and replace it with a better lie. He proceeded to do that until one of the other guys in the group who is a bit less diplomatic than me made a caustic comment.

I assumed he was in the habit of doing that and presumably didn't see anything wrong with his actions until pulled up about it, and certainly it wasn't a monster course as described in other posts so no excuses there. I suspect that its just one of those bad habits golfers get into, like 5 hour rounds, that has more to do with attitude than architecture.

Niall 

The people I  play with usually make the argument that the condition of the course isn't good enough to play the ball as it lies.  They think that a shot in the fairway "deserves" a good lie and so they give themselves one.

I have a relative who plays at a VERY nice country club that is usually in almost immaculate condition where there's a regular money game.  They move the ball in the fairway more often than not.  The argument is that "you can't play it down" which is silly.

But moving the ball is a completely different matter than Jason's premise. The same folks who never play it down at Shawnee CC, where I play don't routinely violate a bunch of other rules, like OB. But when they go to the places Jason describes, they HAVE TO, or they'd never finish a round.

Sometimes, the club either adopts a local rule that mimics the Lateral Water Hazard rule or the just mark everything with red stakes.  Las Sendas, an RTJ Jr. course in Mesa, has it on the card.  Stay out of the desert, drop a ball and take a one-stroke penalty.

A small-town club near here that built a second nine on a challenging, hilly, heavily wooded piece of land next door gaver up after a couple of years and marked the woods on both sides of several fairways as lateral water hazards. If they hadn't, a 25 handicapper having a bad day could have stood on some of those tees and emptied his bag without getting a ball in play.

Even without the club's actions, in places like that people just ignore the rules that get in the way of finishing their round.  What's funny IMHO, is that the rules they choose to ignore vary depending on the course.  At Colbert Hills most of my friends, who refuse to play down at their home course, will happily play it as it lies.  But they aren't likely to take stroke and distance for a lost ball.

K

[Jason Thurman]

I guess what I really wonder is when cheating at golf first became commonplace. My guess is that it would have started with rolling the ball from awkward lies, or maybe lies that could damage clubs or bodies, right? And it's since grown to where, depending on the course and group, we see everything from rolling the ball away from a lie that could damage a club to fluffing a lie to make a shot easier to gimmes to mulligans to free drops for lost balls...



But once golfers were willing to fudge the rules a bit, course designers and owners had more leeway to build courses that were unplayable for large swaths of players, since those players weren't going to play by the rules anyways. I don't think this was necessarily a conscious realization. But I think it allowed guys like Robert Trent Jones to come in and toughen courses up without killing profitability. Players were still willing to "play" these courses. They just took more liberties with the rules along the way. But I don't think those courses would have been profitable if everyone played by the rules and the result was eternal rounds and gigantic scores.