Rule quetion on casual water/ground under repair/dropping

Over the last couple of days my area has received torrential rain. The course I played today has really bunkers with the sides really steep, even in non pot-type bunkers. All of the rain has caused really bad erosion in the bunkers, around the edges, with many of them looking like mini canyons etc etc. It's difficult to describe but hopefully you can imagine it.

Anyways, the rain and erosion of the edges caused massive pools of casual water. Most of them were dried up today but they left behind thick mud on top of the sand. Really thick, heavy, sticky and sometimes hard mud.

I don't know many specifics regarding the particular rules of golf so I am curious what should happen here if someone ended up in one of these bunkers(I did). The mud was very instable, and almost unsafe. A fall would have covered the player. In other instances the mud was like concrete and it would have been like hitting off concrete. My gut tells me that they would be considered under repair, but I still don't know the result of that ruling.

The kicker is, the bunkers were so jacked up that a drop inside the bunker itself would have trickled back down into the shit.

What do you think?

You must play the course as you find it, So according to the rules of golf, the ball can be deemed as unplayable anywhere on the golf course except for inside a water hazard. the golfer is the only person who can deem the ball as being in an unplayable lie.

After declaring an unplayable lie you have three options to where you can drop the ball and each option has a one stroke penalty.

1. Play the ball from where it was originally played.
2. Drop the ball, no closer to the hole, two club lengths from the ball is unplayable.
3. Keeping the point of the unplayable lie between you and the hole, you may go back as far as you want/need and drop the ball along that point.

Since you have three options choose the option that suits you best to avoid increasing your score any more.

Nor following the proper drop procedure is a breach in the rule. If you are playing a match and the breach occurs the penalty is a loss of the that hole. In stroke play you will be assessed a two stroke penalty.

Points to Remember:

1. Only the player can deem a ball as unplayable.
2. Unplayable lie can occur anywhere except for water and lateral water hazards.
3. The golfer has three options for dropping the ball. Each option has a one stroke penalty.
4. The golf ball can be cleaned prior to drop.

From the description, the course is essentially unplayable. The rules allow the committee to declare specific bunkers as abnormal ground, but draw the line at making such a universal designation. Since you were apparently not playing in a competition, I'd say that a round played under such conditions be viewed as a practice round, and play it as you or your group deem necessary, but don't even consider returning the scores for handicap.

A course in such bad condition will not be playing to its rating, so just call it a casual practice round and leave it at that.

Do remember that if the ball is in the bunker and you invoke options 2 and 3 (28b and c in the RoG) you need to drop the ball in the bunker. However, if there is casual water in the bunker and your ball is in it you are allowed to apply 28c and with one penalty drop the ball outside the bunker following option 3 (or 28c).

Myself, those that I play with, and those in my golf league have always played casual water (ie any puddle on the course fairway, rough, or bunker) as a free drop anywhere else in the bunker or on the fairway/rough behind the ball along the flight path. I guess you can just call this a house rule because we think its unfair to the golfer if nature creates more water hazards than the course already has.

What about being deemed gound under repair? At what point does bunker reconstruction become repair and not regular maintenance, warranting different action? some of the lies would be very literally unplayable(ball sitting in a sand canyon 2 inches wide and 10 inches deep).

Well, I think it's technically up to the course operators (i.e., the "committee") to decide whether or not to declare GUR as appropriate. If they haven't done it, aside from the exceptions in the rules (i.e., material stacked for removal but still on the course, etc) you don't really get to decide for yourself if you are playing strictly by the rules. If it's as bad as it was made out and they haven't marked the bunkers as under repair (or issued a blanket statement at the clubhouse), I don't think they're expecting anyone to play seriously there.