Teeing up outside the tee off zone followed by OB shot

I was reading the golf digest and it says :

Q You teed your ball in front of the markers ( a two shot penalty ) and it goes out of bounds (  a penalty of stroke and distance ) . Your opponent says you are hitting your fourth shot when you re-tee. OK ?

Ans: Not OK. You're penalized two strokes for playing outside the teeing ground . That ball wasn't in play so the ensuing shot didn't count. decision 11-4b/6

What does this mean ? Where do you play your next shot from and which shot will you be hitting? Fifth off the tee?

If he hadnt gone OB he would be playing his 4th ? Now because he went OB and was also ahead of the marker he plays his third from the tee because the 2nd penalty only counts if he was in play ? is this correct ?

It doesn't matter if he goes OB or hits a hole-in-one. The actual result doesn't factor into the equation. "In play" here means that the hole was correctly started, not where the ball ended up. He has to replay the ball as his 3rd shot from the teeing ground.

So going OB and teeing off from in front of the marker is more or less the same thing ?

First, the question isn't written correctly.  There is no opponent in stroke play.   If he had an opponent he would have been playing match play and the ruling would be different.

Just think of it this way, in stroke play if you start the play of a hole from outside the teeing ground it is a 2 stroke penalty and you must correct the error before you tee off from the next hole, otherwise you are disqualified .

If you played from outside the teeing ground, went back to the tee and made the same mistake again, it would still just be 2 penalty strokes total.  Until you play a ball from within the teeing ground you do not have a ball in play.

When correcting this error you will always be hitting 3, regardless of what happened with the ball played from outside the teeing ground or how many times you made a stroke at it.

No they are not.  Not even close to the same thing.  The ball played from outside of the teeing ground never happened, that stroke doesn't count, anything that happened to the ball doesn't matter.  It is simply a 2 stroke penalty and then the player is playing his third from inside the teeing ground.

For a stoke played correctly and hit out of bounds, the stroke counts and the player adds one penalty stroke and must play again from the same spot.  If the stroke was played from the teeing ground, then he may play the next stroke from anywhere within the teeing ground and he may tee his ball.

For a ball thought to be out of bounds, the player may also play a provisional ball before he goes forward to search.  There is no such thing as a provisional ball for a ball played from outside of the teeing ground.

I suppose that it might appear that the procedures are similar, but they are in reality much different.  Keep in mind too that in match play, you would only replay the stroke if your opponent wishes it.  In that case, if your opponent recalls the stroke, there would be no penalty and the shot would be replayed from the correct place.  If your opponent chooses not to recall the stroke, then the play stands and you would be required to take the out of bounds penalty and play under stroke and distance.

Something to add to the above because I have seen confusion on this. Say you correctly start play of a hole from within the teeing ground but your ball is lost or OOB so you are required to replay from the teeing ground playing your 3rd stroke.  If you were then to play from outside the teeing area by mistake (say your re teed forward of the markers,), the stroke does  count in this case and the ball is in play.

In this case you have played from a wrong place, and incur a 2 stroke penalty, you would however, continue to play with the ball played from the wrong place.

That is a really good distinction to raise, I don't know that I would have got that right, on the fly.

It's found in the definition of a Ball In Play.  The second paragraph explains the two scenarios we have been talking about.  It's written in USGA speak.

Let's make it more fun:

However, should there be a chance you gained a significant advantage by playing from that wrong place, you would need to abandon the ball played from the wrong place and return to the teeing ground again to correct your error or else be in danger of committing a serious breach and subject to DQ.  Obviously that wouldn't be likely to be the case if you teed up just outside the teeing ground, but it would be the case if say you teed up 10 yards left of it to avoid having to go over hazard.

Admittedly, a bit of a ridiculous scenario and not likely to ever happen.

Ouch.  Dumb mistake on my part.  I was thinking you could abandon if you discovered the breach before completing the hole, but you're exactly right.  Thanks for the correction.

This is only necessary if you can't contact the committee before playing from the next tee or before leaving the last green.  If you can get a timely ruling, only one ball needs to be played unless you finished the hole before the committee rules that it was a serious breach.

It's a matter of emphasis, perhaps, but I think it better to regard the requirements of Rule 20-7 as the norm, with the possibility of a Committee decision being available at the time as an exception.

Worth mentioning, too, that the penalty for playing from a wrong place in match play is loss of hole and so there is no question a serious/not serious breach or of holing out or of playing  a second ball.

That's one of the best things about match play.  Many penalties are just loss of hole, so even if both players screw up, only the first mistake counts.  The hole is finished at that point.  It's happened that both players play the other guy's ball and don't discover the mistake until they get to the green.  All that matters is who played the wrong ball first.  He loses the hole and that ends it.  In stroke play they would both have to go back to where the mistake was made and both play correctly from that point on, each adding the 2 stroke penalty to his score.  That's the sort of penalty can start to bog down a stroke play tournament, yet doesn't cause any delay in a match.