Define Penalty Areas by Physical Features

[reidsou]

Our public course has red penalty areas marked with red stakes. The stakes are imprecisely placed, often overgrown or missing. Our golf club has no control over how the stakes are placed. We have therefore decided to create a local rule to define the penalty areas by physical features and ignore the red stakes. 

Also, most of the currently marked penalty areas are because of an overgrown creek behind dense ground vegetation. The penalty areas are marked (roughly) at the edges of the dense vegetation (see picture example). Players cannot see the creek. The dense vegetation looks the same on holes where there is no creek and no penalty area. For consistency and to reduce confusion, we have decided to define all edges of dense ground vegetation as penalty area.  

This adopts a popular USGA recommendation from 2019.

Committee Procedures 2C(2) cautions: "A Committee may define the edge of a penalty area by clearly describing it in writing but should do so only if there will be little or no doubt where the edge is. For example, where there are large areas of lava or desert that are to be treated as penalty areas, and the border between these areas and the intended general area is well defined, the Committee could define the edge of the penalty area as being the edge of the lava bed or desert." 

We are going ahead, but IMO "little or no doubt" is not possible. For example, the "edge of desert", no matter how "well defined" is often not a distinct line. Sand and grass may intermingle. An edge defined this way will never be as clear as stakes or a line. We will see what happens! 

Other comments: I believe the change will improve pace of play. And have minimal effect on handicaps. (Seems like I saw a study of this, but unable to find it again.)   

Does anyone have a similar experience with defining penalty areas by physical features? How did that go?