Adjacent fairways and max strokes

[lostmyballs]

Hi,

I have two unrelated questions.

1)   Is it legal to play a shot from an adjacent fairway without penalty? Does it make any difference whether the ball found its way there accidentally, or was aimed there for strategic purposes?

2)  Is there a max stroke limit in stroke play? Our rule of thumb was that the max was 4-over par, no matter if it was a par 3, 4 or 5.

Thanks for your help!

Still searching,

lostmyballs

[LuciusWooding]

1: It's totally legal to play from an adjacent fairway, but not from a green. Also, it's not a good strategy to go that far out of your way, and is terrible etiquette to both playing partners and other groups. You could hit someone accidentally, and will likely provoke the wrath of the course staff if you do it on purpose.

2: There is a stroke limit for the purposes of recording handicap, but not for competitive round. If you shoot a 16 on the PGA tour or even in a local tournament, you can't pick up without DQing. An exception is match play, which isn't decided by overall strokes. There still isn't a stroke limit, but your opponent will beat you or you'll concede the hole hopefully before too much time is wasted.

Also, your score is still your overall total, and handicap does not equal score. You can put down a 7 on a hole you took a 12 on for submitting the score as a handicap, but the 5 extra strokes still count for your total. So don't go bragging you broke 80 because you picked up on a hole or two.

The maximum handicap overall for men is 36.4, and the max scores per hole are as follows:

Course Handicap	Maximum Score
0-9	Double Bogey
10-19	7
20-29	8
30-39	9
40 or more	10

That said, most of us would agree that it's better to pick up at this limit for the purposes of speeding up play.

[lostmyballs]

If you have the opportunity, could you show me the ruling for your second answer, or direct me to where I can find it? I'd love to tell my friends about this rule, because my double bogey is far less impressive when my friends, lost in the woods, pick up and call it a quadruple.

[LuciusWooding]

http://golf.about.com/cs/handicapping/a/whatisesc.htm

[Rulesman]

Originally Posted by lostmyballs

1)   Is it legal to play a shot from an adjacent fairway without penalty? Does it make any difference whether the ball found its way there accidentally, or was aimed there for strategic purposes?

You will find that some courses mark an adjacent hole as out of bounds. In this case you may not play from that fairway but must take the stroke & distance penalty.

This is normally done for safety reasons where there is a dogleg when it may be attractive to players to cut the corner by playing onto or over the adjacent fairway.

[rustyredcab]

Overall: Be polite to others on the course and in your group.

1. Often, being polite on a busy course, means getting back in play on your your own fairway as fast as you can. That means you may be hitting a wedge back in play instead of a 3-wood at the green that means waiting for the green to clear and hoping for the shot of your life. Sometimes, playing up the wrong fairway will not slow play or bother other groups. So, go for it. As for aiming into the wrong fairway, it is up to you. For years I played a course where the fifth hole was a dogleg. I aimed for the corner but was fine missing into the 16th fairway. We played early and no one was on that 16th hole when we were on the fifth. If I played later in the day, I was more careful to avoid the 16th because people were there and playing up the 16th was rude and dangerous.

2. If you are playing a match play game, pick up when you are out of the hole and take the max your group's max score. Four over is fine. You'll find threads with other ideas -- my group is five over. Again, it is only polite and speeds pace of play. There is no reason to wait as a player chips for his ten when six lost the hole for his team.

Originally Posted by lostmyballs

Hi,

I have two unrelated questions.

1)   Is it legal to play a shot from an adjacent fairway without penalty? Does it make any difference whether the ball found its way there accidentally, or was aimed there for strategic purposes?

2)  Is there a max stroke limit in stroke play? Our rule of thumb was that the max was 4-over par, no matter if it was a par 3, 4 or 5.

Thanks for your help!

Still searching,

lostmyballs