Should the act of "dropping" be eliminated in favor of always placing?

[bkuehn1952]

So it appears in about 250 years we will be placing the ball rather than dropping, based on the pace of change to date.

[godswing]

just to respond to all the noble platitudes such as "play it as it lies" or "golf is supposed to be hard" as if those are some kind of standards the rules are based on:  if those tenets were set in stone, no one would play golf. there is always a constant struggle between making a game challenging but also maintaining its competitiveness.  notice in golf how those ideas of "play it as it lies" suddenly go out the window when we reach the green.  ever wonder why that is?  is it because there is some inherently holy quality about short cut grass that we are entitled to a perfect shot at the cup? obviously that's silly.  it's because a ball mark in the line to the hole or a patch of mud on the ball makes it too difficult (as "we" have all agreed upon as too difficult i should say) to play the game in any competitive way.  that logic can be extrapolated out into situations between tee and green, as we see with temporary obstructions, sprinkler heads, etc...

 

Edited April 25, 2016 by godswing

[Martyn W]

18 minutes ago, godswing said:

platitudes such as "play it as it lies" or "golf is supposed to be hard" as if those are some kind of standards the rules are based on:

They are. You should read 'Principles behind the Rules of Golf' before you post something like this. To characterize one of the Great Principles as a platitude is heresy! You are, of course, entitled to your opinion but it carries little weight if it not based on fact.

[Mop Bucket]

28 minutes ago, godswing said:

just to respond to all the noble platitudes such as "play it as it lies" or "golf is supposed to be hard" as if those are some kind of standards the rules are based on:  if those tenets were set in stone, no one would play golf. there is always a constant struggle between making a game challenging but also maintaining its competitiveness.  notice in golf how those ideas of "play it as it lies" suddenly go out the window when we reach the green.  ever wonder why that is?  is it because there is some inherently holy quality about short cut grass that we are entitled to a perfect shot at the cup? obviously that's silly.  it's because a ball mark in the line to the hole or a patch of mud on the ball makes it too difficult (as "we" have all agreed upon as too difficult i should say) to play the game in any competitive way.  that logic can be extrapolated out into situations between tee and green, as we see with temporary obstructions, sprinkler heads, etc...

 

I'm pretty sure they changed the 'play it as it lies'  rule on the green because the inside player had a clear advantage when his partner was forced to chip over his ball in order to hole out. It had nothing to do with "holy short cut grass". But as far as mud goes, you don't get relief from it anywhere else on the course, just the green for the reason stated above.

[DaveP043]

5 minutes ago, Martyn W said:

They are. You should read 'Principles behind the Rules of Golf' before you post something like this. To characterize one of the Great Principles as a platitude is heresy! You are, of course, entitled to your opinion but it carries little weight if it not based on fact.

While I agree with the sentiment here, I'd hesitate to define "The Principles..." as fact.  The book is an excellent explanation of the guiding principles which form the basis for the rules, and a good discussion of why many of the rules are be appropriate, even when they may appear to conflict with one or more of the basic principles.  As most of us know, the rules have evolved through the years, and most of that evolution occurred well before Mr. Tufts wrote his book.  Still, I recommend that @godswing find and read that book, and perhaps research a bit on the history of the rules, before weighing in on the "noble platitudes" that really do form the basis for the rules.

[Fourputt]

49 minutes ago, godswing said:

just to respond to all the noble platitudes such as "play it as it lies" or "golf is supposed to be hard" as if those are some kind of standards the rules are based on:  if those tenets were set in stone, no one would play golf. there is always a constant struggle between making a game challenging but also maintaining its competitiveness.  notice in golf how those ideas of "play it as it lies" suddenly go out the window when we reach the green.  ever wonder why that is?  is it because there is some inherently holy quality about short cut grass that we are entitled to a perfect shot at the cup? obviously that's silly.  it's because a ball mark in the line to the hole or a patch of mud on the ball makes it too difficult (as "we" have all agreed upon as too difficult i should say) to play the game in any competitive way.  that logic can be extrapolated out into situations between tee and green, as we see with temporary obstructions, sprinkler heads, etc...

 

Golf as a game involves varying levels of randomness.  Different areas of the course are controlled by different levels of random lies and conditions.  Hazards have the highest degree of randomness, through the green is somewhat less random, and the putting green is the least.

The putting green has the lowest ratio of randomness to player skill.  For that reason it has evolved into a greater allowance for cleaning the ball and repairing certain specific types of damage, which if left as is would detract from the player's skill in playing his ball.

[Martyn W]

44 minutes ago, DaveP043 said:

I'd hesitate to define "The Principles..." as fact.

I wasn't suggesting that the Principles are facts, but rather that it is a fact that the Rules are based on the Principles.

[Golfingdad]

42 minutes ago, Fourputt said:

Golf as a game involves varying levels of randomness.  Different areas of the course are controlled by different levels of random lies and conditions.  Hazards have the highest degree of randomness, through the green is somewhat less random, and the putting green is the least.

The putting green has the lowest ratio of randomness to player skill.  For that reason it has evolved into a greater allowance for cleaning the ball and repairing certain specific types of damage, which if left as is would detract from the player's skill in playing his ball.

I like this post a lot - and next time the divot issue arises, you could copy and paste it word for word into that thread and be just as applicable.

[godswing]

1 hour ago, Martyn W said:

They are. You should read 'Principles behind the Rules of Golf' before you post something like this. To characterize one of the Great Principles as a platitude is heresy! You are, of course, entitled to your opinion but it carries little weight if it not based on fact.

I actually mispoke... i'm totally aware those ideas are guiding principles of the rules, but the spirit of my post was more those principles aren't adequate rebuttals to any rule challenge (or specifically here why one could place vs drop a ball)... there has to be some logical reasoning that falls within the scale of keeping the game challenging yet fun and competitive.  that being said, i have not read that book but i definitely should!  thanks for the pointer.

1 hour ago, Mop Bucket said:

I'm pretty sure they changed the 'play it as it lies'  rule on the green because the inside player had a clear advantage when his partner was forced to chip over his ball in order to hole out. It had nothing to do with "holy short cut grass". But as far as mud goes, you don't get relief from it anywhere else on the course, just the green for the reason stated above.

The "holy short cut grass" was a joke response to my own hypothetical of why play it as it lies doesn't apply as we get on the green.  Regardless, how does one player being inside another player dictate the allowance for cleaning mud?

1 hour ago, Fourputt said:

Golf as a game involves varying levels of randomness.  Different areas of the course are controlled by different levels of random lies and conditions.  Hazards have the highest degree of randomness, through the green is somewhat less random, and the putting green is the least.

The putting green has the lowest ratio of randomness to player skill.  For that reason it has evolved into a greater allowance for cleaning the ball and repairing certain specific types of damage, which if left as is would detract from the player's skill in playing his ball.

you quoted me so I feel like you were intending to rebuke something but this is in complete agreement with my statement that rules are based on logic to allow enough fairness to maintain a compelling competition.

[Mop Bucket]

1 minute ago, godswing said:

Regardless, how does one player being inside another player dictate the allowance for cleaning mud?

I was under the impression that they included it in the ruling when they went away with the 'stymie rule' out of fairness on the putting green.

[DaveP043]

37 minutes ago, Mop Bucket said:

I was under the impression that they included it in the ruling when they went away with the 'stymie rule' out of fairness on the putting green.

Based on this webpage:

http://www.ruleshistory.com/green.html

Lifting and cleaning a ball on the green was allowed in 1960.  The stymie was abolished in 1950 by the USGA.

1 hour ago, Martyn W said:

I wasn't suggesting that the Principles are facts, but rather that it is a fact that the Rules are based on the Principles.

Certainly the Rules have evolved based on some principles, and the more I read of the history, the more the evolution seems to follow some consistent principles.  However, we really don't have any way of being sure that the principles that guided the development of the rules from the time they started, in the middle of the 1700s, are the same ones that Mr. Tufts outlined in about 1960.  

[jgreen85]

18 hours ago, godswing said:

I actually mispoke... i'm totally aware those ideas are guiding principles of the rules, but the spirit of my post was more those principles aren't adequate rebuttals to any rule challenge (or specifically here why one could place vs drop a ball)... there has to be some logical reasoning that falls within the scale of keeping the game challenging yet fun and competitive.  that being said, i have not read that book but i definitely should!  thanks for the pointer.

I agree. It's quite funny sometimes. You'll have the golf rules purist in one thread say "these are rules; deal with it" and then in the very next thread "I agree, xyz should be changed." As in all things it seems, "what I like should stay the same and what I don't like should be changed."

[Fourputt]

7 minutes ago, jgreen85 said:

I agree. It's quite funny sometimes. You'll have the golf rules purist in one thread say "these are rules; deal with it" and then in the very next thread "I agree, xyz should be changed." As in all things it seems, "what I like should stay the same and what I don't like should be changed."

No inconsistency in our comments.  When a question is asked or a situation is discussed, we state the rule as it is written because that is all that really applies.  That doesn't mean that we can't question whether a certain rule might be less than perfect as it currently exists.  

Most of us who spend time on the rules forum have also read Richard Tufts pamphlet "The Principles Behind the Rules of Golf", and many of our opinions are flavored by an understanding of those basic underpinnings that form the fabric of the game.  When someone posts a desire for a rule change, we will discuss it based on that knowledge, and in many cases, the idea or suggestion in the original post takes none of that into consideration.  

When a player comes in here and whines about a rule because he feels he got "unfairly" screwed by it, we don't usually have a lot of sympathy.  If that seems harsh to you, well, sometimes that's just golf.  Until or unless there is a change, the Rules are the Rules, and that's just a simple statement of fact.  

[jgreen85]

12 minutes ago, Fourputt said:

No inconsistency in our comments. 

agree to disagree :)

[DaveP043]

@Fourputt hit the nail on the head.  On one hand, most of us respect the rules as they're currently written, and do our best to understand them, and to explain them to others.  Understanding them, and accepting them, doesn't mean we don't think that some changes could be appropriate.  Its two different discussions, what does the rule say now, and how could the rule be improved.

The book that's been referenced by Mr. Tufts offers some guiding principles underlying the rules, and very solid explanations as to how the rules fall in line with those principles.  In some cases, a change to the rules would still fall in line with the principles outlined in the book.  Its when the proposed changes  conflict with those basic principles that I'll object.  

Going back to the original post, the suggestion was that a drop was too random, and somehow not fair.  To me, dropping  simply maintains the randomness that's inherent in almost all of golf.  To allow a player to take relief from an obstruction in the rough and PLACE the ball gives him an advantage, based on the accident of having the obstruction.  To maintain equity, he should have the same randomness that a player has in the same area if he doesn't have the obstruction, so dropping, not placing, is the right thing to do.  I know, dropping takes place all over the course, this is just one example, but the principle holds true elsewhere.

[Golfingdad]

51 minutes ago, jgreen85 said:

agree to disagree :)

In addition to the great explanations by @Fourputt and @DaveP043, I think you might be combining multiple people into one entity here.  I doubt that you could find many (might go so far as to say ANY) instances of the "golf rules purists" ever complaining about a rule they don't like because it's "unfair."

[jgreen85]

44 minutes ago, DaveP043 said:

Going back to the original post, the suggestion was that a drop was too random, and somehow not fair.  To me, dropping  simply maintains the randomness that's inherent in almost all of golf.  To allow a player to take relief from an obstruction in the rough and PLACE the ball gives him an advantage, based on the accident of having the obstruction.  To maintain equity, I think he should have the same randomness that a player has in the same area if he doesn't have the obstruction, so dropping, not placing, is the right thing to do.  I know, dropping takes place all over the course, this is just one example, but the principle holds true elsewhere.

I fixed your post. Excluding these two words is why I think your post and those like it are annoying and borderline insulting. That's your opinion for how the game should be played. Those principles are some random guy's opinion for how the game should be played. You agree with his opinion. Great. I don't. Others who disagree as well are not "whining" when they suggest a rule change or suggest a rule is dumb. They're voicing their opinion which, in my opinion, has just as much validity as yours.

There are multiple examples where randomness is ignored because a perceived "advantage" is gained. For example, after a ball is dropped it can't roll more than two club lengths. A randomly dropped ball could/would roll that far. 

1 minute ago, Golfingdad said:

In addition to the great explanations by @Fourputt and @DaveP043, I think you might be combining multiple people into one entity here.  I doubt that you could find many (might go so far as to say ANY) instances of the "golf rules purists" ever complaining about a rule they don't like because it's "unfair."

And? Is there something special about that? "Golf rules purists" don't like the way an anchored putting strokes looks. "I don't like something" is a better reason than "unfair"?

[saevel25]

48 minutes ago, DaveP043 said:

To allow a player to take relief from an obstruction in the rough and PLACE the ball gives him an advantage, based on the accident of having the obstruction.  To maintain equity, he should have the same randomness that a player has in the same area if he doesn't have the obstruction, so dropping, not placing, is the right thing to do.  I know, dropping takes place all over the course, this is just one example, but the principle holds true elsewhere.

I agree with this. Golf is a game of good bounces and bad bounces. It makes total sense that if you need to drop the ball you do so by dropping no placing it. In the end the ball rolls and bounces to the position it got to in the first place. 

2 minutes ago, jgreen85 said:

That's your opinion for how the game should be played. Those principles are some random guy's opinion for how the game should be played. You agree with his opinion. Great. I don't. Others who disagree as well are not "whining" when they suggest a rule change or suggest a rule is dumb. They're voicing their opinion which, in my opinion, has just as much validity as yours.

Playing the game by the rules, or not playing the game by the rules has no influence on discussing rule changes or voicing your opinion on if a rule is dumb or not.