What do you consider the most stupid rule in golf?

[Shorty]

Originally Posted by iacas

I don't think spike marks are even a problem worth mentioning anymore. I occasionally see some scuff marks but even those are rare.

I agree.

It used to be a big problem with metal spikes, but these days it isn't.
I play 100 rounds per year and since soft spikes became the norm I can honestly say that I could count on one hand the times I truly believe a putt destined for the hole was deflected by a spike mark.

I could probably say the same about a ball ending up in a divot, but I'm sure on courses that are heavily used and poorly maintained it happens quite a lot.

[Fourputt]

Originally Posted by sean_miller

Personally I don't care as much about the rule as filling in a divot [hole] with seed and sand then allowing forcing a player to dig an even deeper hole to make a decent shot if he's unlucky enough to have his ball stops there. As a former grounds crew worker for several summer it seems counterintuitive.

Um.... I don't see why a repaired divot hole would get any deeper than the original one was.  An unrepaired one might, since you have to focus on going down to get the ball out, but a repaired one I'm more likely to hit thin, like a fairway bunker shot, so that I don't catch any sand before I contact the ball.  I'm certainly going to do everything in my power not to hit it fat, and that means not even going as deep as the original.

Originally Posted by Shorty

I agree.

It used to be a big problem with metal spikes, but these days it isn't.

I play 100 rounds per year and since soft spikes became the norm I can honestly say that I could count on one hand the times I truly believe a putt destined for the hole was deflected by a spike mark.

I could probably say the same about a ball ending up in a divot, but I'm sure on courses that are heavily used and poorly maintained it happens quite a lot.

For once, I'm actually agreeing with Shorty .  I really can't remember the last time I had to deal with spike or shoe caused damage on the green.

[celticstanger]

Originally Posted by zeg

Ok, I thought you meant simply playing them as GUR.

Between rounds, marking divots is rather silly. They already fix and/or fill them in. During a round, marking individual divots would be impractical. If there's a weird situation where a divot is somehow so severe that it's warranted, a special case might be made (though about the only case I could imagine would be be a big honking divot on a putting green).

Agreed - and I suspect that this is a part of the reasoning behind the rule.  A lot of rules do seem to consider practicality of enforcement.

[sean_miller]

Originally Posted by Fourputt

Quote:

Originally Posted by sean_miller

Personally I don't care as much about the rule as filling in a divot [hole] with seed and sand then allowing forcing a player to dig an even deeper hole to make a decent shot if he's unlucky enough to have his ball stops there. As a former grounds crew worker for several summer it seems counterintuitive.

Um.... I don't see why a repaired divot hole would get any deeper than the original one was.  An unrepaired one might, since you have to focus on going down to get the ball out, but a repaired one I'm more likely to hit thin, like a fairway bunker shot, so that I don't catch any sand before I contact the ball.  I'm certainly going to do everything in my power not to hit it fat, and that means not even going as deep as the original.

Then you should see a wider variety of people hit approaches out of repaired divots. Some of them should probably get a permit they're moving so much earth.

[Fourputt]

Originally Posted by sean_miller

Then you should see a wider variety of people hit approaches out of repaired divots. Some of them should probably get a permit they're moving so much earth.

Actually, it's such a  rare occurrence that I am always baffled by the hullaballoo it creates.  I think it happened once to me all last year, in somewhere close to 100 rounds.

[B-Con]

Here's one that bugs me, although I definitely won't call it "stupid". There are several reasons why you would re-hit your last shot. If you hit into in a hazard you may want to re-hit, if you lose it you have to re-hit, it you get a really bad lie in some situations you can just take a penalty and re-hit. But you can never use a provisional as your re-hit. Say you hit a ball and think it might be lost outside a hazard, so you hit a provisional. You get up to where the original ball went and realize that it's in a hazard. You decide your best option is to re-hit. You already re-hit your shot, but you can't use [i]that[/i] re-hit, you have to go back and [i]re-[/i]re-hit the shot. The oddest quirk about this, IMO, is that on your first re-hit you knew the exact spot to re-hit from because you were still standing there, whereas for the second re-hit you have to go back to the original spot but you may not know the exact location, so you may end up abandoning a re-hit from the exact right spot for a re-hit from the semi-right spot. But if you had seen your ball go into the hazard in the first place then the first re-hit would be your only re-hit and you could play it. So whether or not a shot can be used in a certain way depends on how you observe the previous one. It seems somewhat obvious that this rule is to prevent people from gaming the system and taking re-hits first and then evaluating which of the two shots they'd rather play. They don't want people to, for example, put a ball in a hazard in a semi-playable lie, take their re-hit, then get to the hazard and judge whether they'd like to prefer to hack out of the hazard or play the re-hit. The spirit (and often (always?) letter) of the rules is that you have to maintain only one shot you're going to play so that your mental game is played linearly without temporary parallel splits where you get to test both paths of a possible decision fork in the road. (If you ever have two balls you are playing, AFAIK the one you use will be decided by something outside your control.) So while I understand the motivation, there is the occasional circumstance where it costs someone time to walk back and re-hit a shot that they've already re-hit. From a high level perspective, I think it does occasionally look kind of silly. Not that it comes up very often.

[luu5]

Originally Posted by B-Con

But you can never use a provisional as your re-hit. Say you hit a ball and think it might be lost outside a hazard, so you hit a provisional. You get up to where the original ball went and realize that it's in a hazard. You decide your best option is to re-hit. You already re-hit your shot, but you can't use that re-hit, you have to go back and re-re-hit the shot.

So while I understand the motivation, there is the occasional circumstance where it costs someone time to walk back and re-hit a shot that they've already re-hit. From a high level perspective, I think it does occasionally look kind of silly. Not that it comes up very often.

If there is a possibility of this happening a lot, the course can use local rule permitting hitting a provisional in this case. If this local rule is in use and you hit provisional and the original is found in WH you can not play anymore using WH relief rules. You have to play either ball as it lies.

[inthehole]

Originally Posted by flap

I think the 14 club rule is obsolete.The way they build new courses with deep rough 7500 yards large bunkers you should be able to carry what ever you feel you need.

THIS !

[DirtCheap]

Non-conforming grooves on wedges.

It's sort of like the belly putter debate. Until they can show that people using a certain type of wedge face are just walking away with the titles, how can they say that "too much spin" gives a guy any sort of advantage?

[B-Con]

If there is a possibility of this happening a lot, the course can use local rule permitting hitting a provisional in this case. If this local rule is in use and you hit provisional and the original is found in WH you can not play anymore using WH relief rules. You have to play either ball as it lies.

I didn't know there was the provision for a local rule to override that. That's convenient for the occasional hole where re-hitting would be a huge waste of time. Alas, I've never seen it used on a course where I wished it was.

[Fore Left]

Quote:

Originally Posted by B-Con
But you can never use a provisional as your re-hit. Say you hit a ball and think it might be lost outside a hazard, so you hit a provisional. You get up to where the original ball went and realize that it's in a hazard. You decide your best option is to re-hit. You already re-hit your shot, but you can't use that re-hit, you have to go back and re- re-hit the shot.

Can you cite the rule that states this?   I was always under the impression that you hit (from the tee for instance)  and you fear your ball trickled in the water  (and assuming you didn't want to take the distance and drop at the point of entry...  something I couldn't see myself doing I guess)   or more likely,  you hit the ball and you saw it go by the dreaded white stakes,  and think it 'may' have rolled Out-Of-Bounds.

You re-tee 3 if you hit it out of bounds,  but since you're not sure,  you hit a provisional....   upon getting to your ball,  you see it is in fact Out-Of-Bounds....  thus you play the Provisional,  and are now hitting 4.

If this isn't the case,  what then would be the reason to ever even take a provisional shot????

Quote:

When Provisional Ball Becomes Ball in Play
The player may play a provisional ball until he reaches the place where the original ball is likely to be. If he makes a stroke with the provisional ball from the place where the original ball is likely to be or from a point nearer the hole than that place, the original ball is lost and the provisional ball becomes the ball in play under penalty of stroke and distance (Rule 27-1).

If the original ball is lost outside a water hazard or is out of bounds, the provisional ball becomes the ball in play, under penalty of stroke and distance (Rule 27-1).

[luu5]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fore Left

Can you cite the rule that states this?   I was always under the impression that you hit (from the tee for instance)  and you fear your ball trickled in the water  (and assuming you didn't want to take the distance and drop at the point of entry...  something I couldn't see myself doing I guess)   or more likely,  you hit the ball and you saw it go by the dreaded white stakes,  and think it 'may' have rolled Out-Of-Bounds.

OB and WH are under totally different rules.

Quote:

If this isn't the case,  what then would be the reason to ever even take a provisional shot????

If you know (or it is virtually certain) the ball is in WH, you can not hit provisional, unless the local rule allowing that is in place. If there is a possibility that the ball is lost outside WH only then you can hit provisional.

When your ball is OB you can hit provisional and hope to find your ball inbounds. No harm done, but with WH you can not do that.

[B-Con]

Can you cite the rule that states this? I was always under the impression that you hit (from the tee for instance) and you fear your ball trickled in the water (and assuming you didn't want to take the distance and drop at the point of entry... something I couldn't see myself doing I guess) or more likely, you hit the ball and you saw it go by the dreaded white stakes, and think it 'may' have rolled Out-Of-Bounds. You re-tee 3 if you hit it out of bounds, but since you're not sure, you hit a provisional.... upon getting to your ball, you see it is in fact Out-Of-Bounds.... thus you play the Provisional, and are now hitting 4. If this isn't the case, what then would be the reason to ever even take a provisional shot????

I meant for water hazards. Thought I specified that in specific, but I didn't.

[Wisguy]

Here's one that bugs me, although it's not an universal rule of golf, but it is a rule of the men's professional tours:  the no-shorts dress code rule.  It is absolutely asinine to see grown men on hot summer days doing an outdoors sport in long pants, especially when they think they are especially dapper and are wearing wool dress pants instead of something cooler (I've worn tropical wool suit pants in the summer for years and do not find them remotely comfortable).  I remember a tournament in the Midwest around 12 years ago, I think it may have been the John Deere Classic, where the temperatures were over 100 and I watched a husky Robert Damron walking around in pants that were absolutely drenched wet with sweat.  There was nothing whatsoever classy about that look, I can assure you.  I read some PGA pro's comments supporting the no-shorts dress code and it was pretty dumb, something like "Well, have you seen the legs on some of these guys?  Nobody would want to see their bare legs!"

There ought to be a rule that if the heat index gets above 80 or 85F, players can wear shorts.  Some of them might not want to because their silly white belts look better with pants than shorts, but that retro fashion trend won't last much longer.  Allowing professional tennis players to wear whatever colors they like (aside from Wimbledon) hasn't ruined tennis and allowing the PGA to wear shorts won't hurt the sport one iota.  Afterall, athletes in almost every other non-winter sport, other than maybe judo or equestrian events (and who would want bare legs rubbing on hot horsehair, anyway?) wear shorts, weather permitting.

[TourSpoon]

Originally Posted by Wisguy

Here's one that bugs me, although it's not an universal rule of golf, but it is a rule of the men's professional tours:  the no-shorts dress code rule.  It is absolutely asinine to see grown men on hot summer days doing an outdoors sport in long pants, especially when they think they are especially dapper and are wearing wool dress pants instead of something cooler (I've worn tropical wool suit pants in the summer for years and do not find them remotely comfortable).  I remember a tournament in the Midwest around 12 years ago, I think it may have been the John Deer Classic, where the temperatures were over 100 and I watched a husky Robert Damron walking around in pants that were absolutely drenched wet with sweat.  There was nothing whatsoever classy about that look, I can assure you.  I read some PGA pro's comments supporting the no-shorts dress code and it was pretty dumb, something like "Well, have you seen the legs on some of these guys?  Nobody would want to see their bare legs!"

There ought to be a rule that if the heat index gets above 80 or 85F, players can wear shorts.  Some of them might not want to because their silly white belts look better with pants than shorts, but that retro fashion trend won't last much longer.  Allowing professional tennis players to wear whatever colors they like (aside from Wimbledon) hasn't ruined tennis and allowing the PGA to wear shorts won't hurt the sport one iota.

But that would open the door for John Daly to market Loudmouth Socks. I don't know if I am ready for that yet, lol.

[Fourputt]

Originally Posted by DirtCheap

Non-conforming grooves on wedges.

It's sort of like the belly putter debate. Until they can show that people using a certain type of wedge face are just walking away with the titles, how can they say that "too much spin" gives a guy any sort of advantage?

There is verifiable evidence to support this.  The larger grooves definitely allowed the player to impart more spin on the ball on shots from the rough.  That is indisputable.  The ruling bodies were not concerned with anyone gaining any advantage.  They were concerned with bringing the rough back into play.  Watching the Tour now it would seem that the change is justified.  Those pinpoint short and mid irons from the rough are far less prevalent than they were a few years ago.  You see the ball release more now.

[Fore Left]

Originally Posted by Wisguy

Here's one that bugs me, although it's not an universal rule of golf, but it is a rule of the men's professional tours:  the no-shorts dress code rule.

I absolutely never wear shorts on the course.   I prefer pants for one,  and also I think I'd look silly wearing my golf-shoes in shorts.   Either way,  I always wear a shirt with a collar too....  even if I go to a driving range.   Respect the game I say....

[DirtCheap]

Originally Posted by Fore Left

and also I think I'd look silly wearing my golf-shoes in shorts.

They make golf sandals and even golf crocs for that very reason.