Casual Water in a Bunker Question

[Rulesman]

The R&A put it to me this way.

If there is an area in the bunker where a ball may land after a stroke that is free from casual water interference to the lie, then the bunker should not be declared GUR. Players can play such a ball so why do they need relief?. If a ball lands in an area where there is interference, then they may take relief. This may be 'maximum' relief or outside the bunker with a penalty.

If there is nowhere that a ball can land after a stroke that is free from casual water interference to the lie, then the bunker may be declared GUR.

 

[Fourputt]

12 hours ago, iacas said:

No, I didn't.

Committees are strongly encouraged not to use the local rule, and the bunker in question wasn't completely flooded.

We had a fairly extensive discussion about this over lunch at the first USGA/PGA rules seminar I attended.

 

5 hours ago, Rulesman said:

The R&A put it to me this way.

If there is an area in the bunker where a ball may land after a stroke that is free from casual water interference to the lie, then the bunker should not be declared GUR. Players can play such a ball so why do they need relief?. If a ball lands in an area where there is interference, then they may take relief. This may be 'maximum' relief or outside the bunker with a penalty.

If there is nowhere that a ball can land after a stroke that is free from casual water interference to the lie, then the bunker may be declared GUR.

 

So the player whose ball lands a couple of yards farther into the bunker is given an inequitable advantage over the player who is unlucky enough to be in the puddle that covers 3/4 of the playable surface of the bunker?  In that photo, I don't see any "point of maximum relief" that would be reasonably playable in the near 2/3 of the bunker.  Why should one player benefit and another be penalized for an essentially identical situation?  What happened to equity?

[iacas]

6 hours ago, Rulesman said:

If there is an area in the bunker where a ball may land after a stroke that is free from casual water interference to the lie, then the bunker should not be declared GUR. Players can play such a ball so why do they need relief?. If a ball lands in an area where there is interference, then they may take relief. This may be 'maximum' relief or outside the bunker with a penalty.

If there is nowhere that a ball can land after a stroke that is free from casual water interference to the lie, then the bunker may be declared GUR.

That matches the sense that I got.

1 hour ago, Fourputt said:

So the player whose ball lands a couple of yards farther into the bunker is given an inequitable advantage over the player who is unlucky enough to be in the puddle that covers 3/4 of the playable surface of the bunker?

It's casual water. In a hazard. I don't think it's a matter of equity at all. If you take relief for casual water in a fairway, there's no guarantee the nearest point isn't in some thick rough, while someone else two yards away gets to drop in the fairway because his NPR is in the other direction or whatever.

1 hour ago, Fourputt said:

In that photo, I don't see any "point of maximum relief" that would be reasonably playable in the near 2/3 of the bunker.

Of course there are points of maximum available relief.

If the ball is at A, a seems like a valid point. If it's at B and in six inches of water as we were told, b has less than six inches of water while still being in the bunker.

And of course, the guy can always take  stroke and drop out of the bunker. They're hazards.

1 hour ago, Fourputt said:

Why should one player benefit and another be penalized for an essentially identical situation?  What happened to equity?

You're mis-applying equity here. Equity is to treat like situations alike, but that's at a broad level, not to the tiniest degree.

We see this type of thing all the time. My example above. What about a righty and a lefty whose golf balls find similar parts of a cart path, with one side being a far worse lie than the other. Because one player is a righty, and the other is a lefty, they may have to drop on opposite sides of the path.

Equity doesn't go down that deep, into that detailed a breakdown.

And finally, Rick, they didn't change this rule for 2019, so I think they're pretty content with it.