giantbear

For me, the lip out is it. The others are the result of a poorly executed shot, but the lip out, defying the laws of gravity, is just the golf games looking down and laughing at you. It almost as bad as hitting a sprinkler head or trap rake.

Since you are such a student of the rules, perhaps you could step off your horse and explain to me then the reason for a separate rule for ob versus a lateral hazard? I understand the difference from the perspective of allowing a person to play the ball versus not allowing them to. With a lateral hazard, you are allowed to attempt to hit the ball whereas with ob, you are not. However, the reason for the difference in actual penalty escapes me. Most if not all ob markers are there to either protect the property beyond the ob, eg someone's backyard, or to protect the golfer, eg not allowing someone to play down a different fairway. However, the differing factor as to the penalty is not where the ball lands but how the course has decided to label the area. In my opinion, the only difference between ob and a lateral hazard should be in whether you are afforded the ability to play the ball as it lies. If you are ob, you lose that ability and must drop with stroke penalty in accordance with the lateral hazard rule.

For me, hit it in a lateral hazzard, stroke penalty, if that lateral hazzard is actually out of bounds, stroke and distance. Makes no sense to me that the same shot has a different penalty based strictly on the color of the stake.