RickK

You have been given the "official" Rules of Golf ruling. That said, we don't have the option of playing under PGA Tour conditions where they have crews to pump the water out of bunkers before allowing play. To that end, I play in 2 tournament leagues where play is under the USGA Rules of Golf. The committee has the option of declaring specific bunkers as Ground Under Repair...basically taking them out of play. This is only done in cases where a bunker is completely filled with water, such as you describe, and it is not applicable to every bunker on the course. If other bunkers are not completely filled with water and there is the ability to take relief inside the bunker itself...those bunkers are in play. However right or wrong this may seem, it is equally fair.

I'm a little late reading up on this post. But, here is my take and opinion...FWIW. I am a member of a private club. This is my 5th country club to belong to in the past 50 years. My reason for each one of those clubs has been moving residence from one place to another. I live in a country club community. I had several options but what sold me on this club was the neighborhood and the viability of the club itself. Lots of country clubs have gone under in the US in the past few years. This club is solid, privately owned by an owner who is also the developer of the gated neighborhood where the club is located. It has a solid revenue stream. To live, or own a lot, in this neighborhood...you must pay an initiation fee up front and maintain a social membership at the very minimum. Lot sizes here range from 1/2acre to up to 10acres. Homes range from 3000sq ft to over 10,000sq ft. with prices all the way up in the millions. You can own and operate your own golf cart here as long as it meets the standard set for carts. While there are numerous millionaires living here, the club is very unassuming. The golf course is well maintained and generally some type of improvement going on all the time. Fairly easy to get a tee time or find someone to go out with. Pace of play is generally under 4 hours. So, all of the above is why I live and belong here. Now, that said...probably 50% of my golf is not played at my club. I belong to 2 tournament leagues, play in the MGA at a daily fee course in addition to playing in the SMGA at my club. I am old enough that I don't have a lot of other priorities to prevent me from playing golf very very frequently. I have been asked why I bother belonging to a private club since I play so much golf outside of my club. Well, that is pretty simple...I can go hit range balls pretty much any time I want for as long as I want. If I want to go play 3 holes, 6holes, 9holes, a full 18...I can do that easily pretty much any time I want. I have a regular group that I play with on Saturday and a different group on Sunday when I am not playing tournaments elsewhere. Plus...I like belonging to a private club. It is my "kind of thing.". Playing as much as I do elsewhere, if I could not afford it, might be a different story. But, I can.

If I am invited to play at someone else's club, I always offer to pay and if that is declined, then my statement is always "Allow me to at least tip". Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. When I invite someone to play at my club, all charges go on my club account. If they offer to tip, great. If they don't, so be it. They were my guest to begin with. I view it similarly to going out to lunch with someone when it is not business. If they say they will pick up the tab, same thing...I say, "How much is the tip, I will pay it." If I am picking up the check, I don't ask them to pay the tip but if they offer, I will let them do it. I have always looked at it like this...if I am getting to play a club I may not have ever played and may never get a chance again....great deal for me. The least I can do is offer to pay any tips. So, if I was asked to pay the tip...hell, I would just pay it and think nothing of it.

Here in SE Texas, we were CPO for months during what is our winter and early spring. It was not fun. Now we are getting into the part of the year where we have that 10% to 20% rain chance every afternoon but usually not enough to soak the course. Now we just need the wind to die down a bit. Oh...and the #$%& gnats to go away. They are horrible.

I don't recall you mentioning how old you are and looking at your screen name I doubt you are a senior. You have gotten some good advice here. If you are fairly new to the game, which I think I saw somewhere that you were, heed the advice given here. Also saw somewhere you mention drinking beer with your mates, so guessing you are not an early teenager. So, use some of the advice here but you need to work on your driving distance. Go some place and have your swing speed checked. You might also want to have your driver checked to see if it is what you really need to be swinging. If you have any athletic ability at all, I am guessing you should be able to hit the ball more than the distances you are getting just by figuring out what is robbing you of that distance. In the meantime, play those long holes to make no worse than bogey. Good course management can help you lower your scores.

Did they get this ruling wrong...NOPE. I think they got a lot of stuff wrong with the rules changes for 2019 but by leaving the ruling about distance measuring devices and not allowing for elevation...they got that right.

Not sure villain is the word but I cannot/will not root for Zach Johnson. Have never liked the guy.

I play out of 2 different clubs and also play in 2 tournament leagues. It is a bit different in the 2 tournament leagues. Those have 1st flight thru 3rd or 1st thru 6th. In those, every flight gets whatever handicap they play 2. 1st flight in one of those leagues has a +2 handicap player. At the 2 clubs I play out of, the MGA/SMGA at those has a Championship Flight and then usually 4 other flights. Players in the Championship flight (generally +handicappers thru 3 or 4 handicappers play scratch. Then the other flights get handicap based upon their handicap index.

Not in my pocket but either in my golf bag or in the cart. I do not use the phone for yardage information but have used it to call 911 for someone in the group we thought was having a heart attack.

Not exactly sure but I have been playing for 49years. So, well over 5000 rounds. In the past 13 years, I would guess I have averaged somewhere between 150 to 165 rounds. Last year, I played 198 rounds. Not bad for a guy with a full time job. 🤤

That is interesting. Back in the 90s, my wife and I went to the Houston Open Pro-Am. We followed Fred around for several holes. We were standing beside 17 tee box when he came up. They had to wait on group ahead. Talked to him for a minute or two and my wife asked him if she could get a picture with him. He obliged and was about as nice as he could be. Probably the nicest pro I ever had the pleasure of meeting was Arnold Palmer. I was a marshal 2 days in a row at a tournament. Talked with him on the tee box the first day. 2nd day, he remember who I was, said hi again, and brought up the discussion he and I had had the day before. He was a true gentleman. Interesting enough, probably one of the rudest pros I witnessed was Payne Stewart...but this was early on in his career particularly during the Pro-Ams. Apparently someone had a chat with him along the way and he had a complete turn around long before his death.

Correct. As I stated, the whole point of contention was the fence. The fact that you do not get relief from boundary objects, one opinion was that he did not get relief from the cart path. My understanding was that first you find NPR from the cart path and then and only then does the fence come into play. Luckily for the player, NPR took the fence out of play for him.

here is a pic from Google Earth reflecting the coordinates. The fence is to the left of the bunkers under the trees which overhang. I believe we got the ruling right. We determined NPR was farther back but on green side of the cart path to get complete relief from standing on the cart path. There was a discussion that he was not entitled to relief because of the fence from his original lie. My understanding was that since his ball was on the cart path, he was entitled to relief. Once it was determined where the closest point was that he could get full relief from the cart path with the ball in bounds...that is when the fence comes into play. If it was in his backswing...then he had to decide what to do. In this case, NPR was on green side of the cart path...fortunately for him. Thanks for the input...greatly appreciated.

Would appreciate some help with this situation. Player hits ball over the green and ball ends up on cart path. The obvious spot to drop would be on side of cart path keeping the cart path between the player and the green. The problem that comes into play is that full relief from path would put the player's drop OB. I would assume that player would need to find NPR where he can drop the ball and have full relief from the cart path and the ball not be dropped OB. Now comes the rub....there is a boundary fence down the length of the cart path behind the green. Can I "assume" that he if he can find relief no closer to the hole where he has full relief from the cart path and then the fence comes into play in his back swing that he would either have to play the ball or now take an unplayable lie? This discussion came up because the fence was actually in play from where his ball lay on the cart path. My take was that he was entitled to full relief from the path but he could not go backwards and drop (fence or no fence because his drop would have been OB).

I won First Flight in the Club Championship at the club I used to belong to and never hit a wood for 3 days. I used 2iron off most holes where you would normally use driver. Course played at 6450 yards. Now...that said...that was 28 years ago and my distance ability was a heck of a lot better back then. The reason I put the woods away, I had just come from a 4 day tournament the week before and probably had the worst hook going of my life. My irons had been pretty consistent with a slight draw for the longer irons and I knew I could at least compete by keeping the ball in play. Would I attempt that feat today on the course I play now where the senior tees are a shade over 6000 yards. Not a chance at 72 years of age. Beside, the first iron in my bag these days is a 7 irons.

Is this while on the course? Is he playing in the same group as you? If so, tell him to let you play your game and then you can yell at each other. If not on course, leave it at the door when you leave or if he is calling you on course...don't answer the phone, wait till it stops ringing and tell him your playing golf to text you whatever he needs. Then wait till 18 to read it. Now...all this advice is worth exactly what you paid for it and remember...I have been married 3 times. 😀

Interesting article about why the Ryder Cup pairings were not what many expected to start with...... http://www.espn.com/espnw/sports/article/24833830/2018-ryder-cup-us-had-plan-worked-last-ryder-cup-changed-it

I listened to a lot of PGA Tour Radio leading up to the Ryder Cup this week. Pretty much every program had their own version of what the pairings should look like. Almost all of them were the same. Then Furyk comes out with his pairings and everyone seemed baffled by the pairings he picked. Of course, if his pairings had paid off...he would look like a hero. If not, he would look like a goat. Well, goat it is. The Tiger/BDC pairing was just as bad. Granted Tiger did not play spectacularly but it was pretty hard to make up ground for Dechambeau's mistakes.

On really humid mornings here in SE Texas, I quite often play with my left hand rain glove instead of my normal glove. The Titleist rain gloves of today are better than they were a few years back. Previously, I felt they needed to be wet or damp but the new ones I got (2018 version), they work just fine without being wet.

I have had my putting woes for a number of years. Pretty solid player for the most part but just never seemed to make putts that I felt I should make. I have had people tell me that I take the putter back outside, I loop it, I don't take it back on line, etc. I have struggled with trying to get this right. I could concentrate on watching my stroke with the putter and they were right...I was all over the place. Now...have I turned this around completely...not by any stroke of the imagination but I have definitely improved. I found that most of my problem was my stance. My stance promoted me taking the putter back to the outside and the loop it or sort of cut across the line. I got 2 yardsticks and put them down with about a putter head and a half width apart and then tried different address positions and stances until I found one that promoted a pretty clean back and forth stroke with no loop or taking it outside. I had been crouched too much, my hands were too low at address also. After all that, it comes down to being able to read the break and speed. Then, putt with some confidence. If I misread a putt but hit it on the line I was looking and speed i was expecting...then all is not completely lost. I also found that I was consistently low of the hole on breaking putts. Had to work on reading the break better and giving the ball a chance to go in. As I was told...there is more of the cup for the ball to fall into if the putt is on the high side. But on the low side of the hole, you have reduced the area of the cup the ball can fall into significantly. So, I would suggest you have someone watch your stroke or even film your putting stroke and see where the putter head is going. May not make any difference at all for you but I can tell you...it has saved me several strokes on the greens pretty much every round. Last week I had a round with 5 birdies and that had been almost unheard of for me in recent years.

Well, I played for years without a rangefinder or GPS. I have not played for years with both. If I am playing a course I am familiar with, it really does not make much difference either way (with or without). Where I find it comes in handy is courses I am pretty much unfamiliar with. Not every course provides you with depth of green information. I find that more valuable than anything else.

A guy playing in a MGA tournament at one of the clubs I play at had 2 in the same round. Someone looked up the odds on doing this...astronomical.

Hottest temperature I have ever played in was 107* No idea what the heat index was that day. But, we played and it was ok. Just had to drink lots of liquids to stay hydrated. Now...ask me what is too cold to play in, I can probably come up with a number. But have yet to find what temp is actually too hot to play.

I should put in more range time than I do but I just don't do it any more. I would much rather go out and play. If I go to the range before my round, I generally hit 5 shots each with 7iron, 4hybrid, driver, 9iron...in that order. Then I go hit 3 or 4 sand shots and chip 3 or 4 shots. And, lastly go putt a few. This is a vast difference than when I was younger. Back when I had just turned 30, I moved to Houston and began playing with my boss and some of the other guys I worked with. I could beat everyone except my boss and the difference in my game and his was like night and day. I wanted to get better so I spent 5 nights a week for 6 weeks at a driving range working on my game. It made a huge difference. I never did beat him but I sure narrowed the stroke difference margin significantly. He had held his tour card at one time. We have a few people at my club who hit probably 150 shots or more every day the range is open. One is a young high school golfer and he is quite good. The others are old buzzards like me except in the fact that they put in range time and I don't.

My first set was a Northwestern starter set...3, 5, 7, 9, putter, driver, 3wood...at least I think that was the set makeup. Played with those for couple of years and then my wife's (at the time) uncle gave me his old set. They were a full set of Wilson Staff irons (2 thru wedge), Macgregor Tourney driver and 3 wood.