Transcripts - Episode 14: Tee Box Rules Every Golfer Should Know

Welcome back to the Birdie Board Podcast. This is episode 14. Doing this about once a week right now, so 14 means I’ve been doing it a little over three months. Most of the time has been winter golf, which is interesting to start a podcast about golf where most people probably aren’t even playing golf right now. But it’s going well, and I’m trying to keep the focus on what can we do during the winter.

So on today’s episode, I’m going to continue talking about the rules of golf and just try and expand that knowledge. I think that’s really good for winter golf because you don’t get the opportunity to go out and practice as much, but you get the opportunity to learn a lot. These episodes are great because you can just kind of listen to them and not have any action items to take from them.

The first time I did this was actually episode 11, where we talked about the golf rule basics and then just the dropping rules. Today, we’re going to talk about the rules around the tee box. And then at the end of this episode, I’ll give some Birdie Board updates that I thought are pretty cool.

All right, so I will start with saying not all of these rules are for the average golfer. And the first rule here is an example of that.

So the first rule is the official rule around a late arrival. Now, I have friends that they like to show up right at the tee time or right afterwards. We just tee off, they catch up if they’re really late, I pay for them and they pay me back, something like that. I’m sure we all have friends like that. But there are official rules around late arrival that I would say most of us, as casual golfers, probably won’t ever follow, but it is interesting to learn about.

So you might wonder what happens by the rule book if there’s a late arrival. And what that means is if the player is not ready to play at their tee time. So it’s not just that they’ve arrived, they’re ready to tee off at their tee time. If they’re not there or not ready, up to five minutes, it’s a two stroke penalty. So if you tee off at 1:10, your buddy’s not there, they have up to 1:15, but they’re going to get a two stroke penalty at 1:10 if they’re not ready.

Again, probably not a rule that most casual golfers follow, but it is interesting to learn about. Now, after five minutes, then they are technically disqualified. So again, this isn’t really for casual golfers, but that is the actual rule.

And then starting the round before the tee time is also not permitted.

For a casual golfer, we typically run into starters. Go off when the starter tells you go off. Communicate to the starter if you have a friend running late. They can usually swap around tee times, like bump you back a spot or something like that. Most courses are really flexible with that. And you might get some griping depending on the course, PGA pro, or the starter, or something like that. But the best thing you can do is just communicate. Say, “Hey, my buddy is running…” If they tell you 15 minutes, say, “Hey, my buddy is running 20 minutes behind. I’ve already paid for them in the clubhouse. Can you bump around our tee time or something like that?” It’s always a better route.

And from my own experience, most starters accommodate those requests. And most of them like that, especially giving them a heads up, because then they have a chance to kind of reorganize the tee sheet.

But those are the official rules around arriving late.

So another thing, and so moving on to the next topic here, is you can have a maximum of 14 clubs in your bag. You might have heard that before, but that is the official rule.

So if you have an extra club, it doesn’t mean you have to go put it back in your car or anything like that. You can just not play it. And the easiest way to indicate that you’re not playing it is just turn it over in your bag, so it’s the club head side up. That would be a nice reminder to you that this club isn’t in play.

For casual golf, I would say don’t worry about it too much. But if you’re playing in some sort of competition, the rule is that you can’t have more than 14 clubs. But it doesn’t mean you have to get rid of a club. It has to be before you begin the round, which is why it relates to the tee time and the first tee box. That’s kind of the start of a round.

So you just need to make sure that you have 14 clubs or less in your bag, or you indicate which clubs you’re not going to play during the round. And you can do that by flipping it over. Maybe you have some athletic tape in your bag. You can just put a little piece of tape around the end just to remind yourself that you’re not allowed to play it.

So if you do end up playing over 15 clubs, so one of the clubs that you indicated you’re not going to use, then it is a two stroke penalty on each hole that you had too many clubs for, maximum of four strokes. So if you do it on hole one and hole two, you’re going to get two stroke penalties on one and two, but you wouldn’t get it on three.

You are going to, let’s see, if you clubs are, I’m going through my notes right now to see if there’s any way you could get disqualified. If you do use clubs that are out of play that you marked as out of play, then that is disqualification.

The scenario I talked about before where you use clubs, that’s on mistake where you have 15 clubs, you didn’t realize you have 15 clubs, you use it on holes one and two, and you realize that, you would be able to get away with just a two stroke penalty. However, if you start the round knowingly that you have more than 14 clubs in your bag, that could result in a disqualification.

Again, all these rules are more for competitive play, but if you’re trying to just understand like how do I truly play golf, and that’s something I enjoy. I would personally probably not abide by the late arrival, but like the maximum 14 clubs, because that’s just a part of golf. You have to play within the rules. I don’t want to have, even though it’s really an advantage for myself if I’m playing by myself or something, to have 15 clubs. I’m just going to make sure I have 14 because that’s part of the rules of the game.

So let’s move on next to the order of play. So on the first tee, it’s just the order, you can randomize it with your friends, there’s not really any set rules. If you’re playing like a tournament, you would go in the order of what your names are on the tee sheet for the first hole. And then every hole after that, it’s going to be the winner of the previous hole. If you guys tied the previous hole, then you just keep going back to find the winner. If you go all way back to the first hole, then you just go back to that original order. I think that’s pretty understood.

And I would encourage you guys to follow that order as long as pace of play allows. This is a trade off between pace of play and ready golf. Ready golf is like whoever’s ready to go, go ahead and hit. If it’s a busy day or something like that, I would definitely do that.

If you’re trying to do a little bit of a competition with your friends, push this order, this correct order, because it does give a little bit of an advantage to the person who doesn’t go first, because they get to see the ball trajectory, they get to see maybe a hazard you didn’t see before, maybe some wind patterns and things like that. So it does create a little bit of an advantage for that second golfer. So I would encourage you guys to follow that rule.

Now, if a player tees off out of turn, that stroke still counts for that person, but there’s no penalty. So it’s not really an aggressive rule to play by. However, if the player agreed upon the wrong order so that they can get an advantage… So imagine this scenario: you’re playing in a twosome. One player is definitely out of the tournament. The other person is competing for the top. If that person out of the tournament says, “Hey, I’ll go first so you can see the wind,” and the other person agrees, then that’s an unfair advantage. That is a two stroke penalty.

So if there’s some scenario like that where it is agreed upon to go out of order for some advantage, especially in a tournament, then that would be a two stroke penalty. So keep that in mind.

But in most cases, order of play doesn’t really matter. You’re not going to get any penalties just under normal conditions, but I would encourage you all to abide by the normal order of play rules.

All right, so let’s talk about the teeing area. So the obvious thing is there’s going to be two tee markers on the tee box. You can play up to two club lengths behind those tee markers. So it’s two of your longest clubs, not including your putter. For most people, that’s probably going to be your driver. You’re probably already going to have a driver in hand. So it’s pretty easy to just lay down your driver, mark the end of it, put your foot there or something, lay it down again. That’s how far back you can tee off.

You cannot extend outside of the tee markers. You are allowed to stand outside of them, but your ball is not allowed to be outside of them.

Now, what dictates a ball outside of it? The ball has to be completely outside of the line. So either completely in front of the tee marker or completely outside of it left or right. If that happens, then you incur a two stroke penalty. And you would have to hit your third stroke again off of the tee box. So you couldn’t take the two stroke penalty. Let’s say you bomb it down the middle of the fairway 300. Unfortunately, part of breaking this rule means you would have to re-tee it up for your third stroke on the tee box.

There is a little nuance to match play. If you play outside the teeing area in match play, the opponent may immediately require you to cancel and replay the stroke. But if they say nothing, I don’t encourage dishonest play, but if they say nothing, then there’s no penalty for you and you can play your ball even though you teed it up outside the teeing area. So a little unique rule for match play there.

All right, moving on. Playing from the wrong teeing area is just the same as if you teed it up outside of the tee box. So you can think of that just as a normal rule. No matter what, whether you’re beyond two club lengths, whether you’re on the same tee box or some random tee box, you’re still outside of it. The same sort of rules apply.

All right, let’s talk about the tee markers because this is something I’ve seen people do before.

So when you’re on the tee box, the tee markers are classified as fixed objects, so you’re not permitted to move them at all. You can’t move them out of your stance. You can’t move them to get a better ball. You can’t move them out of your club path. You have to move your ball to make sure that you have a clean spot.

Now, this is just a personal thing that I do. Sometimes I play courses that don’t have the best tee boxes. In those cases, I just tee off in a spot that looks normal. Whether that does require me to slightly move a tee marker and then I’ll move it back, or I tee off outside the tee box. If I’m just playing by myself or just casually with a friend, I’ll just try to get the most normal tee box on a course that has really bad tee boxes. So it just depends on the type of play you guys want to do. I encourage you to try to follow the rules as best as you can, but be lenient, especially at more of those mid-tier courses that might not have the best conditions.

All right, tee marker. We talked about how you can’t move the tee markers. If you do move them, it’s a two stroke penalty. However, if your ball lands in another tee box, like let’s say you hit it and you land it just up the fairway on another tee box, the rules around the tee markers actually change and now they become moveable objects. So in that case, you are allowed to move the tee marker so that you can hit your second shot. You just can’t move them off of the tee box for your first shot.

All right, this rule is something I found kind of interesting. So you cannot, anywhere in the course we’ve talked about, improve your lie at all. However, the tee box is different. You’re actually allowed to pat down the grass around your ball. You’re actually allowed to fluff up the grass if you want to just hit it off of it. There’s a lot of free rules you can do around the tee box to actually improve your lie, strangely enough. So that is permissible.

You’re allowed to move any objects that might disturb you, like rocks or anything like that, except for the tee markers as we just talked about. You can do all of that without penalty.

All right, so let’s talk about an accident. I’m sure this has happened to everyone before where they just accidentally hit the ball. You’re lining up to it. You just kind of graze it with your club or something. There’s no penalty for doing that. You just pick the ball back up, tee it up, and take your shot like normal.

I would recommend if that happens to you, reset your shot sequence, take a step back, go through your motions again just so you can get back into your right rhythm.

Now, if you do an air shot where you swing and miss, I’ve seen friends do this before, it does count as a stroke. It doesn’t count as a penalty though. You just end up hitting your second shot then.

If you do kind of hit the ball but it doesn’t end up going outside the teeing area, you are technically allowed to tee it back up for your second shot. So definitely take advantage of that if you have a whiff or something like that. Re-tee it back up, improve your lie. Obviously you can’t advance it towards the hole anymore, but you already had a really rough first shot. Take the full advantage of that second shot: tee it up, fluff up the grass, whatever you need to kind of get it back into the hole.

And remember, it’s not a penalty. It’s just like if you’re playing at par. For a lot of people who play bogey golf, I know sometimes I’m thinking, okay, I have two shots to get to the green and then three shots to putt, or maybe I have three shots to get to the green, two approach shots, a chip, and two putt for bogey. Try and play like that. Well, it’s not the end of the world if you have a bad shot off the tee box. It just makes it, okay, now I’m playing more of a normal par. So I want to get my next shot in the middle of the fairway. I want to try to get my approach shot as close or onto the green as I can, and then maybe two putt it to save the hole for bogey. Something like that.

So I don’t know if the play is always to play more aggressive, but that is one strategy you can take after that. The biggest thing is that second shot, you just want to get off the tee box. Feel free to play a safer shot so you can actually get down the fairway and have a chance.

All right, this is another one of those rules that probably only applies to more tournament golf, but it is a rule that’s interesting.

You are allowed to discuss distances, position of bunkers or penalty areas, the pin position, the rules, and other general facts. So you’re allowed to do that with your opponent. If you can’t see the green from the tee, you are allowed to ask someone to indicate the position of that pin. But that’s where the rule kind of comes in.

You’re not allowed to ask or give advice before the tee shot. For example, “Which club did you take?” “Take a seven iron,” things like that you’re not allowed to do. You see pros all the time kind of peek over at their opponent to see what club they take, and they do that because they’re not allowed to ask what club they take based off of the rules.

If you receive unsolicited advice, there’s no penalty for doing that. And I think I forgot to mention, if you do ask, it would be a two stroke penalty. Now, for casual golfers, I say ask all day. We’re all growing in golf or something like that. But if you’re playing more competitive play, just refrain from asking. Unless it’s kind of like just competitive buddy play, but if you’re in any sort of tournament, they’re probably going to try to enforce a rule like this.

All right, we are getting near the end. I have two more rules I want to go over for the tee box.

So the next one is a provisional slash lost ball. This definitely applies to probably every single golfer that’s listening to this podcast, good or bad, is what you do when you think you’re not going to be able to find your ball. This is a really important rule to understand and it can actually save you a lot of strokes in the end.

So if you suspect you’re not going to be able to find your ball, or you know it’s landed out of bounds, so again out of bounds is like a boundary line definitely indicated by white stakes, then you announce, that’s key, you have to announce that you’re playing a provisional, and you tee it up and play it as if it’s your first shot until you reach the approximate location of where you believe your original ball to be.

So what you do in that case is once you get to where you think your original ball is, you can look around. Sometimes you just lost it. That’s just laced to the woods or something like that, but it’s kind of on the edge and you’re playing a provisional just in case you can’t find it. You have to give a good effort, two or three minutes, to look for your ball.

If you do find your ball and it’s in bounds, you have to play it. If not, then you can play your provisional. You still have to follow the normal rules, so your provisional would have been like your second shot with the penalty, so you’re just kind of going to continue as if you lost your ball originally. It probably would save you though if you were able to find your original ball, assuming it’s a decent distance out there.

And we’ve talked about that in the past, is sometimes the best thing you can do off the tee box is just relax and full send, not recklessly, but really try to get some distance on there. Because worst case scenario, you can be down there and find your ball pretty far down there with a penalty, so there’s a lot of scenarios there that you guys can play around with.

So if you don’t say you’re hitting a provisional, you end up just doing a one stroke penalty there. So it kind of ends up being like a two stroke penalty because you would have the lost ball out of bounds plus the provisional penalty.

And then also, you cannot play provisionals if you hit it into a penalty area, so a yellow or red stake area. In those cases, you have to go up to see if you can find your ball and then play the appropriate stroke or the appropriate color from there. So red stake, you could possibly find it in the red stake area and play it. Yellow, you’ll have to drop and take your stroke-and-distance. So just a few things there that you can remember about provisionals and lost balls.

And then the last thing, which is just kind of a fun little thing: you are technically allowed to chip and putt without penalty while you’re waiting on the tee box. Chipping is probably the most useful. Get a ball and just bring your 56 degree or something, 60 degree or something, and just do a couple chips towards a tee marker if you’re waiting for someone. That’s totally fine. It also kind of keeps you loose and keeps the club in your hand. Nothing against the rules for that. Just don’t forget your wedge while you’re up on the tee box.

All right, so that’s it for the tee. I’m going to try to keep doing these rules every few weeks. The next rule category is the fairway and the rough. I’m just following a little book that I had that I carry around with me. I got it off Amazon. I really like it because it explains the rules really simply. So sharing it with you guys on the podcast I think is perfect for winter golf.

All right, let’s talk about Birdie Board a little bit.

So let’s see. Actually, before I’m going to talk about Birdie Board, I didn’t want to bring up the TGL. So this is actually, I forget what TGL stands for. TGL is, googling it, it’s a golf league ran by Tiger Woods, and I think Rory McIlroy is in it now as well.

But what they have is, if you haven’t seen TGL before, it is an indoor golf league that’s in association with the PGA. So it’s played just in the off season. It’s played by PGA players on teams.

And I watched a few episodes last year and I absolutely loved it. And I can kind of see where they’re going with it, because they designed these indoor golf matches to be able to fit in a football field. So right now it’s just played in I think like the SoFi Center down in Florida, which is I think just like a big building. I don’t think it’s a stadium or anything. I guess conference center maybe, but something like that.

But the whole indoor golf area is built to be able to be fit inside of a football stadium. So you can definitely see where they’re going with this, where they’re hoping that it grows big enough where it could be put into stadiums for larger audiences.

And how it has is it has a big huge, I would say like 30 or 40 yard wide screen that the players hit into off of natural grass, which is really interesting.

And then based off of their drive and their approach shot, they actually have a big green that changes based off of the hole that they play. And then there’s a little light that shines down that tells the golfer where to put their ball on the green or off the green. They might even have to chip.

I really enjoyed watching it last year. It was really, really fun. Really easy to just put on in the background too if you’re working or something, and turning it on. They’re quick matches. But I would definitely recommend watching it. It doesn’t hurt to watch, and it’s really fun to watch during the off season. It’s a different take on golf being all inside and also team based.

It’s interesting that compared to LIV, it’s probably already doing better than LIV golf, but LIV has so much more money backing it and everything. So I think the biggest difference is its association with the PGA, where LIV was against it. Obviously, TGL is in association with the PGA, so all cool stuff there. Definitely recommend watching it.

So let’s jump back to Birdie Board a little bit. If you don’t know, Birdie Board is a golf app for just casual weekend golf or small scale golf tournaments.

I used it on a golf trip. We did a three round golf match and the competitions across each day. The first day was like full team versus full team. The second day was 2v2. The last day was just 1v1 stroke play, but with our handicaps it was a lot of fun.

So Birdie Board is like app I created to facilitate these sorts of matches. Like I said, it can be used just for a single round for a weekend golf, or to do a multi round golf trip.

And a lot of this content that I’m creating is based off of Birdie Board just because I love golf and I’m trying to share as much as I can. But the cool thing about Birdie Board is just the community that it’s starting to create.

But I will say it is winter too, so I haven’t seen hardly as many downloads as I, I don’t want to say hope. I kind of expected going into winter not anticipating a ton of downloads.

But what was really cool to see is I saw 12 downloads from real users the other day from Australia. So that was pretty cool. Probably a good portion of the users of Birdie Board right now aren’t even based in the United States, which I would love to see. I’m going to be telling people that my app is international now even though we have under 10 people probably internationally, but hey, I can still say it, so that’s pretty cool.

The Birdie Board podcast isn’t too into about either. Like I said at the beginning, this is the 14th episode. Across the first 13 I have 135 downloads. This doesn’t include the YouTube plays either, which is like 15, so I probably have about 150 overall, which is pretty cool. By far the first episode is still the most listened to. I think that makes sense. Probably a lot of the first episodes are always the most.

But I’ve seen a good bit of downloads for each episode and I definitely see it going up, so that’s pretty cool.

And then the social media is still doing pretty well. I think the best one I have is still YouTube. I think I’m just about at 150,000 views for the videos.

Let’s take a look. Yeah, I just passed 150,000 actually. We have 457 subscribers, so pretty happy with that. The views per video that I put out are definitely going up as well, which is pretty exciting.

So it’s still winter time and you guys could continue that winter golf learning. If you want to learn more about what you can do over the winter, the last probably six episodes I’ve done are all about just winter golf and what you can do during the winter. So definitely listen to those.

Especially Christmas just passed, a lot of you probably have new clubs or new golf balls or new golf gear that you’re anxious to get and use. There’s a lot of strategies that I’ve talked about, and then I’ve had golf instructors and other creators come on this podcast as well that might give you some good ideas as well.

Anyways, that’s it for this episode of the Birdie Board podcast. Thanks for listening everyone.