Transcripts - Episode 15: Fairway & Rough Rules Explained

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Now, here’s your host, Corey, with another episode of the Birdie Board podcast.

Welcome to episode 15 of the Birdie Board podcast.

So I’m going to continue what we’ve been doing the last couple of weeks with focusing on winter golf and really the rules around golf. It’s a perfect time to learn about the sport. Many of us don’t have the opportunity to practice with the weather. A lot of us are in cold climates, so it’s just not an option right now. But what is always an option is to just expand your knowledge on the sport and learn things. And one of the biggest areas of golf that you can learn is the rules.

So I’ve been doing a few episodes now about going over the rules of golf, and I’m going to continue to do that today.

On today’s episode, we’re going to talk about the fairway and rough rules. So we’ve talked about the tee box already. In a future episode, we’ll talk about the green. So this is kind of everything in between.

It doesn’t include bunkers. I’ll have a whole section just for bunkers in the future as well. But this is just the fairway and the rough. So it’s really just considered what’s called the general area.

So this can be the fairway, semi-rough, it could be the rough, other teeing grounds, which is important too. So even though I’ve already gone over the rules of teeing, if your ball lands on another tee box, these rules are going to cover that as well. As well as if your ball lands on another green, that’s also covered in this section too.

So a lot of rules we can go over today. The first thing we can talk about is a pretty simple one. With all of these rules in mind, the simplest way you can play golf and not break any rules is just play your ball as it lies.

I’m not saying to do that. Knowing the rules can save you guys a lot of strokes. But if you’re just concerned with not breaking any rules, the best thing you can do is just play the ball as it lies. You’re not going to break any rules doing that.

However, there are rules that you should take advantage of. You don’t always have to play the ball as it lies. There are ways you can get free relief, meaning you take no penalty getting the relief, or just a one stroke penalty, which might help you a lot in the end. And knowing those rules can really help your game out at the end of the day.

So let’s start with this. You have three minutes to look for your ball. So this is outside of any staked areas. If you hit it down into the rough or something like that off the fairway, you have up to three minutes to find your ball. If you can’t find your ball within those three minutes, it’s classified as a lost ball.

And what you have to do is you have to return to the spot where you played your last stroke, and you take a drop within one club length for one stroke penalty.

Now I will say, for pace of play, what I would probably encourage you to do is follow a different USGA rule, which is to actually go up to your ball where you were looking and drop back in the fairway for a two stroke penalty instead of going back to your original spot for one stroke penalty.

Yes, you might be taking an additional stroke, but for a casual golfer, it’s pretty necessary for pace of play. And also a lot of times, if you can’t find your original ball, you might go back and have a flub shot or something like that, where now you’re basically seeing those two strokes anyway that you could have taken up near where you thought your ball was lost.

So something to consider there. But if you’re playing more tournament golf or competition golf, you would have to go back to your old spot and hit from there if you can’t find your ball.

Let’s say you’re walking around looking for your ball and you accidentally kick your ball. Well, good news for you, you found your ball. And also good news for you, there is no stroke penalty for accidentally doing that.

Now, obviously you don’t want to intentionally use the foot wedge. That would be dishonest and result in a penalty. But if you’re just walking around searching for your ball and you accidentally kick it or something like that and you move it, you can put it back in its original position without penalty.

So that’s a good rule to understand. I’ve seen people break that before where they assess themselves a penalty because they accidentally moved the ball. Well, if you’re searching for it and you just step on it or something like that, you don’t need to worry about it. Just replace it exactly how it was and you can continue on with your day.

Let’s say you’re still looking for your ball. You see a ball, but you’re not sure if it’s yours or not. There is a proper procedure for how to identify it.

Now, for a casual golfer, you probably can just pick it up real quick, look at it, and place it back down. If you’re playing more competition or you’re just trying to follow the rules as best as you can, what you would actually do is put a tee marker right where the ball is, then pick it up, identify it. You’re not allowed to clean it more than what you would need to identify the ball.

So if it’s landed in a bunch of mud or something like that, you’d obviously have to clean it off so you can identify it. But if it’s clean overall, you can’t clean it anymore. That would be considered an advantage to this process.

So you’re just looking at it and then you’re placing it back where your tee marker is.

So yeah, that’s pretty much the rules around looking for your ball.

So next is, let’s say you found your ball now and you’re kind of assessing the lie. There’s some things you can do and you cannot do about the lie. Again, the easiest thing to do is just play the ball as it lies, don’t do anything. That’s pretty much a guaranteed way for you not to break any rules, but you want to use these rules to your advantage wherever you can.

The first thing to know is you can’t break anything or bend anything out of the way. For casual golfers, I’m going to encourage you, break the twigs and stuff around. You don’t want to damage your clubs as a casual golfer. But if you’re in a tournament or something, you need to understand that you can’t bend any branches out of the way. You can’t break any branches, any twigs, anything like that. If there are things in your path, unfortunately, you just have to live with it and play around it in those cases.

If you do end up doing something like that, you would incur a two stroke penalty.

We talked about this a little bit on the tee box, where there is a designated order you’re supposed to play in. When you’re not on the tee box, the order that you would play in is the furthest person out would be the next person to go.

However, this is usually trumped by pace of play, especially for casual golfers. If you and your group have agreed to just play ready golf, you don’t need to wait for the person behind you to go. Just keep playing your shot all the way up to the green until you hole it out.

That’s okay, but in competition golf, it’s usually the person farther out. I would advise you, just like the tee box, follow this rule because it could give you an advantage. If the farther person out is going, you might have a chance to look at the wind patterns or see where it rolls once it lands on the green or something like that. It is an advantage to the person not going yet to be able to see your ball.

Next one here is advice about the line of play. This is probably one of those rules a casual golfer doesn’t run into as much either, but it is one of those interesting edge cases that we can talk about.

You are allowed under the rules to ask about the line of play. Maybe you’re not on a course you’re familiar with, or it’s just different pin placements or something like that. You are allowed to ask, “Where am I hitting?” “What’s the line?” “What obstacles might be in play?” Things like that.

You still have the same rules that apply on the tee box where you can’t ask what club someone’s taking or give advice on which club to take. As a casual golfer, it doesn’t really matter, but interesting note there that if you do do that, it would incur a two stroke penalty.

We found our ball, we kind of have some understanding of our line of play, a little bit of our lie, what we can do around that. Let’s get up to the ball and start swinging.

We’re taking a practice swing, we accidentally hit the ball. Unlike the tee box, this unfortunately would incur a one stroke penalty for you, and you would just have to hit it wherever it ended up. Or you could replace it back to its original lie for the one stroke penalty.

You kind of have two options there. Probably in most cases I would guess that if you accidentally hit the ball, you would want to replace it and then actually hit the ball. But who knows, maybe you got lucky. Maybe you’re in really tall rough or something, and you accidentally hit the ball and it pops out into the fairway. Well, maybe you just count that as your shot and play it. Either way, you can kind of choose what works best for you.

Here’s another kind of unfortunate one. It’s tough for casual golfers. Probably not many people will assess themselves a penalty in this case, but it is the rules.

If you put your club down behind the ball and the ball moves in that process, which is basically saying the ball moved when you grounded the club, you must put the ball back where it was originally for a one stroke penalty. If you don’t end up doing that, then it ends up counting as a two stroke penalty.

So we’re covering a lot of just kind of the mechanics of approaching the ball.

Let’s say you’ve been looking for a ball, you found your ball and you found someone else’s golf ball right next to yours and it’s impeding your swing. Well, you don’t have to try to play around their ball. What you can do is you can mark their ball with a tee and then you can go ahead and play your shot, and then they can replace it.

It’s important that when that ball is marked though that it can’t be cleaned or anything like that. In this case, it just has to be replaced.

This is a really interesting one that I found that not many people know about, that I think people tend to get wrong a lot. That’s what you do when your ball is embedded.

So imagine really wet conditions or something like that. You have an approach shot, you hit it up high in the air, it comes down and it just embeds in the fairway. I have heard personally a lot of people say, “Well, you play it as it lies.” Well, that’s not actually the rule.

The rule actually says that if your ball has become embedded into the ground upon landing, you are allowed to pick it up, clean it, and drop it without penalty within one club length, but no closer to the hole.

That’s a huge advantage, I think, for a lot of even casual golfers to understand. If their ball is embedded in fairway or rough or something like that, you can get your free drop off of it. That’s okay. That can save a lot of strokes. And I’ve seen a lot of people try to play embedded golf balls before and it just never ends up turning out well. So take advantage of that rule. It could really save you strokes in the end.

All right, so still kind of talking about the lie, let’s say there’s just loose impediments around your ball like twigs, rocks, things like that. You are allowed to move it. Just be really careful about making sure it doesn’t disturb your ball at all and move your ball at all. If it does, it would end up incurring a one stroke penalty.

Really, move rocks and twigs and stuff out of your path because that could damage your clubs. Especially as a casual golfer, we don’t have the money to just buy new clubs every single time we play golf. So I would say in general, follow a lot of these rules as much as you feel comfortable with. If you feel like your clubs are going to get damaged, it’s not worth it. Just move your ball or something like that. If you want to take a one stroke penalty, great in the process. Just protect your clubs.

There are moveable objects that you are permitted to move out on the course. So for example, red stakes, yellow stakes, they can be moved out of the way if they’re impeding your swing. If there’s bottles, cans, signs, other artificial objects, things like that, they can be removed without penalty. You just need to put them back after you’re done with your swing.

All right. So if there’s any sort of abnormal course condition, so these are going to be like immovable obstructions, things like walls, lightings, shelters, things like that, and then ground under repair things usually marked by a blue stake or mentioned in local rules. If there’s temporary water like puddles or animal holes, if your ball is lying in any of these sorts of things or they interfere with your stance, you are given free relief.

And this is really important. It can be used a lot.

The most common one that you’re going to run into is probably a cart path. If your ball is on the cart path, or if your stance is on the cart path, you get free relief.

Now the rules about this free relief, now I’m going to give an example of a cart path. Just understand that this is any sort of abnormal course condition.

So like I mentioned in the beginning, it includes things like immovable objects, park benches, houses, ground under repair markings, temporary water, animal holes, things like that. You always get free relief.

So even though I’m going to give this an example of a cart path, just know that replace that word cart path with anything else and you’ll understand the rules.

So what the rule is saying is you can drop the ball to the nearest point of relief.

So if you’re on the cart path and let’s say you’re a right-handed golfer, you can drop it two feet to the right of the cart path. But technically that wouldn’t be the nearest point of relief. Even though that’s nearest to the ball, your stance would still be on the cart path.

So you actually would go the opposite way to the left of the cart path, which would be the nearest point of relief for you to be completely relieved of whatever that artificial object is.

So you can drop the ball within a club length without penalty and you continue to play your shot.

This is one of those rules you probably want to make use of as much as you can, especially if you’re playing a course with full cart paths. It can really save you a lot of strokes. Even if your feet are on the cart path, you can drop it away from the cart path and even perhaps improve your lie a little bit and get a better shot into the green. So definitely use that rule. It’s an important one to understand.

So moving on to the next one now. If your ball is lost in abnormal course conditions, kind of related to the last one, but let’s say there’s a ground under repair section marked by blue stakes or mentioned in the local rules and you can’t find your ball in it, but you know for a fact your ball went in that area, you can take free relief there as well without penalty.

The same rules apply. You just drop wherever you get the nearest point of relief without penalty, and then you drop your ball within the one club length and you continue to play your shot. This has happened to me before.

Moving on to if your ball ends up on the wrong green. There’s a course that I play at that has a lot of holes that are side by side, and there have been at least two or three times that I have had a shot that has not gone on target and ended up on another green.

And what you do in those cases is you actually get free relief as well. You don’t want to damage the other green. You go ahead and pick up your ball and you drop off of the green within, I think it’s, let’s see, you have to take free relief. You go to the nearest edge of the green, not nearer to the hole, where the ball is no longer on the green and you do not stand on the green, and you drop within one club length up there.

So it doesn’t affect things too much. It just kind of gets you off the green and playing.

I definitely would encourage you guys to remember this rule. I’m sure it’s happened to you before. Don’t take a penalty or anything. Just take your free drop and move on.

So this next rule is the one that’s probably really debated a lot, is what do you do if your ball lands in a divot.

When I play with my friends, we always play with the rule that if your ball lands in a divot on the fairway, you get free relief and you just drop right next to the divot on the fairway. However, that’s not the official rule.

And this is why it’s debated a lot. The official rule is you have to play it as it lies if it lies inside of a divot. It’s an unfortunate one. I wouldn’t be surprised if it changed someday. I would encourage you to play however you want to play with this rule.

I think if your ball lands in the fairway and it rolls into a divot, you shouldn’t get penalized for that, just because it’s a result of someone else not cleaning up their last shot. I like to just pick up my ball, put it right next to the divot, and continue on playing without a penalty.

So you guys can take that as you want, but that is the actual rule though, is that you would have to play it as it lies.

So the next rule here is the unplayable ball. So at any time, you do have the option to declare a ball as unplayable. And that could be an advantage to you and it could be a strategic choice that you make.

So if the ball has an extremely bad lie, it is advisable that you declare it unplayable. And the player, you are free to choose whether to do this or not. So you don’t need to ask for someone else’s permission or anything like that. And you don’t need someone to agree to it either. If you think it’s an unplayable lie, you can just declare it as unplayable.

And what that means is you have three possibilities to take a drop. In each case, it’s only a one stroke penalty.

So you can take a drop within two club lengths of where your ball is, for one stroke penalty. So what you imagine this could be is imagine you are smack in the middle of trees and there’s just no way to get out. Even if you try to take a safe shot to the left or right, there’s just no options for you. Take the one stroke penalty as your chip shot. Move it two club lengths to the left or right for a nice shot at the green. It’s a perfect way to save you strokes as you approach the green, especially in a heavily treed course or something like that.

A second option you have is you can go back on the extension line from the hole to the ball as far back as you would like, and you can take a drop on that line. And it’s still only a one stroke penalty.

So you basically have two options from where your ball is already. You can either take two club lengths to the left or right or off center or something like that, or go straight back on your line. So you have a lot of ways you can get yourself a better shot into the green only for a one stroke penalty. Something I definitely recommend doing.

The last option you have, you could take a one stroke penalty and just go back to your original shot where the ball was originally and retake a shot from there.

So that’s a rule that I think I’m personally going to try to make use of more. I even have a time in mind recently at the end of the season where I was playing a par four and there’s a really treed line. I was up the right hand side. Ball lands right behind the tree. I was probably only like 50 yards out from the green, but I had no view of it because of this tree in my way.

Now, because of how the ball was positioned, I couldn’t really get a chip back to the fairway. I could kind of get a chip back to the right, but then it would just get more trees in my path. And I ended up trying to do that and ended up taking two or three strokes just to get out of the tree area, where what I could have done is I could have taken my one stroke penalty and dropped off to the right of the tree that had a really clear line to the green and then just do a little punch shot.

I might have had a chance of bogey in that case, or even maybe up and down for par. So that would have been a better decision for me and something I’m definitely going to keep in mind next season.

All right. So if you’ve played the hole with the wrong ball, a mistake under normal tournament conditions, that would mean you would be disqualified if you end up holing that ball by the end.

If you catch that you’re playing the wrong ball before you end up holing it, you would just have to go back to the point where you started playing the wrong ball. You would take a two stroke penalty and hopefully you would start to be able to play the correct ball.

If your ball ends up hitting some outsider, so like a person, a golf cart or something like that and it bounces off back into the green, you might have seen pros do this before. This is usually when the fan gets a signed glove or something. There’s no penalty for that. You just play your next shot as it lies.

We’ve seen YouTube clips before of an animal coming in and grabbing your ball and taking it away. No penalty for that either. If you can get your ball back, great. Just get it back, put it back to where it was or as close as you can estimate it. If you don’t get your ball back, you can just drop a new ball or place a new ball where the ball was originally.

The last rule here I have to go over from my list that I put together is a double hit. This has probably happened to people before, especially around the green. If you accidentally double hit a ball, there’s no penalty for that. You just play the next shot as it lies.

So yeah, those were all the main rules that I had to go over for the fairway and rough. Hopefully this was a really informative episode.

Until next time, thanks for listening to the Birdie Board podcast.

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