Transcripts - Episode 20: Out of Bounds Rules Explained (White Stakes, Provisionals, and Unplayables)

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

Welcome to episode 20 of the Birdie Board podcast.

I've been doing this for quite a while now. It is about mid-February, which means golf is not far away. Golf season is not far away, especially for the lower half of the country.

I can look out my window right now and I still have, I want to say, at least 8 inches of snow. So here in the Northeast, it seems like it's farther away, but I know a lot of places down south, you're not far away from golf season.

So I've been doing a rule series for quite a few episodes. Every once in a while, I'll mix something else in, but I am getting near the end. All we have left to review is out of bounds rules, then the green rules.

So this episode is all about out of bounds rules. And this is probably the area of golf that helped me the most with my game. Understanding these out of bounds rules are really important and can help you strategize how to save strokes on the course.

So how do you define out of bounds? Well, it's pretty simple compared to the penalty stakes. Penalty stakes are either yellow or red and they have different rules. Out of bounds is even more simple than that. You're looking for white stakes. If your ball is at a white stake or near it, then you might be out of bounds.

So unlike the penalty stakes, where if your ball is touching the line it's considered in the penalty area, out of bounds is a little different. If your ball is just touching the line between two stakes, it's actually not considered out of bounds. It's still considered in bounds.

So a little nuance there with the difference between white stakes and the penalty stakes, which are the red or yellow.

A lot of the nicer courses might have spray paint between the stakes so that you can see exactly where the out of bounds line is. But if you're like me, who you don't always play on the nicer courses, you just have to look and find the two nearest white stakes and mentally draw a line between those stakes and see if your ball crosses it.

I would say, in probably most cases, give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Don't be super stingy. If you're that close to the edge of an out of bounds, just say your ball is in bounds, play it. I think it's already tough, especially at a lot of amateur courses, even if your ball's out of bounds, so give yourself the benefit of the doubt there.

So you pretty much have one option if you do hit your ball out of bounds, and that's to go back to the previous spot that you hit the ball. And this can start informing strategies.

So if you see, let's say you're approaching a green, up the right-hand side you see white stakes, up the left-hand side you see red stakes. Well, what do you think is the better option to aim toward if you're going to miss?

Well, it's probably to aim more to the left near the red stakes because if you do hit it in that area by mistake, then at least you can play your ball without penalty if you find it. The white stakes are not as forgiving.

So if you hit your ball near the white stakes or in the white stake area, then your only option is to re-hit it from your current spot.

So if you're approaching this green and you're trying to make a decision of what's the lesser of the errors, you might want to be more on the red stake side rather than the white stake side.

This really applies best to me off the tee box. So if I'm seeing white stakes at one-hand side of the fairway and red stakes, or maybe it's even just open on the other side, I'm always going to try to hug that side a lot more, especially because I have high dispersion off of the tee box.

So the chances of me hitting the fairway are like 33%, and then I'm almost like perfect: 33% to the right, 33% to the left.

So if I'm trying to avoid the penalty area, I'm going to aim up the left-hand side of the fairway so that if I do go too far left, while my ball is either just in that red area or maybe it's just in an open area, if I go too far to the right, I'm still, unless I totally slice it, I'm still going to stay away from the white stake area.

And this has helped me save a lot of strokes in my golf game, and this strategy could probably help you as well.

So knowing and looking forward and seeing, okay, what sort of stakes do I have in my path can really help you make some informed decisions on how to handle it.

So let's say you do hit your ball near, or clearly into, a white stake area.

If it's clearly in a white stake area, just drop your ball and play your next shot with a one stroke penalty.

If you're not exactly sure if your ball is in a white stake area, the option you have is to play a provisional, and you by the rule have to say that you're playing a provisional or it would be a penalty for not saying it.

So just announce to the people you're playing with that you're going to play a provisional ball. Drop it where you just hit your ball and continue playing that ball until you get up to the point that you've hit your other ball out of bounds.

Once you get to that point, leave your provisional wherever you hit it and walk and look for your ball near the white stake area. You have three minutes to find your ball.

If you don't find it, you go back and play your provisional with a one stroke penalty.

If you do find it, you now have to look to see if it is out of bounds or not.

If it's out of bounds, you go back to your provisional and you play your provisional with the one stroke penalty.

If it's in bounds, by rule, you have to play that ball.

No matter how good your other shot is, try not to cheat here. It's only hurting you.

If you had a great provisional shot and you do in fact find your shot that you thought was out of bounds and it wasn't, just play that shot. It's not worth risking your integrity on that or anything like that. You'll be more proud of your game at the end of the day if you play the shot by the rules.

So that's how you can handle white stake areas.

Like I said, it's very simple. If your ball is in a white stake area, it's a one stroke penalty and that's it. That's all you need to remember. Your only option is to re-hit it from where you were before.

You can hit a provisional to help pace of play.

A couple of tangential rules here we can talk about is that you are allowed to stand in an out of bounds area. That is okay to do. That's not breaking any rules. However, you are not allowed to move any white stakes in the process. So something to keep in mind there.

And then, let's see. I'm just looking over my rules here and seeing if I forgot anything. I actually got through this, I think, a little quicker than I expected.

So with that being said, let's see if I forgot. Oh yeah, so this is a good one.

In this kind of a recall to an old rule that we talked about, let's say you hit it near a white stake area and you end up finding your ball even after hitting a provisional. Great. But unfortunately, your ball is not playable. Maybe it's right up against a tree or something like that.

Well, you just have to play the unplayable rules at that point, and we can do a quick refresher on what those are.

So you have a couple options if you want to declare your ball unplayable, and no one has to agree with you either. You can just declare a ball unplayable any point you want.

And to do that, you just simply say, "Hey, I'm declaring this as unplayable," and you get a couple options.

The first option you have is you can take a drop within two club lengths of where your ball is for a one stroke penalty, no nearer to the hole.

So if you're right up against a tree right behind it, there's probably no reason to try to hit it out. Like you're going to hit it out to the left or the right and then you'll go to the green.

Well, if you see I have two club lengths to the left or right of this tree, I can just drop to the left in the rough and have a clear shot to the green.

There's no reason to try to chip it out to the left. You just take the one stroke penalty, drop it to the left of the tree or the right of the tree, no closer to the hole, and take your shot into the green.

You're going to have probably a lot better error rate with that, especially as an amateur golfer, than trying to chip it back out to the fairway or something like that.

Now again, it's all depending on your lie and your exact setup.

So who knows, maybe you're the best chipper in the world and you can get out of any unplayable lie and get it back to the fairway. Great, good for you.

I think the average amateur golfer, though, would probably do better with just declaring an unplayable lie and taking the two club lengths left or right, no closer to the hole, to give themselves a better shot into the green.

So that's the first option you have.

The second option you have during declaring an unplayable lie is going straight back on the extension line.

So maybe your ball is inside of a bush and you found it, and it's a wide bush so you can't really gain any advantage going left or right two club lengths.

Well, that's where you might want to just go straight back, and you can go straight back as far as you want.

So go 10, 15 yards or so, get yourself exactly the distance. Maybe the bush is at 85 yards and you're really good with your 100 club. Go back 15 yards and play your 100 club. I've done this all the time. It helps a lot.

I've even gone back like 40 or 50 yards just to get the club that I'm more confident with.

For example, I had a shot where I was right behind the tree like this. I was about 30 yards out, and I was just kind of feeling off that day with my touchy shot. So I just went back to my 140 yards.

Even though I gave up 110 yards there, I just wanted a full pitching wedge, which was like 130, 140 for me that day. And I got the ball on the green. It was much better for me that day.

And I think that's a big key too: stay in tune with yourself during a day because the option you take during an unplayable lie might be different based off the day. Some day you might just want to drop it to the left. Some day you might want to be a little more aggressive and actually try the chip shot back out to the fairway if you're feeling really confident. Or you might want to just drop on the line.

So we've gone over two rules with unplayable lie, which is you can drop left or right up to two club lengths, no closer to the hole. You can drop on the line of play straight back from your ball.

And then the third option is kind of like the out of bounds option. You can go back to your original spot and hit it.

All of that is just for a one stroke penalty, and you don't need concurrence from anyone else if you wanted to declare a ball unplayable.

So a lot of good rules there for you guys to understand. I think it's like I just keep saying, the winter is the best time to learn this stuff. A lot of us aren't playing golf, so I think this is how you can really get better at your game without the ability to actually go out and practice.

So I'm going to transition now. Those were kind of the rules I want to go over today.

So let's talk a little bit about, I guess, just a little bit of a personal update, and then we'll talk a little bit about Birdie Board as well.

I have been practicing a lot of what I've been preaching downstairs in my basement.

So I've talked about in my basement I have tall enough ceilings to fully swing a club. Now, I don't have like a simulator or anything set up yet. That's a dream one day.

But what I've talked about in previous episodes is, and you've heard it on the episode with Jeff Jones, the PGA coach, is the importance of just swinging every day. Even if you're not making contact with a ball, just getting into that habit is super beneficial.

So I've been doing that for the last maybe three weeks or so, just going in my basement and swinging the club. I choose different clubs every day, maybe a seven iron, wedge, hybrid, wood, driver. I try to mix it up.

And what I'm just working on is getting my numbers right and getting my feeling correct. And not having a ball in front of me, I will say, has surprisingly been refreshing on trying to improve my game.

Being able to just swing and not worry about the contact of the ball, it might sound counterintuitive, but it is really beneficial and does slow you down in terms of your mental ability because you start assessing your swing differently.

Usually, we assess our swing based off of where the ball goes. And you should know that that's not, it sounds weird, but that's not always the best assessment of your swing.

You could feel like you have a really good swing but have one little thing off, like an open club face, and your ball goes flying to the right even if you have a good swing.

So being able to kind of assess your swing without just the feedback of the ball has been really beneficial in my own game.

So a couple of episodes ago, I talked about a lot of the different angles that pros have during their swing. The first being, if you hold your lead hand out front with the back of your hand down the target line, the question that I had is, how much does that hand rotate during a swing? And the answer was surprising and it was less than like 20 degrees.

Another question that I had is, how far across does your lead arm come across your chest during a swing? The answer was about the same, a lot less than you would expect, less than 30 degrees during your whole swing.

So I've started practicing that without a ball down in my basement just to get a feel for it, and it's been incredible because it's allowed me to focus in on just getting that mechanic down without even worrying about the ball.

But I'm practicing making sure I don't rotate that lead wrist too much. I'm practicing making sure I don't have my arm come across my chest too much during my swing.

And because it has forced me not to make contact, something that I had in the past with practicing my swing is I would always try to rush to actually hitting the ball.

Well, I just simply don't have that option in my basement. I don't have any net set up. I don't have any simulator. I can't hit the ball. So the only thing I can do is just continue to practice this motion that I know is right.

And it's been extremely beneficial because now I feel like I'm swinging the club smoothly and naturally without even thinking about it.

So when I do get back behind a ball, I don't have to think about these mechanics of my swing. I already have that ingrained from the last three weeks of practice.

Now what those results actually are I won't know until I actually get in like a simulator and can actually hit a ball.

But I am super optimistic and I will definitely share how it goes when I get to that point.

But another thing that's helped me a lot is another step I've talked about, which is tempo.

So I've been able to get my angles a lot more in control with my basement practice. And since I've been able to get natural with that, the next best thing I was able to practice is the tempo, which is I like the count one, two, three, where you take your backswing on one, you pause at the top at two, giving yourself a second for your hips rotation to start, and then three is when you start to drop your hands and come through.

Well, I've been practicing that now. Now that I've got my angles right, I've been able to do that naturally. Now I can practice the tempo.

So over the last three weeks, I've been able to get my angles right and my tempo natural without even hitting a ball.

And I feel like I just wanted to be able to get into that flow. If I had a ball in front of me, again, I don't know the exact results until I actually get into a simulator.

I do have plans again next Thursday, well, I guess it would be this Thursday. So I'll definitely let you guys know the results if I remember next Monday.

But I am very optimistic of it, and I do think it could be a huge key to anyone's practice. Try for a significant amount of time to practice without a ball and see the results. I bet it will surprise you.

Alright, so last topic I wanted to go over is just some Birdie Board updates.

So with golf season not far around the corner, I've been pushing really hard with just trying to get the word out about Birdie Board. I have no marketing experience, so everything I'm doing is new.

This podcast is about Birdie Board, so I'm just going to straight up ask: if you guys haven't tried Birdie Board yet, it's free.

I have a super generous free tier because I'm not really concerned about making money on it right now. I just want people using it, especially since most of the country isn't even golfing right now.

Just go ahead and download Birdie Board, check it out, see if you like it or not. This would be an awesome time too for feedback.

If you go to birdieboard.golf, there's a page just for feedback that you guys can provide me.

If you are able to play golf before the winter ends, you're the type of person I really want feedback from because it's hard to get feedback right now with so much of the country not playing golf, including myself.

So if you can use Birdie Board, please do leave me some feedback using that form on Birdie Board. If you want to go back, it would be really, really helpful.

So that's everything I want to go over for this episode of Birdie Board. Thank you for listening.

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