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Ball out of Bounds

• Ivories78 61 Posts

  Tue, Jun 29 2010 9:47 PM

  Does the ball have to be 'lost'?

  I'm sure that I would physically go look for and probably find my ball if it went out of bounds. Unless it's a money making ploy (tour balls are not cheap), I think it to be unrealistic. 

  Is there a possibility of changing this in the program, to get your ball back?

  Cheers.

• WGTniv 1,788 Posts

  Tue, Jun 29 2010 10:50 PM

  Hi lvories,

  It's not likely that would change.  Unfortunately, it would be extremely difficult to cover every inch of every course to discern whether or not a ball could be retrieved from any particular location. 

  While there are some areas where you might find your ball 20 yards off the course there are also many areas where 5 yards off the target lands you in thick brush, a gorse bush or in protected marsh lands.  It would not be realistic to retrieve a ball that went into one of those areas.

  So, you can probably see the dilemma now.  Either way it's implemented it's not going to be entirely realistic.  In the interest of easing player confusion about why X ball was able to be found 20 yards OB, but Y ball could not be found 10 feet OB we decided that all OB areas will be treated equally and will create a lost ball situation.

  Unfortunately, there will be times when programming limitations interfere with the by-the-letter implementation of the game and this is one such limitation.

• andyson 6,415 Posts

  Wed, Jun 30 2010 6:51 AM

  WGTniv:

  Hi lvories,

  It's not likely that would change.  Unfortunately, it would be extremely difficult to cover every inch of every course to discern whether or not a ball could be retrieved from any particular location. 

  While there are some areas where you might find your ball 20 yards off the course there are also many areas where 5 yards off the target lands you in thick brush, a gorse bush or in protected marsh lands.  It would not be realistic to retrieve a ball that went into one of those areas.

  So, you can probably see the dilemma now.  Either way it's implemented it's not going to be entirely realistic.

  No need to make the solution that difficult.  2 ideas come to my mind.

  1. Any ball coming to rest in the first 3 (or 5 or 10) feet of OB is retrievable and not lost.

  or

  2.  For any lost ball situation, 10 (or 25 or 50) % of the balls are found and not lost.  Perhaps a small penalty would be imposed on the remaining life of the ball.  You get the ball back but lose 10% of its life.

   

  To mimic reality, a brand new ball, first hit, would always be lost  when hit  OB, in the water, or in the deep weeds. ;~)