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Lost ball next to cartpath

• whitesabbathica9 8 Posts

  Mon, Feb 15 2016 12:33 PM

  This week WGT swiped a near-new Callaway ball from me after it hit a tree, bounced on the cart path and softly landed out of bounds mere feet away in the 30% rough.

  The standard rule is if the ball is "Out of Bounds" you lose it, but considering the location it realistically would have been easily recoverable.  Many near-the-edge water hazards would also be easily recoverable.

  I think WGT should consider penalizing only strokes, not balls, when landing out of bounds or in hazards less than 30 feet away from in-play areas (my ball retriever is 30 ft).  I nearly broke my computer screen when the "Ball taken out of play" message popped up.

• alosso 21,070 Posts

  Mon, Feb 15 2016 11:45 PM

  No offence intended - the game is different here.

  Most rules apply, some do not, and there are limitations to a few rules. A major one is "no player choices" which means no unplayable, no deliberate drops.

  The other one is, OOB balls are gone for good (think of undue delay), and there are more OOBs than on the real courses. Here, the mini maps give good but not unfailable hints to the limits. Me thinks that these extras are there because they didn't shoot photos from these places - all the left sides of STA are clear indications.

  So, don't worry about it but take it like a man ;)

  I see ball wear and lost balls as the entry fee to the game. Luckily, we're free to decide how much to pay so we may downgrade if a lost ball hurts too much.

  Have fun!!

• MichaelStroke 2,066 Posts

  Wed, Feb 17 2016 8:23 PM

  If you want to act on that premise, Merion should have no water hazards at all, since most Merion water holes are streams that are all of 2 inches deep.

• Robert1893 7,719 Posts

  Fri, Feb 19 2016 7:00 PM

  alosso:

  I see ball wear and lost balls as the entry fee to the game. Luckily, we're free to decide how much to pay so we may downgrade if a lost ball hurts too much.

  Have fun!!

  Generally, I agree. But every once in a while there are some weird bounces that just don't make sense. Last week, I was playing Merion. The long story short is I switched balls for a round and went to a ball rated for less distance. I hit basically the same as I had the balls I had been using that were rated 5.0 (IIRC). But the ball rated 3.0 went farther, hit right before the one bunker, and then bounded straight out of bounds.
  
  That made no sense to me. And it wasn't the wind. Thankfully, it was just a Calloway (L33) ball and really didn't cost all that much. But it was the first hit on the ball. Why is it always the first hit! :-)

• alosso 21,070 Posts

  Fri, Feb 19 2016 10:48 PM

  In such moments, golfers quote "rub of the green", while gamers open their drawers to pull out their tin foil hats ;)