Golf Smarter number four hundred and twenty nine, published on April twenty five, twenty fourteen.
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If you're practicing, that's not a stroke. That's a swing because you don't have intent to hit the ball. So you know, quite often we're practicing a little too close and we knock it off. That is not a stroke. There is no penalty for.
That, okay, So let me try to graphically explain this one. So your go to address the ball, you place your driver right down next to it, and it taps the ball and the ball falls off the tee.
That is not a stroke.
That is not a stroke. Because you'll have guys in your forest and all. That's one and you can turn around and say no, it's not right, okay.
Good. On the opposite side, you can swing with the intent of putting it out there and it go two inches. That it would have that is a stroke and that is your ball played.
More on the Golf Rules Stroke Play with Richard Todd. This is Golf Smarter. Welcome back to Golf Smarter, Richard.
Thanks so much, Bred, it's great.
To have you on again. I want to get right back into the conversation about your fun little book called the Golf Rules Stroke Play. Learn the rules of golf by watching others break them again, a fun little read. I was picking your brain. I'm so curious. You know, now that you have the book out, do you talk to people about rules or do you get a sense that people always follow the rules or that they admit they broke the rule? Do you get any sense of that?
Yes? Actually, I was just at the Cleveland Golf Show. Twenty five thousand people came through, and most everybody I'm sure it's tongue in cheek, but it's a lot of smart alec comments saying, oh, we don't play by the rules, we don't need the rules, I don't like the rules, those kind of things. Although we know that at least to a great extent, everybody plays by the rules. You might have your personal ones that you like to bend
a little as you were saying before. Inside the leather is good, but overall, selling the rule book was akin to setting up an alcoholics anonymous table at a bar. At least, that was my takeaway from everybody that came by. Loved the idea, but they were shy of admitting that they knew less than everything.
So they don't admit that they're breaking the rules, but they also won't admit that they know the rules exactly. Wow. Well, uh, I'll fall in that kind of I know, I admit, I admit I know there are rules that I break because I just don't care. I think that they're absurd. I think that there's some of these rules are just ridiculous and I and it's it's part of my whole issue with the us GA and having a driver up there,
you know up It just drives me crazy. Why to me, so many of these rules are to be And I know I'm gonna really upset a lot of people with this, but I get the sense that these rules are to be the advocate for the golf course, not the advocate for the golfer.
I've heard you say.
That before, and it never made sense to you then, And it doesn't make sense to you.
I know, I understand what you're saying, but I have more of a perspective after dealing with the USGA and for the book and going through the rural school, and to make another metaphor, I feel like the USGA is a police officer. Nobody wants to see a police car in their rear view mirror with the lights on, but when somebody is trying to break into their house, they don't mind calling nine one one for some reason. That's just the way people feel. You know, if you're speeding,
it's very simple. You know, here's the speed limit. If you break it, there's the potential for the penalty.
So if you're a victim, that's one thing. If you're the perpetrator.
Exactly, so you know, the question is that you are you're breaking the rule intentionally and you're trying to get away with something or is it an accident and you just need to talk your way out of the two stroke Banetley Okay.
Fine, so let's let's let's pick into the book. I would love to go over some of the rules that seem to be common mistakes or common misinterpretations or just I didn't know that type of rules and so I'd love to do two things. One, I'm going to ask you a series of questions and see if we can get a ruling from our official, even though you're not the official, you wrote a book. And then also, if anybody,
let's just do this. If anybody has any rules questions they're not sure of and would like clarification, send me an email. I'll get Richard on Skype and we'll do a little video of Richard explaining that rule to you. I mean, and if it works or not. So just go click on the Hey Fred button and send me your question and we'll get Richard to answer the question. So Richard here, let's start right at the tea box.
Is there's rules there, you know, like are the rules where the your playing partners are allowed or not allowed to stand while you're teeing off?
There are not rules, but that's an etiquette.
Issue and that's in the next book.
That is in the next book. You know. The tea box, of course, is an interesting thing. It is defined by the tea markers, which actually the tea box goes to the outside of the tea markers. So if you depending on if you have the little balls or blocks, it actually extends on the outside.
Of that how far outside just to.
The end of it, right to the outside outside edge, right, and it's two club blanks back. Granted that don't remember the USGA specifying which club. But you know, for some people, like there's an issue in the book where one of the players knows he it's his eight iron one hundred and thirty five yards and the tea markers at one hundred and thirty and so he backs up five yards. Well,
that was outside of the actual defined tea box. And so that's something you can't do, okay, because if you're playing outside of the tea box, you effectively didn't tee off properly, then you can qualification.
Right. Are you allowed to not use a T on the tea box, Yes, but you're not allowed to use a T anywhere else. But I'm just making I'm just asking here.
I've heard that starters should do that. But yes, no, you cannot use a tee throughout the green or through the green as we were just talking about. Four that's the definition of the area between the tea box and the putting green through the green, okay.
And when you say that, you can set up two club lengths generally, I would think that's people using their driver. Whenever there's a two club length thing, people pull out the longest club, which would be the driver. Right. Usually you can't use your you're not you're not allowed to use your ball retriever that has still a scopic ball retriever, right right, Okay, So.
And the interesting thing with that is the ball has to be in the T box.
Yeah, That's what I was going to ask, is like can the ball be well, it can't be right to the outside edge because you may hit it. But if you put the ball like right, say you're a right handed hitter and you go to the tea box when you're facing the fairway the T box, it's on the far left right, the left side, which is for a right handed here, so you put the you put the ball just inside that that marker, but you could stand. Is it legal to stand outside that?
Yes?
Okay, good, good to know you.
You'd have to have a really strange fairway that you'd want to be able to do that, but yeah, it's an option.
Well no, I mean it's like I know when like when I go bowling. Okay, And it's a weird analogy here, and you know you're from Ohio. You bowl, Oh yeah, it was not good. So anyway, so like you know, you got the seven to ten, you know the outside pins right, you got the ten pin over on the far right. Now, to me, it makes much more sense to start on the far left of the lane and give yourself the angle to go at it. Then try to just hug the ball straight down the right side
and hope that it hits it right. So for me, the same thing. If my target line is to put the ball on the right side of the fairway to give me a better angle to approach the green, then I'm going to hit from the left side of the t box.
It's something you could do.
Yes, okay, that's not a rule thing. That's just how I approach it. It's like, yeah, I'll hit on the far side. I think, now you've listened, because I don't listen to my interviews when I'm doing them. I'm just like recording them so I hear. But I remember when I asked when I had the woman at TPC Scottsdale and I asked her if she noticed anything, and she she said to me, oh, yeah, you tea up on the right side of the tea box every time, and
I'm like, I do. I don't think I do, And she said that I do.
That is exactly what came into my mind when you gave your description.
Is what she said. Yes, dude, you're not supposed to take notes on the on the shows. You're just supposed to listen. It's a podcast.
It's a great podcast.
Stop. Thank you.
I appreciate that's very nice.
Can you tell people in my family that it's like we're thet They're like, why do you still do that?
Okay, let's go to the book.
Yeah, you kidding, it's it's already in a frame and no, it's going to be though. I'm just so touched. Water hazards. Let's get back to because we talked about water hazards and you know, I kind of caught you off guard there. Let's go over the water. You've done a little research, now, what can you tell me?
First, we're talking about We mentioned water hazards versus lateral water hazards before, and the lateral water hazard can actually be part of a water hazard, but the lateral part is positioned so that you can't play behind it. You're outside of the you can't drop a ball behind the water hazard and still be in the playing area. That goes back to what we were saying. Okay, so there's four things you can do when you're in a water hazard.
First one is play it as it lies. And this is one of those things you got to think about for a second because most people like, well, my ball's in the water, how can I play it? Well, your ball doesn't have to be in the water to be in a water hazard. You know, if you see those those red lines or the red steaks, you're you could technically be in the water hazard but still have a nice dry approach way.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Oh caught you with that one. Huh.
Well, no, it's like, say, say that the golf course, you know, the water begins and there's crocodiles, you know, the waters there, and the ball is like three or four inches before it gets into the water, and yet there's a red line that's been spray painted onto the grass about two feet away from the water. Now that red line is ob is it not?
Now that's well the water that's a water hazard.
Okay, that says it's the water red lines. So even though it's inside the red line, but not in the water. You can still hit from there without penalty. Yes, oh okay.
So you can hink you and as we're saying, you can go back to the tee or not necessarily a tea box, but you can go back to where your last shot was, which may not be in the tea box. You could have been like a Part five, you could have put it in the water from your second, third, or eighth shot. So there's number two three is we're talking about dropping a ball online from the tee or not the t the flag stick behind the water hazard, and you can go as far back as you want, but.
You have to stay online from where you pull the ball out the line, not the line your ball flight was, but the line to the flag.
Yeah, where it crossed the water hazard to the flag. And there are options where you were saying about dropping within two club links, not near the hole. Now, an interesting part on that one is we know closer to the hole, we can see that, but that line goes left and right, so you literally could possibly drop on the other side of the water being the same distance
from the hole. It's an interesting one. The rule book does have a nice little diagram for that, and I'm sure the USG website also discusses that or has that same graphic. But again, this just goes to show you why it's so difficult to play by the rules. Yeah, as opposed to just take it back and hit another one, as you were saying before, you could hit a provisional, but there are other options.
Yeah. Then I'm still not clear on when you're allowed to just move the ball, the difference between taking the ball all the way back to where you originally hit or just saying, you know, out it's over here, but I'm moving it so it's in play here and hitting it here and taking hitting three versus going back to the T box hitting three. Is there an instance where I'm allowed to hit it from where it is out of bounds and just move it laterally and then take my third shot from there? Is that legal?
Every I'm trying to say yes, but I'm having a tough time remembering the exact situation.
Yeah. Yeah, We're gonna have to do a little more research on that one.
But yeah, that goes back to your question you ask me a little earlier. Do people come up and ask me rule questions? And that happened a lot at the golf show. And I'm an author. I'm not a rules official for the USGA, so I will from time to time just like everybody else. Forget how that rule goes.
Dude, you're a compliance guy.
It doesn't mean we're always right. That's our goal.
Well that you know. I don't believe the rules are always right, but I have to play by them. He's not comment on that. No, Okay, are you? Are we there more water hazard things that we should know?
Yes, but you know that's more than enough for today. All right, so much to have fun with?
Yeah, right, right, right right? Let's see what about testing hazards? What is the ruling on that? What does that mean? Like you know with bunkers? I remember that? Is that a us open Like if it's if.
You know, are you talking about Let's see what was that Johnson?
Was that Dustin Johnson?
Justin Johnson?
If it's it's a hazard?
Right?
And he was like that he got penalized and laws It was like terrible.
You know, it's funny. Is I actually struck up a conversation with one of the presenters at last year's Real School about that, and he was laughing because he was there and he was telling me how every caddy and player was told over and over and again, you know they were they were shown where all the bunkers are at. And even as I guess as Dustin was going up there, his caddy was told, that's a that's a bunker hazard. So what we see on TV doesn't always actually happen
is the way we think it does. Uh, and sometimes they just don't pay attention. So uh, but yes, to answer your question, you can. You can dig your feet in. You can, I think the rules call that getting a firm stance. Uh. You cannot take a practice stroke that means hitting the sand, but you can take a practice swing into the air. Again, that goes back to your h the legal descriptions of swing versus stroke.
Like my ball versus the A ball.
Right right, So as long as you don't swing into the sand, you're okay in those in those situations.
Okay, okay. So then testing hazards no, no, correct, cannot have your club touch the hazard while practicing correct, Okay, don't do it. Don't do that, but they have to be designated. Now, obviously that was tournament play and there was you know, like that hazard that he got penalized for it was like the size of a size seven shoe, right, and I.
Believe there were a spectator standing in it too, Yeah, exactly. It makes it even more difficult to.
Oh that was so painful. Yeah, that was so painful. Okay, So you really, if you're just playing, you should know your course. But I mean they're probably.
No, there are, Yes, that's always an interesting question to ask before you t off, you know, at the starter and what is defined as the hazards on the courses, and you know they'll always give you recommendations and suggestions and things to watch out for because you know they know the course and they want you to have a good time.
Yes, sure they do, all right, Well, they want you to come back, that's what they want. You care if you enjoy yourself or not. They want you to shoot on hundred and thirty. So then then I guess that would bring up the conversation about debris or what are they called obstacles or impediments.
Loose or faced impediments and.
Fixed.
Yes, I'm sorry, I'm losing my thought process again.
And I understand that. I apologize. You know, we're three hours difference on time zone, and I'm just throughout. You know, I'm getting it's getting late in your day, and I apologize you get a pot.
You had made a comment earlier about the being on the tee box and knocking the ball off the tee.
Yeah, there's gonna go.
That kind of goes with being in the bunker. Is it a stroke or is it a swing? If you're practice practicing, that's uh, not a not a stroke. That's a swing because you don't have intent to hit the ball. So you know, quite often we're practicing a little too close and we knock it off. That is not a stroke. There is no penalty for that, okay.
So like so let me let me try to graphically explain this one. So your tea, you're you've teed up the ball, you're about to do it. You go to address the ball, you place your driver right down next to it, and it taps the ball and the ball falls off the tee.
That is that is not a stroke.
That is not a stroke. Because you'll have guys in your forest and all going that's one you're and you can turn around and say no, it's not right, okay, good.
Now on the opposite side, you can swing with the intent of putting it out there two seventy five and it go that two inches that it would have. That is a stroke and that is your ball played. And some people think, well, okay, I went three inches, let me just pull it back, put it back on the tee. Well, effectively you've gone back to what we just talked about, that stroke and distance, and.
And then you you do not get to tee it up again right at that point? Well, no, the balls you play it where it lies. If you only had three inches, you got to hit it there, right, okay, okay, And and but what about uh say you take a practice swing. No, you take you address the ball. You take your swing and miss the ball completely. It has happened.
It has happened. And that is a stroke because you had the intent of hitting it.
So if you swing and miss completely and this was your swing, but you're missing and the ball is still sitting exactly where it was when you started, that counts as a stroke.
That strike one.
Yes, oh wow, No I don't do that. I do that. No, never, never do that. No, but I've seen I've seen it happen because I don't I play with anybody. It's like, oh, you've never played golf. Come on, let's go on. This will be fun. But so that actually counts as a stroke. That would be defeating if you were that happened to you and you weren't very good players, Like, well, I don't want to play. That's going to count.
At least there's no penalty because you don't have to, you know, bring the ball back. You're still in a good lie.
What do you mean there's no penalty. I didn't hit it and it counts, well, there's no penalty. But you're right. I like that you actually said strike one that you know that counts as a swing. Say you hit your ball and it goes into the woods, and I hope I'm okay with this. It goes into the woods and the ball lands under some stuff that has fallen from the tree, you know, and then there's a branch here and there, and there's some leaves and the balls under there.
And what am I allowed to do to make it so I can get a clean shot at the ball?
No, we've we saw again. Not to bring up the tour. There was an interesting one not too long ago. I think it was down a Hilton head where it was live thick brush and in the backswing. If you clear out some of that brush, that is a penalty, even though I don't know how you could not do it.
Wait live but live brush, yes.
Some tall weeds. Okay, And I think there's been other people that have called a penalty on themselves or something which somebody watching from TV at home. But you've got to be very careful about changing the lie.
So am I allowed to if it's if it goes into the fescue and there's all this tall grass around it and I can get to it. But if I hit it, it's just going to get caught up in this tall stuff. So I can't pat down the grass in front of it on the direction my SHOT's going, I can't correct.
You can't go in there and clear out your path. H Okay, And no, I don't know how you'd really, I guess just smack away and try.
To Can you say you know? But you can say listen, I know that if I try to hit this, it's not going anywhere. I'm going to take five or six strokes. I'm stuck in this. Can you just can you say I'm going to take a drop, I'm going to move the ball and take a drop over there, you.
Can play it as a drawing a blank on the terminology shown unplayable.
Lie, unplayable Ie, Okay.
I'm trying to think though, where your drop zone is at very if I'm sure it's going to be close to where the ball's at. So if you're if you're surrounded by fifteen feet of this stuff, I don't think you're going to get out easily.
Right, But there's a penalty involved with that. I mean you can.
Exactly right, yes, And that kind of goes back with the rule you're not trying to get out of trouble because you know I played the course as it lies.
No, I'm just trying to get closer.
You're trying to well, right, but you're trying to get relief from something that is not normal, like on a cart path. And that's probably one area that most people don't understand. You can be on a cart path and most everybody will drop to the fairway side of the cart path. Well, that may not be your quote quote closest point of relief. It depends if you're a right
hand or a left hander. You know, you you literally have to almost measure where that ball's at and how far you have to move it so that you can take a stance to play the ball. And it may be to the inside, it may be into the rough. And I've even seen where your closest point of relief could be right behind a tree. Now you're not taking relief. You're not trying to better your next shot. You're just
taking relief from the car path. That doesn't mean that you're going to have a great next shot, but it means you're not going to hit on the carpath right.
And if you do land on the card path and you take relief from that, is there a penalty. No, So you should not hit from the card.
Path unless you have no good relief. I mean you can get relief from the car path, but that could put you into a more troublesome position. You could have roots on one side tree, maybe the dirts all tore up.
Do you remember, now this is funny. Do you remember the interviews that I did with the caddies at Pebble Beach a couple of years ago, number of years.
Ago about using some other guy's club.
Yes, I love that story. I love the guys, The guys like they were playing you know, I gotta play it real, liies gotta play it real lies. And the guy's like, he landed on the card path and it was like like it was asphalt. It wasn't just a cement. It was asphalt, right, So there's rocks in it and pebbles and it's rough. And the guy was like, oh, I'm going to just take relief here, and his playing partner said, no, got to play it where it lies. Now. Was he wrong?
Well, yes, that's not the rules. The rule says you could you can take free relief from there. Those two were they Well, again, they broke the rules before they even started because they decided that they were going to play everything down and that was contrary to taking your a loud relief mm and so yes. And then the golfer that was hitting asked if he could take a practice wing, and the golfer said sure, right, took several practice wings.
And he took several practice wings and and he's like, you know, he's making sure. Then there's sparks flying from the club and you know it's just he's just destroying the golf club. I loved this story. And finally he takes the shot and sticks it, puts it right next to the pin and his playing partner said, wow, that was a great shot. Which club did you use? And he said your six iron? I thought that was funny, now it was it was, But now wait a minute,
using your partner's six iron is illegal? Correct?
Okay? You can share clubs as long as the total number of clubs don't exceed fourteen.
Whoa total number of clubs that you use and around or because you may be carrying fourteen, but you're not going to hit your seven iron at all today, you can't.
It's in your bag, You're going to use it. Okay, it's available to you.
Right, So if you're only carrying.
I never thought about that one. He probably he's got a penalty for having too many clubs, right.
So that you can carry thirteen clubs and say to your buddy, I didn't bring my hybrid today. Can I borrow yours? And as long as you've got thirteen clubs in your bag, that's okay.
Well, it's okay one way. I'm trying to think of the other golfer because now he's shared a club. I'm not sure how that falls. I think he might be Okay, it gets a little tricky there. Oh, sure, the penalty can.
Go, where's the lawyers when we need them exactly?
Another point about the rules that we're getting into is it's not always about penalizing yourself. It's about the opportunities that you missed, like dropping it off the cart path or taking it out of the embedded life so you don't take four strokes to move it a foot and a half. So the rules are there just to try to make the game more enjoyable, or at least even.
That's making the game more enjoyable is being able to tee it up every time? What about cleaning the ball? You know sometimes you'll get when where there's win. There are when people say winter rules, Is that an official designation? Do you know?
It is an official designation. It's called preferred lies in the book, and it's there for the care of the course. Okay, that hole or maybe the entire grasp because of the weather conditions. They don't want you taking big chunks of sod out so you can move the ball slightly so that you have a better lie, so that you don't do as much damage to the course.
Sure, but what if you've got a big chunk of mud on your ball?
There are times that you can clean the ball, but just I'm not sure how the preferred lies rolls in with cleaning your ball. I don't think that that's an option there. Wow, of course you can clean it on the putting green.
On the putting green, yes, and.
After your market, before you tee off, you can clean your ball slightly for identification purposes. You know, you might have a big clump of dirt, but that dirt might be right over your marking and you need to be able to identify. So there are opportunities where you can touch up the ball a little bit. Playing an unplayable live believe that's an option too, where you can clean your ball before you redrop. So, m okay, a lot of fun stuff.
A lot of fun stuff. Let's see, I'm gonna throw one more at you. Let's see if you can come up with your ball. You've just hit your ball from the fairway. You're now on the green, and your playing partner hits up and comes up short of the green. He's just on the fringe. And then he goes to take his next shot from the fringe, and in the process of hitting it from the fringe, he hits your ball. Is that a penalty or is that okay, because you
haven't gotten up to mark your ball yet. I mean, you know, obviously you're going to go mark your ball what you're allowed to do, right and pick it up. Okay, But if he hits it from off the green, no matter what club he's using. And this is one thing that cracks me up all the time. People say, oh, I had three putts there. It's like, no, you had three strokes with your putter, but you only had two
official putts. Correct. Just because you're using your putter doesn't mean it counts as a putt because people putt from off the green all the time, right, okay, so excuse me. So then now, guys, he's using his putter, he's on the fringe and he hits it and it hits your ball. Is that a penalty? And if it is, well, whose ball gets moved? Or do they both? How does that work?
All? Right? Hopefully I get this right. There is no penalty. The ball that was there first sitting will be replaced for no penalty. The player that was just hitting that knocked the ball. I believe that's a rub of the green and his ball stays where it bounced off.
So one gets moved The ball that's originally there gets moved back to where it was, and the other one wherever it ricocheted onto that stays where it is, right, Okay, Now he hits that shot and it trickles from the fringe. He hits his approach shot, it trickles just over the fringe and makes it onto the first two inches of the green. Now he's actually putting on the green, and you still haven't moved your ball because you're on the opposite of the green, and for whatever reason, and he
puts it and it hits you your ball. Is that a penalty?
Yes?
How much of a penalty?
Two strokes? Most everything is two strokes for match or for stroke play. Match play is usually the loss of whole.
Okay, okay, So two strokes meaning I'm hitting my third shot. Let's see, I'm hitting you hit hitting my third shot. I hit his ball for my my third shot. Ye, and now I'm a two penalty strokes. So now my next stroke four or five, I'm now hitting six, right or I'm hitting five.
You're hitting six because you hit three, you four and five is your penalty, and then your next shot will be stroke will be six.
Okay, But on the on the out of bounds situations, you're you hit it in, you pull it out, that's penalty. You get one stroke penalty.
Well you're hitting the first it counts and then your penalty stroke coming back.
And so you when you're hitting a and you're hitting three not four, that's okay, right dude, I am. I know you got to be exhausted for me grinding you like this. I'm I'm I'm tapped out, but I really enjoy your time. And again, I can't thank you enough for your long term support of the podcast and your very kind words. And I'm still don't get why you would dedicate your book, but now that you've done it, you've got to dedicate all three of them to me,
So screw you, buddy, And again, thanks so much. And I really want to advise anyone who's interested in getting more about learning the rules so you can repeat them to your friends. Forget the Rules of Golf written by the USGA is it's little, but it's little pages because they want you to put it in your back pocket, but it's over two hundred pages long. No the golf
role stroke play. Learn the rules of golf by watching others break them, which actually is kind of fun because you get yourself into situations going I've been there, I know that, and you start getting to know the people that are in the book. It's a lot of fun.
Pick that up.
It's in the Golfer's mart The Golf Rules by Richard Todd. Richard, thanks again, man, thank you, I appreciate it.