A Golf Blog

Divots

Why the almost universal aversion to filling one's divot? For that matter, fill your's and another.

They call today's game bomb and gouge - the gouge part being the oversized piece of displaced turf dug up by a short iron or wedge on a second shot.

And it's not only symptomatic at munis - semi-private and private courses are also plagued by inconsiderate players.

The fact that you may have paid as much as $75 or more for a round does not entitle you to take divots with reckless abandon and not fill them in. Same goes for ball marks on the green.

Truth be told, I'll be I can count on one hand the number of times my ball has actually landed in a fairway divot. Get with the program people - show some consideration for the groups behind you.

Local Rules

I play on a relatively new course – the original design was toward a links style course with undulating greens and tall native grasses as rough. Well, early on, the clubs Men’s Golf Association developed some rules to make playing more enjoyable. After all, the course was new and the layout was difficult when viewed through the eyes of a retiree.

Rules like waving the 14 club limit; non-conforming clubs were fine; you got 2 club relief if a tree was in the way of your stance, your swing, or the flight of the ball; you could take a two stroke penalty and play your next shot from where your ball went out of bounds or was thought to be lost (this took the nail biting terror out of the distance component of the stroke and distance penalty); if a sprinkler head within two clubs lengths of the green was in the intended line (lots of folks here like the Texas wedge from just off the green) of your next shot, you got relief from the sprinkler heads; and the one I especially liked was that if your stroke total equaled what you were allowed through ESC (equitable stroke control) you could pick up your ball and record what equaled your ESC for that hole.

Well, a lot has changed since those first years. The MGA is reviewing the local rules and I suspect quite a lot will change.

What are some of your local rules that make you crazy?