Hitting the wrong ball.. Ethical dillema?

[cookelad]

me and friends regularly use stroke and distance, rather than walking back to the tee to hit another ball, if you agree before hand i dont see anything wrong with this approach

I think you've misunderstood the term stroke & distance! What you're doing there is choosing not to penalise stroke & distance, as you say no problem when just having a friendly knock with mates!