Preferred Lies & Clean & Replace LR’s

[Slab]

• Preferred Lies
• Clean & Replace

We see it often on televised tours where a spot o' rain can see organisers put this out for the entire 4 days (Indeed if next months winner has the option to use preferred lies he'll still get a green jacket same as every other year) but does your comp committee introduce the rule at your club

So two questions:

How regularly/often does your course introduce the above local rules outwith the winter season?

Do you think they should be applied more/less often & why?

 

[Oddsocks]

The only LR is like see in play during the season is relief from fairway divots, I don't see why a player should be punished if he has hit a fairway and diggin the ball out just impacts the damage. BUT...... we have done this debate before and most say it's the rub of the green!, under winter rules you get relief with pick and place but during the competitive season you don't

But back to the original question, never during months where winter rules are not in place.

 

[chrisd]

Sometimes the local rule is extended at the start of the season if it still wet but rarely introduced for individual comps as there's often no officials around at the start of a comp to make that sort of decision.

 

[Imurg]

Never.
I find it quite funny that Winter Rules kicks in on a set date and kicks out on a set date regardless of conditions..
We come off WR after the weekend but could easily have been off them for a week or more.

 

[JohnnyDee]

Outside Winter I can never remember our course introducing clean and place in a comp either. There are times when I think we should do, say when you have a slab of mud the size of a small house stuck to your ball, but as OS says, the counter argument is that it's a rub of the green.

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

Never.
I find it quite funny that Winter Rules kicks in on a set date and kicks out on a set date regardless of conditions..
We come off WR after the weekend but could easily have been off them for a week or more.

We have stayed on WRs past the original date due to slow growth.

 

[duncan mackie]

we don't have a defined winter season - so the answer is always!

the decision to implement preferred lies is made between the greens committee, rules committee, director of golf and course manager (in practice this involves only 3 people!) both in terms of putting it on, and taking it off. If this is outside the normal CONGU permitted period the director of golf gets the appropriate authorisation from the local golf union.

for us the biggest single driver to preferred lies is in picking up mud on the ball ie conditions interfering with the fair plying of the game.

in the same way we will frequently implement the other common course LRs - aeration marks on the greens and embedded ball TTG - as and when considered appropriate to fair play.