The hole was big enough to have killed the dinosaurs. There was my ball sitting right in the middle of it.
I might as well have been in buried in a bunker or smacked it into a pond. But, no, I was bang in the middle of the fairway and submerged in a massive crater. Curses.
Hit the green? It was mission impossible just to get it out. What could I do? The only option was to have at it and tunnel halfway to Australia. I apologise to the greenkeepers.
But I was irked. A perfect drive had essentially become a penalty shot. Tell me why I play this game again?
Right now there will be a load of purists telling me to suck it up. But these people are idiots and their opinions irrelevant.
Not getting relief from a golf ball in a divot is the stupidest thing in the sport. It’s even dumber than WHS. Why would we penalise a great shot? Because those are the breaks?
Golf back in the day was a painful pastime. Check out the original 13 Rules of Golf and you had to hit it from anywhere and pretty much everything.
But we’re a bit more civilised now, aren’t we? That’s called progress, people. The modern sport hands out free relief for all sorts of stuff that would have our golfing ancestors spinning in their graves.
No one expects you to play out of a tiny pond in the fairway. If your ball is sitting in its pitch mark, you don’t have to carve it out.
And when it comes to the green it’s basically a hippy festival. Almost anything goes.
You can scream ‘play it as it lies’ as much as you like but there are so many areas on the course where we don’t.
Advertisement
Strike one purely and catch the remnants of someone else’s chunk, though, and this is the time you’re expecting me to do it?
Golf ball in a divot: ‘Are you calling us cheats?’
Here come the zealots again. ‘You can’t give relief from a divot because it is impossible to enforce. What even IS a divot anyway?’
Can’t define a divot? Rubbish. We do exactly this for an animal hole. It’s in a hole or it isn’t. We know scrapings don’t count. There is a similar process for embedded balls.
I’m well aware of the difference between a divot and a gentle bruising of the turf. I’m not a moron. I can also tell when a divot has been filled in. That’s because I have eyes.
The rules bang on and on about integrity, conforming to the spirit of the game, and players being the ultimate judge.
But when it comes to divots, we suddenly can’t be trusted? Are you calling us cheats?
They’re back again. ‘Stop complaining. Your ball is hardly ever in a divot anyway’.
Right, so that’s the absolute definition of an abnormal course condition then? Something that isn’t part of the regular playing of the game. For which you should get relief.
The ground gets a little bit bare in the summer and everyone’s out with the GUR paint. It gets slightly wet and someone puts a rope up. A big gouge doesn’t count? Don’t be daft.
Finally this pearler from the play-it-as-it-lies-crew…
‘Golf is an unfair game. You can hit one into the trees and it might bounce off a branch and back into the fairway. You take the good and the bad’.
So why have relief at all then? Get rid of that Local Rule that lets you drop it because a sprinkler head is in the way. Tough luck if you can’t find your ball in a load of leaves that are piled up. As you say, golf is an unfair game.
We contrive all kinds of rules to suit ourselves. A golf ball in a divot should be ground under repair. It’s a hill on which I’m prepared to die.
Now have your say
Is this the stupidest rule in golf? Should we just get free relief from a golf ball in a divot? Or has the Angry Club Golfer got it badly wrong? Let him know on X.
Advertisement
