Is your club using the Alternative to Stroke-and-Distance Local Rule?

It’s one of the more controversial statues and it’s not even one of the 25 in the Rules of Golf!

Model Local Rule E-5 is an innocuous title but its full name, ‘Alternative to Stroke and Distance for Lost Ball or Ball Out of Bounds’, caused something of a stir in the club golf world when it arrived as part of the massive changes to the laws which came into force in 2019.

It was designed to help speed up pace of play but quickly had a caveat slapped on it by handicap chiefs.

What is the Alternative to Stroke-and-Distance Local Rule?

If only we’d all hit a provisional ball. But we don’t and that can bring significant issues with pace of play when a player needs to take stroke-and-distance relief for a ball that is out of bounds or can not be found.

This Local Rule is designed to allow a committee to provide an extra relief option that allows a player to “play on without returning to the location of the previous stroke”.

Deemed appropriate for casual rounds, or for golfers playing their own competitions, it isn’t allowed in professional or elite amateur tournaments.

What does the Alternative to Stroke-and-Distance Local Rule say?

Model Local Rule E-5 states: “This option allows the player to drop in a large area between the point where the ball is estimated to have come to rest or gone out of bounds and the edge of the fairway of the hole being played that is not nearer the hole.

“The player gets two penalty strokes when using this relief option. This means that the relief is comparable to what could have been achieved if the player had taken stroke-and-distance relief.”

You couldn’t use this Local Rule for an unplayable ball, or for a ball that is known or virtually certain to be in a penalty area.

“If a provisional ball is played and neither the original ball nor the provisional ball can be found, then the Local Rule may be applied for the provisional ball that cannot be found”.

That all sounds good, so what was the problem?

Meant to stop players having to walk back to the tee, there was a fear that some players – knowing they had the option of dropping onto the edge of a fairway – might take advantage when estimating the point at which the ball had been lost or gone out of bounds.

As the days ticked by to the implementation of the new Rules, CONGU – who control handicapping in Great Britain and Ireland – affirmed the Local Rule could not be used in any qualifying competitions or supplementary scores. That’s any event where handicap marks could be affected.

That left club committees in something of a quandary. Do they bring in the Local Rule for casual play and not qualifiers, potentially causing confusion among members, or rule out its use altogether?

That uncertainly led many to ignore it altogether – despite some of the slow play concerns that continue to cause clubhouse debate.

Got a question for our expert?

Despite the changes to the Rules of Golf in 2019 and 2023, there are still some that leave us scratching our heads. I’ll try to help by featuring the best of your queries in this column.

Has your club ever used the alternative to stroke-and-distance local rule? Let me know by leaving a comment on X.

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