Golf’s most brutal rule? It’s time to change stroke-and-distance

It’s the game’s toughest penalty. Lose a ball, or hit one outside the course boundaries, and not only do you add a stroke to your score but you lose the distance as well.

There isn’t a player who hasn’t experienced it. That long walk back, for those who didn’t hit a provisional ball, is golf’s most humiliating treks.

For most of us club golfers, it’s a scorecard wrecker. Who doesn’t dread the stroke-and-distance rule?

But here’s the thing. It hasn’t always been this way. Did you know the penalty for a ball lost or out of bounds has had many different guises since the rules of golf were first written down in 1744?

It’s been stroke. It’s been distance. And, of course, it’s been both. What it should be, and quite how harsh, is an argument that has raged on for much longer than many of you might think.

In fact, well into the 20th century, it was still causing grief for R&A and USGA bosses. There’s the R&A report in 1948, for instance, where the rules committee conceded they couldn’t agree on the penalty for a ball out of bounds.

“They were all agreed that the penalty for lost ball, unplayable ball and ball out of bounds should be uniform but they were equally divided as to the nature of this penalty,” it said.

“Therefore, with the approval of the General Committee, they decided to take a referendum of the members of the club as to whether it should be loss of stroke and distance, as under the present rule, or loss of distance only”.

In his excellent book The Rules of the Green, author Kenneth Chapman revealed the USGA experimented with reducing the penalty for both a lost ball and out of bounds to distance only.

It didn’t last very long but a Local Rule, for a ball beyond the boundaries, allowed a “ball to be dropped within two club-lengths of the place where it last crossed the boundary line, with a penalty of one stroke”.

Yes, you read that correctly. A stroke only penalty as a Local Rule! It was ditched at the start of 1968 and the stroke-and-distance rule many of us either love or loath has been in its current form ever since.

Of course, we know the debate did not even end there.

Ahead of the massive 2019 Rules of Golf update, the R&A and USGA previewed a new Local Rule – Alternative to Stroke and Distance.

Do you remember the stir that caused? The principle behind its introduction was to reflect a pressing issue for many modern golfers: time.

And it’s still in the rule book, but I’m betting your club have never used it.

It is designed to speed up play, and stop delays in the game when a ball is lost and a provisional isn’t taken. This rule allows a 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”.

You add two penalty strokes if you use the Local Rule, but you can’t benefit if it it’s an unplayable ball or if it’s known or virtually certain to be in a penalty area.

It’s not allowed in professional or elite amateur tournaments. Rules chiefs instead deemed it appropriate for casual rounds, or for golfers playing their own competitions.

CONGU, though, did not agree – quickly saying the Local Rule could not be used in any “qualifying competitions or supplementary scores”.

So clubs were caught between two stools. Bringing in the Local Rule for casual play, and not competitions, was bound to cause confusion among members. It was a penalty-fest waiting to happen.

We need a fairer alternative to stroke and distance

And so there has been little talk about it since. But should we look again at stroke-and-distance? Is it time to reconsider the penalties that are applied in our club competititons?

I think it’s time for a debate.

Back in 2019, I wrote a polemic praising CONGU for putting the breaks on the Local Rule. I argued keeping the ball in play had to be one of the game’s principal tests. I said pace of play was important but “not at the cost of losing golf’s soul”.

I mainly didn’t like the benefit of being able to find the fairway edge and drop – even with the sanction of a two-shot penalty.

I haven’t changed my mind on much of that. I still believe keeping the ball within the boundaries of the golf course is a fundamental tenet of golf. For those shots that go out of bounds, stroke-and-distance should still apply.

But when I think about a lost ball on the course, I find myself asking more and more how that situation is any different from a ball in a penalty area.

If it’s known or virtually certain to be in that penalty area, you can take relief at a cost of a stroke.

If the same applies for a ball that’s lost within the boundaries of the course, why can’t do you take similar relief?

Everyone does this already in friendly games. A ‘bush rule’, or whatever you call it, no one is walking all the way back to the tee when a scorecard is not on the line.

You just drop a ball, accept a penalty, and carry on.

So what if the Local Rule was tweaked, removing the ability to take relief on the edge of the fairway? What if you could drop at the point where the original ball was estimated to have come to rest on the course?

If that’s in the rough, drop at that point in the rough. If it’s in the trees, well… you get the drift.

But people would take advantage, you say. Or, more bluntly, they’d cheat. I’ve written more extensively about this but it really annoys me that developments in the game – whether it be rules, or WHS – are hamstrung by a collective paranoia that a minority of players might look to pull a fast one.

People cheat – always have and always will. When you spot them, deal with them.

Stroke-and-distance is a brutal penalty in our club competitions. It’s way too harsh for the average golfer and we have a mechanism – a Local Rule – that with a couple of tweaks could help ease some of our slow play frustrations.

If we’re serious about trying to speed the game up, and outside of the diehards the length of time it takes to play a round is still cited as a barrier to participation in competitions, then isn’t it worth considering?

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.

What do you think about the stroke and distance rule and my proposed changes? Let me know by leaving a comment on X.

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