Walls, fences, railings, stakes, lines – golf courses can choose to mark their boundaries in so many ways.
Some of those we’ve mentioned above are obvious, but what if you’ve got a mix? What if you’ve got white stakes and a white line at the same time?
This is what happened to our emailer: “I teed off and could see my ball had gone towards out of bounds markers so I took another in case the first ball was out of bounds.
“When I got to my ball it was between a badly marked line and the white post. The white line was about one foot on the course side of the OOB post.
“Does the line (OOB for me) or the post (still on course for me) take preference – was I out of bounds or not?”
Given how often I seem to find out of bounds, you’d think I’d be an expert on this one. So when you’ve got a line and posts at the same time, which takes priority? Let’s take a look…
Golf out of bounds rule: Is it stakes or lines that count?
Boundary edges can be defined by boundary objects, such as stakes or lines. Usually, a club will specify how they treat out of bounds in their Local Rules.
I picked up a dozen different scorecards when writing this piece and all of them made it very clear which was which and even on what holes.