Cgkdisc
.:Hall of Fame Member:.
TD gave an incorrect ruling. A waiver to disallow a re-tee would likely not be granted except for a highly specialized hole design where it made sense. The ballfield is not one of them.
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Allow some/all of stance in OB?
- Thread starter Cgkdisc
- Start date
krupicka
Double Eagle Member
It's the way we had the course rule written at the time (it has since been changed). I made the call (along with Nate). Did we get that part wrong? It's the call we made. This occurred in time when there was a strong emphasis on not having players rethrow for OB and instead force them to move forward. The call was made with that in mind.
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Hey, I was there when this happened!
Paul still could have re-teed under the optional re-throw rule, HOWEVER, the rules at that time did not allow for the OB penalty to be erased by an optional re-throw, so Paul would have been throwing 4.
(Note the current abandoned throw rule does wipe out any penalties associated with the throw that was abandoned.)
Note also that whether a waiver is given or not, the players are still ruled by whatever the TD says. The TD might be punished later, but the players have no standing to overrule a TD for lack of a waiver.
Cgkdisc
.:Hall of Fame Member:.
Ironic that several of us posting here were involved in different capacities with this incident. Steve Dodge was on the phone with me about the ruling while this was happening when they couldn't get ahold of Big Dog at that moment.
krupicka
Double Eagle Member
The TD has the final call, not Chuck, not Dodge, not Big Dog.
Cgkdisc
.:Hall of Fame Member:.
While that's correct, the TD should heed expert advice when available.
robdeforge
Double Eagle Member
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Appreciate the clarifications all!
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We use it as a course design feature. In the majority of cases golf applies it for course boundaries. You nearly always have the option in golf to play your shot from where it lies be it a creek or lake. The difference of a sport played from the ground and out of the hand where play it where it lies isn't quite so relevant to us as we never do.
With that in mind having a rule that allows a player to take a stance OB opens up the need for further clarification. You can't ever say it is ok for a player to take a shot from off the property so if taking a stance in designed OB was allowed then expressly banning it on any course boundary areas would need to be done. That's either a hassle to a TD or requires new terminology in the rules.
IE. Change design feature OB to some other terminology - eg penalty area. You could then have a Hazard penalty area (you can play from within the area with a stroke penalty) or "lie change/relocation area"* penalty area (you play the area as current OB rules but can take a stance within but you have to relocate your lie with stroke penalty)
OB would then only designate a course boundary or some other area like a nature reserve area in the course that keeps the current rules but hopefully will be rarely involved.
Embracing the idea of a penalty area over Out of Bounds is probably a step the sport needs to take. Use Out of Bounds for what it should represent - an Out of Bounds area, get the hell out of there, it would hopefully encourage designers to use course boundaries less as a design feature(a bad design feature in general for the sport in the future, don't upset your neighbours!)
With all that said I don't see the issue with the rule as written currently and a meter is plenty distance enough however tall you are. Your front foot doesn't have to be on the lie, a patent pending is an allowable stance amongst infinite other variations of stance to keep you a long way from the fence/wall. Just because it's not the stance you would choose is irrelevant, don't throw your first shot into a pinched off area if that is your concern.
On that note I've always been dubious of giving an extra meter from barbed wire. Having a concept of where your arms swing and taking a stance that allows you to not hurt yourself should be on the player not the course set up. We have an infinite number of ways to take a stance and throw the disc, we shouldn't expect players to get a perfect lie every time their discs lands especially when they are off the fairways.
*please come up with better terminology!
biscoe
* Ace Member *
I agree completely on the terminology- while there are aspects of our game which are dissimilar from golf, the original rules makers would have done well to mirror golf's terminology more closely in this respect. Now we have years of inertia working against "fixing" it and it may not be worth the effort. Any change to any rule needs to consider the implementation of said change and how that will work imo.
On the barbed wire- I own a course with a lot of it. Hawk Hollow is a cow pasture. While I may not have been the first to implement additional relief from barbed wire (I honestly have no idea) I have been doing it for almost 20 years there and at least thought I had come up with the idea myself at the time. From a gameplay perspective I agree with you that additional relief should not be needed- players not being entitled to their preferred stance and all that. From a property owner/TD perspective however I am well aware that players will eventually screw up most anything and am much more comfortable with the added relief (actually forced relief of a meter minimum).
A pendantic plea against absolutism:
Our private course has 4 wooded holes adjacent to wooded neighboring land, and it's quite possible to throw a bad shot off the property (trust me). It's perfectly fine to take a shot from off the property -- you'd be hard-pressed to know where the line is, and the neighbors don't care.
Cgkdisc
.:Hall of Fame Member:.
In ball golf, you may take a stance OB.
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If there is no OB line marking the boundary (which your post suggests) then course boundaries aren't an issue. If a course boundary is marked, unless local rules allow otherwise with the neighbours permission, the boundary should be absolute and the rules should not allow play outside the course boundaries ( it shouldn't require a TD to state this IMO and the current OB rules don't)
To Chuck's point that golf allows you to take a stance OB... True. Generally the sport and course design tries to avoid OB ever being an issue in golf. An issue where a players stance relative to neighbours boundaries is so rare I can only find a couple of video incidents of it, one recent amateur and Padraig Harrington in the Open a few years ago.
In our sport a stance OB is possible in just about every round you play and as course boundaries are often used as design features the rules IMO should not ever allow players to take a stance from them, if taking a stance from them is deemed a big issue then let's change terminology so OB is absolute and penalty areas are design features.
Cgkdisc
.:Hall of Fame Member:.
Yes, I get it. I was just countering RH original comment, not justifying standing OB based on ball golf rules. Oh, the horror.
biscoe
* Ace Member *
Which makes no sense at all considering that in golf the most common usage of the term OB is for off the course. These instances are much less common in golf though as shots actually landing OB are subject to stroke and distance penalties rather than "play it where it went out" and OB is not strewn throughout the interior of the course.
Changing the terminology is what we should do, in principle but impractical in practice. So we're stuck with prohibited/penalty areas being called "O.B.", whether they're off the property, boundaries of the fairway, or within the fairway.
This runs into the idea that you shouldn't be able to throw from out-of-bounds, because it's out-of-bounds. As opposed to, say, because it's trespassing (your example). This philosophy comes from many sports...but not every sport.
If we renamed them "hazard areas" (oops, already taken) or "penalty zones", there might not be the same objection to part of the stance being within them, even if the lie is outside them. But it looks like we're stuck with calling them "O.B."
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Why? Is there something fundamental I'm missing?
OB rules stay as they are but for future use are encouraged only for absolute no play areas. Penalty areas come into the lexicon and are encouraged as the course design features with a slightly different rules set under regulated areas. Change would take a few years to take full sway but if embraced by the PDGA and DGPT it would happen.
Current tee signs wouldn't even become obsolete by doing this as OB could still be used in it's current form, it's just future courses would use it far more sparingly and hopefully just around the edges, using the correct penalty area in its stead.
Inertia.
Well, you could be right if the PDGA created a new term and really pushed it -- and with the amount of video coming from the DGPT and elsewhere, it might have a quicker spread.
Or, they could remove the wording from the rules that all supporting points need to be inbounds, and leave it at that. It would offend some people's sensibilities that foot that's not behind the lie, is touching or slightly inside "out-of-bounds" (sometimes, probably not for lakes and fences), but otherwise be a relatively seamless change.
Well, you could be right if the PDGA created a new term and really pushed it -- and with the amount of video coming from the DGPT and elsewhere, it might have a quicker spread.
Or, they could remove the wording from the rules that all supporting points need to be inbounds, and leave it at that. It would offend some people's sensibilities that foot that's not behind the lie, is touching or slightly inside "out-of-bounds" (sometimes, probably not for lakes and fences), but otherwise be a relatively seamless change.
biscoe
* Ace Member *
Either leave it alone or make the wholesale change. Any "improvement" from the partial change is inconsequential enough that imo it doesn't justify the effort of implementation.
