Alternative Local Rules (reposted)

Are the rules of golf fair for us humble amateurs?  

As part of our blog re-location project, we've revived this old gem of alternative local rules.
(please use the comments to let us know your favourite)

A1. Adjustment of Lie Prior to Bold Play

If a player declares his intention to hit his ball between, through, around, or over any obstructing objects, he is entitled, by reason of his dauntless and venturesome play, to improve his lie, without penalty, by rolling or tapping his ball to a perfect lie within two club lengths of his original ball position, but once having done so, he is obligated to attempt the shot he has designated, and he may not then make a safe play from his newly improved lie.

A2. Audible Interference with Swing

A player may replay his shot without assessing a stroke if at any time during his backswing or downswing, and prior to the moment when he strikes his ball, he shall hear a distracting sound or noise, including, but not limited to (a) a horn, siren, bell, gong, or chime, (b) a backfire, tire squeal, or engine whine, (c) a cheer, shout, groan, or whoop; (d) a bang, clap, crack, crash, slam, or snap; (e) a blast, rumble, or roar; (J) a thud, click, clunk, rattle, or clatter; (g) a bark, bellow, whinny, bleat, or howl; (h) a squawk, quack, cackle, cluck, chirp, honk, mew, or coo; (i) a cough, hiccup, sniffle, snort, or sneeze; or (j) a giggle, chuckle, chortle, snicker, or guffaw.

A3. Autonomous Concession

If a player misses an unconceded tap-in putt of four feet or less, he may retroactively give himself that putt, provided at least one of the following conditions has been met

1. He played out of turn following a fellow player's suggestion that he putt out
2. He adopted an awkward putting stance in an effort to avoid standing in the line of a fellow player's putt
3. He made the attempt while a fellow player's putt was rolling toward the hole.
4.  Another playing group was waiting in the fairway to hit up to the green.
5. He putted last and all of his fellow players had already left the green.
6. He putted with a club other than the putter.
7. He really, really needed the putt

A4. Ball Hiding from Player

If a player cannot find a ball that has been hit in plain sight into a reasonably playable area of the course where there is an accumulation of dead leaves, seasonal debris, grass clippings, or other forms of incidental camouflage in which a furtive ball could improperly conceal itself, the ball shall be deemed to be hiding, but not lost, and another ball may be dropped without penalty as close as possible to the place where the original ball is believed to be lurking.

A5. Ball Hit Perfectly Straight

If, in fairly taking his stance on the teeing ground of any hole, a player intentionally lines up well to the left or well to the right of his desired target in order to compensate for a chronic hook or slice and proceeds to hit a straight and flawless shot directly into unplayable terrain along the margins of the hole, he may replay that shot without assessing a stroke or incurring any penalty. However, if he thereupon deliberately readjusts his customary corrective alignment to a square stance in the belief that his long-established directional error has been unexpectedly and inexplicably cured, and then hooks or slices his second ball, he must play that shot from wherever it lies, no matter how unfavourable its position, even if he can clearly and convincingly demonstrate to his fellow players that if he had adopted his habitual preventive posture, his ball would have come to rest in the middle of the fairway.

A6.    Ball Hit Slightly Out-of-Bounds

A ball that conies to rest beyond the stakes, fencing, or lines denning ground out-of-bounds may be moved back within bounds and played without penalty of either stroke or distance under the following circumstances:

1. If the ball lies just beyond the line of the out-of-bounds stakes and can be tapped, pulled, dragged, or spooned back into bounds with any conforming golf club by a player standing within bounds.

2. If the ball did not travel directly out-of-bounds but bounced off or touched down safely on ground or some fixed natural feature lying within bounds at least once before crossing the out-of-bounds line.

3. If the ball landed out-of-bounds but was clearly attempting to return within bounds when its progress was improperly blocked by an impediment or obstacle located out-of-bounds and hence not a legal part of the course.

4. If the ball has crossed an out-of-bounds line that is not a true course boundary but rather an administrative division of the ground lying between two adjacent holes drawn so as to discourage play from an adjoining fairway, and the player states that it was not his intention to engage in such play.

5. If the ball lies within a portion of the out-of-bounds area that juts or bulges outward from the general line of the out-of-bounds stakes in such a way that if one or two of the stakes were removed, the remaining stakes would form a much straighter line that would leave the place where the ball came to rest well within bounds.

A7.     Ball Missing in Fairway but Obviously Not Lost

When a player cannot find a ball that he has clearly and unmistakably hit into the fairway, he may declare his ball to be "missing but obviously not lost" and drop another ball in the approximate place where his original ball must have come to rest, and play that second ball, without penalty of stroke or distance, provided that he is absolutely and positively convinced beyond all reasonable doubt that his original ball did in fact come to rest in the fairway and that his failure to find it is the result of the unobserved action of an outside agency, the effects of an unexplained phenomenon, the intervention of a sinister force, or the occurrence of a supernatural event (or dogs on the course, obviously!).

A8.    Ball Playable in Water Hazard, but Just Not Worth It

If a player's ball comes to rest within the margins of a water hazard in a highly playable lie from which he is certain he could, if he so desired, hit a successful recovery shot with no difficulty whatsoever, but the marshy, muddy, swampy, or boggy state of the surrounding terrain makes it inevitable that in the execution of such a stroke, he himself, his clothing, or his equipment would be extensively soiled and/or soaked, or that he would be obliged to assume a stance requiring the time-consuming removal of his footgear or other elaborate preparations, he may move his ball, without penalty, to the nearest equally favourable lie inside the hazard where conditions are sufficiently dry to permit prudent, sensible, and reasonable play.

A8 Rulings:  This is a ruling from an open competition in Durness; If, a player encounters severe laughter pains after watching a fellow competitor enter a water hazard and attempt an ‘Experimental Shot’ [see rule A17] wearing light coloured breeks, then the next shot he plays may be replayed without penalty.

A9.    Ball Played as It Once Lay or Ought to Have Lain

If a player's ball lands and comes to rest, however briefly, on the face of any slope, bank, or hill, and then, in a separate and distinct motion occurring after the completion of its forward movement, it rolls down the incline in a direction generally away from the green or toward or into a hazard or the rough, the ball may be lifted and replaced without penalty as near as possible to the point of its farthest advance.

A10.    Botanical Obstruction

When a player's swing is impeded by any part of a fixed and growing plant, he may sit upon or lean against it in order to address his ball provided that neither the assumption of his stance nor the execution of his stroke results in a permanent alteration in the shape of the plant or a significant reduction in its size.

A11.    Casual Air

"Casual air" Is wind of a volume or velocity sufficient to cause (a) a pinch of grass blades released at shoulder height to be blown a distance of at least two club lengths in any direction; or (b) the fabric bunting attached to the flagstick on any green to be drawn taut, or to ruffle, flap, or flutter, or the flagsticks themselves to bend, sway, or wobble; or (c) improperly affixed headgear to become airborne. Whenever casual air is deemed to exist, players may obtain relief as follows:

1. The ball may be teed up anywhere within the closely mown area of the teeing ground without regard to the position of the tee markers.
2. Any ball hit out-of-bounds may be retrieved and replayed from the nearest playable lie within bounds, without penalty of either stroke or distance.
3. Any ball that flies unexpectedly far over a green, or falls conspicuously short of it, may be replayed once without assessing a stroke.
4. All third putts are conceded.
5. A range ball may be put into play at any time at a player's discretion.

A12.    Casual Bunker

Whenever heavy rains, melting of snow or ice, leakage from pipes, or inundation by sprinklers cause an accumulation within a sand trap of a visible amount of casual water in a pool or puddle or a quantity of moisture sufficient to cause the sand within its margins to coagulate into a damp, solid mass, the presence of that water is deemed to have transformed the entire sand trap into a casual bunker from which the ball may be removed and dropped in the closest playable grassy area, but not nearer to the hole, without penalty.

A13.    Coincidental Demolition of Coarse Growth

If a player's ball comes to rest behind a plant that is obviously a weed, or if the swing path his club must follow in order to fairly strike his ball is blocked by such a plant, the player may attempt to defoliate or dismember it with a series of practice swings, but the motions he makes with his club must be consistent with the movements golfers normally perform in the course of a swing, and they must be neither so numerous nor so violent as to appear to have as their sole and exclusive purpose the deliberate eradication of the plant.

A14.    Deniable Ball

If, owing to the unreasonable proximity of condominiums or other occupied dwellings along the boundaries of a course, a player shall, upon making a wayward tee shot, hear a splintering, cracking, or shattering sound, or some similarly alarming or worrisome noise, he may at once declare his ball to be "inadvisable to play" and immediately tee up and put into play in its place an "expedient ball" without assessing a stroke or incurring a penalty. However, during the remainder of his play on that hole, the player must behave as if his earlier misdirected shot never took place, and if he sees the affected homeowner or is confronted by him and betrays any awareness whatsoever that the mishap occurred, either by a verbal expression of apology or regret or a physical gesture indicating frustration, embarrassment, or discomfiture, then the stroke for his original errant drive shall be counted and all applicable penalties shall be assessed.

A15.    Environmental Hazard

If a player's ball comes to rest in ground within the margins of a hazard that has been deliberately left in a wild and natural state, whether or not that area has been officially designated as an environmentally sensitive zone from which play is prohibited, and the player in question has reason to believe that in making a swing he might damage rare, threatened, or delicate species of plants, or unduly disturb or traumatise endangered forms of animal life, he may drop his ball without penalty into an adjacent area of the course with limited biodiversity, such as a stretch of fairway with a monocultural planting of heavily fertilise hybridised turf grasses, where any moderate incidental destruction of normative vegetation that may occur during his shot is unlikely to have a significant negative impact on the global ecosystem.

A16.    Expendable Ball

On the teeing ground of any hole with a clearly defined dogleg layout, a player who wishes to attempt to hit a shot that takes a "shortcut" across unplayable ground and into the fairway may select and put into play a lower-priced or less desirable ball and declare that ball to be "expendable." If his drive then safely clears the hazards or obstacles occupying the intervening area of the bend in the hole, he may lift and replace it with a better ball and continue play. If, however, his shot fails to carry through to playable terrain, he may proceed at once to play a second ball without assessing a stroke or incurring any penalty, but he may not spend any time whatsoever searching for his first ball, and if he makes another unsuccessful attempt to "go for it" with his second tee shot, he must play that ball subject to whatever rules would normally apply and shall, in addition, be assessed the stroke and all penalties waived on his original tee shot.

A17.    Experimental Shot

When a ball comes to rest in a lie that precludes the execution of a conventional golf stroke, a player may elect to attempt an experimental shot incorporating an innovative manner of gripping or swinging the club or a novel means of addressing the ball. If as a result of this inventive and enterprising play the ball fails to move at all, or comes to rest in a position substantially worse than the one it previously occupied, he may then declare his ball unplayable and proceed to drop it in the nearest playable lie without assessing an additional stroke, provided he clearly states before commencing his swing that his sole motivation in undertaking what appears to be a greedy and idiotic shot is an unselfish desire to add a hitherto unknown method of striking the ball to the general body of golfing knowledge for the ultimate benefit of players everywhere.

A18.     Ground in Flight Outdistancing Ball in Play

If a divot taken at the time a ball is struck comes to rest at a point nearer to the hole than the lie ultimately occupied by the ball itself, that ball may be retrieved and replayed without assessing a stroke or incurring any penalty, provided that the divot is properly replaced.

A18.    Ground in Need of Repair

If a player's ball comes to rest in a worn, eroded, or otherwise deteriorated area of a heavily played course, which, in his judgement, is clearly eligible for designation as "ground under repair" but has not been so marked due to an obvious oversight by the course maintenance staff, and where he feels that additional play would be likely to further degrade the already deplorable conditions, he may, without penalty, tap his ball to a playable lie in the nearest intact ground, provided that this action is only taken for the purposes of improving his lie but solely as part of a sincere attempt to protect damaged portions of the course from fresh injury.

A19.    Hostile Growth

If, in order to sit upon or lean against a plant or remove deadwood from it or interweave and immobilise interfering branches, a player would have to subject himself to scratches, cuts, or pricks from thorns, brambles, briers, spines, burrs, needles, or thistles, he may, without penalty, tap or kick his ball to the nearest safely playable unobstructed lie.

A20. Misplaced Ball

If a player successfully finds his ball in extremely deep grass, a dense thicket, or some other absurdly overgrown portion of the course where visibility is severely limited, and then departs momentarily to retrieve a club with which to strike it, and upon his return discovers that he is unable to relocate his ball, the original ball is still deemed to have been found, but subsequently misplaced, and another ball may be dropped without penalty as close as possible to the place where the first ball vanished, but under no circumstances should it be permitted to come to rest in a lie so obscured from view as to run the risk of a second disappearance.

A21. Nonchalant Putts

A player confronted with an unconceded putt of three feet or less may elect to approach the ball in a deliberately casual and unstudied manner and hit it toward the hole with a one-handed putting stroke using either of two approved perfunctory putting methods.

1. He may knock the ball toward the hole with a one-handed putting stroke using either the front or back of the putter. If the ball fails to enter the hole but the player is able to sink the putt with no more than two additional rapid "taps" made while the ball is still in motion, the putt is deemed to have been sunk with a single continuous multipart stroke executed in a staccato fashion rather than multiple separate attempts.

2. He may adopt a putting posture in which he crouches over the hole with his hand behind the cup and drags the ball back toward it with a one-handed pulling stroke. Once the ball touches his palm, it is deemed to have been holed out, even if the ball never actually enters the cup and the player is obliged to move his hand a short distance away from the hole in the direction of the oncoming ball to ensure solid contact.

A22. Nonconforming Shot

If upon being struck a player's ball makes an oddly dead or flat sound, or produces a peculiar tingling or stinging sensation in his hands or fingers, or exhibits bizarre and surprising characteristics of flight, or travels in a direction or along a trajectory not typical of his normal style of play and not directly attributable to any known deficiencies in his game, or otherwise deviates so strangely and bewilderingly from the intended course in which it was propelled that the only possible explanation for the unprecedented mis-hit is that the ball itself was faulty, the player may state that he believes his ball suffered invisible damage during play or possessed a hidden flaw imparted in its manufacture, and he may then replay the shot without assessing a stroke or incurring any penalty.

A23. Pre-addressing the Ball

In the course of preparing to make a stroke in any place except a fair or formal hazard, a player may take the following actions without penalty:

1. Prior to assuming his stance, a player who wishes to position himself in such a way that he can precisely determine his exact line of play by sighting along it may place his foot directly behind his ball, step solidly, and shift all his weight to that one leg, even if as an incidental consequence of this activity the turf or other ground lying immediately to the rear of his ball is compressed and the lie of his ball is elevated in relation to the surrounding area and thereby enhanced, but he may not rock back and forth from heel to toe or hop up and down unless he deems such movements essential for an accurate assessment of the distance or direction to his target

2. Before addressing his ball, a player may, solely in the interest of safe play, press his clubhead into the turf or other ground behind his ball to probe for stones, roots, sprinkler heads, pipes, or the like that might damage his club or cause him injury during his swing, and test the soundness of the shaft of his club and the secureness of the attachment of its head by repeatedly tapping it on the grass or soil, and, in order to avoid cramps and undue strain in his legs while waiting for players in front of him to pass out of range, he may temporarily lean on his club in a resting posture as he stands by his ball in readiness to hit as soon as conditions permit.

A24. Protection Against Double Penalty

If a brand-new, high-quality ball just removed from a sleeve, box, or carton is struck by a player from the teeing ground of any hole directly into water, deep woods, impassable terrain, or ground out-of-bounds under circumstances that appear to foreclose the possibility of its recovery, the loss of that ball shall be deemed good and sufficient punishment for any infraction of the rules, and the player may hit a second ball without assessing a stroke or incurring any further penalty.

A25. Providential Ball

If during an unsuccessful search for his ball a player shall find another ball that does not belong to him or to one of his fellow players and that does not appear to be currently in play from an adjacent hole, he may treat that ball as a "providential ball" and substitute it for his own ball if (a) it lies reasonably close to the point where he believes his own ball came to rest, (b) it is not an obviously different colour, and (c) it is not a range ball.

In playing this providential ball, the player need not assess a penalty stroke, since the award of one minus stroke for having found a ball cancels out the penalty stroke for having lost his original ball.

A26. Provisional Provisional Ball

If a player hits a ball that he is confident he will be able to find or that he is certain remained within bounds, and he therefore decides not to hit a provisional ball, but then upon reaching the place where he knows it must lie he is nevertheless unable to find his ball or discovers to his surprise and consternation that his ball has gone deeply, totally, and indisputably out-of-bounds, that player may elect to avoid the delay of returning to the tee or some other distant point to hit a second ball from the spot where his original ball was played and instead make a powered drop and throw a ball, without any additional penalty, into whatever part of the fairway he reasonably believes a provisional ball would have come to rest had he hit one in the first place.

A27. Recent Instruction

If a player who has taken a formal lesson from a licensed golf teacher or club professional on the same day that he commences a stipulated round of golf approaches his ball in an oddly studied manner prior to hitting it, or addresses it with exaggerated concentration, or aligns himself along his target line with elaborate care, or waggles his club an excessive number of times, or interrupts his practice swing to examine the position of his elbows, arms, or upper body, or obsessively and repeatedly shifts the placement of his hands or feet, or noticeably alters the speed, plane, or length of his swing, or makes any other visible modifications in his characteristic style of play, and he then hits an unsatisfactory shot, he may replay it without assessing a stroke, provided that he clearly attributes the mis-hit to ineffective and inappropriate instruction and immediately abandons all of his recent innovations and returns to his traditional game.

A28. Removal of Deadwood

When a player's swing is obstructed by a twig or branch that gives every indication of being dead, he may break it off, but if upon being severed from its parent plant it turns out to have been alive all along, he must then immediately express chagrin and remorse, whereupon he may proceed with its removal in the interests of the continued health of the specimen.