Sure hope someone can help with this....

An unpaved road runs between and parallel to the 17th and 18th holes of my home course. It has ditches on both sides which often contain water. There's a 6 ft. dropoff from the left of the 18th fairway down to the ditch on the right of the road.

For decades we've had a local rule declaring the road and its ditches as "an integral part of the course" and it's played as it lies. The obvious reason for this is that if you received free relief from the road and its ditches, you would get incredible relief from a bad shot off the 18th tee. You'd get to drop on top of the 6 ft. dropoff and it would be nearly as good as a perfect drive. Of course, if you were in casual water or a tire track, you received relief under the rules of golf, but you stayed in the road or ditch if you wanted to play it without penalty.

Now, the road is going to be paved to allow traffic to new condos. If your ball ends up on the road, it will be almost impossible to take relief, have a stance, and drop the ball anywhere but on the embankment, where the ball will roll back to the ditch, and you'll be standing on pavement again. Again if you get relief from everything and you get to drop on top of the embankment, there's basically no penalty for hitting a bad shot.

The rules of golf apparently don't allow us to mark the ditches and the road as a lateral hazard. This would be the best solution....Play it as it lies without grounding your club...or take relief with penalty under lateral hazard rules.

We don't really won't to mark the road and ditches as out of bounds....the entire road and ditches are within the boundaries of the course.

Please correct any of my assumptions that are incorrect.....and tell me if you know a solution.

I've played many courses where everything to one side of a hole was marked as lateral hazard to speed up play....even though there was no watercourse over there...which I think the rules of golf require.

I didn't know you "couldn't" mark it as a lateral hazard....

What the rationale? Doesn't the ditch have some water in it on occasion? Wouldn't it then meet the criteria for a "lateral water hazard?"
e.g. Same rules apply for a dried up "water hazard".

To add: I thought you could just put a local rule in with relief procedures as long as it kept with the "idea" of the game....if not you could still do it with "authorization/support" from the USGA?

As above, what's the rationale for not being allowed to declare it a lateral hazard in it's entirety?

As far as I'm aware (and certainly backed up by experience) a LWH can be declared pretty much anywhere - even where there's a distinct lack of any water for much of the time.

I'm getting lots of conflicting opinions.

I talked with someone at the Georgia State Golf Association who said he was fairly sure we could mark the entire area as one big lateral water hazard (including both ditches and the road).

I talked with a rules official with the USGA and he said we should mark each ditch as separate water hazards and declare the paved road an "integral part of the course" so if a ball stopped on the road you would not be entitled to free relief.

I talked with a friend who was a longtime club pro. He thinks we could mark the entire area as a lateral water hazard AND amend the local rule allowing NO PLAY FROM THE AREA, since traffic will occasionally be on the road. Then, if you hit it in there, you must take a one strok penalty and proceed under the LWH rule.