Hello All,

I have a rules question that I am not sure about. I recently played at a course where red stakes separated the fairways. The local rule was that if the ball went into the other fairway I had to pick up my ball and drop it in my fairway, and take a stroke penalty. This round of golf was a tournament and I was playing rather competitively. Some golfers saw other golfers not pick up there ball and not take the penalty. They just swung at the ball while it was in the other fairway.

My question is this: If red stakes separate fairways and your ball goes onto another fairway, should you play the ball as if it is in a hazard and not ground your club? Or should you take the penalty?

Thanks for any help with this question

Do whatever you want...sounds like a MICKEY MOUSE course anyway.

Very common on courses in Japan. Really annoying when you know you could make the shot back over the trees.

I'm not sure that such a local rule is legal. What would be permissible is for the adjacent fairway to be marked as out of bounds.

A Local Rule like that makes no sense.
Red stakes are used for lateral water hazards only, and there must be some kind of feature fitting the definition of a water hazard.

It's correct that white stakes can be used as a separator, but that's another kind of option and penalty - and probably not what the Committee was looking for

Thanks for the response to this one. It's a course in Taiwan and now that I have some extra insight into this I will let the members of my golf society know about this.

Thanks once again.

Is it common for courses to separate fairways with OB? They recently did this at a course I play and I was confused. Also, the entire driving range is marked OB, but the property line on one side is marked with red stakes.

I don't know if it is "common" but it does occur on a number of courses that I play-including my home course-we've a par 5, dog leg right where the dog-leg corner and the adjacent hole fairway meet with a screen of trees-it is an inbound OB for the par 5 due to the possibility of hitting folks on the prior fairway if you try to cut the corner too much.

So then what happens if you hit your ball past the red stakes? Is there a penalty? If so what is it?

Cheers

Who knows?
Who knows what the Committee was thinking when they made this marking?
If there should be a thread of logic in this strange marking, the player can play the ball as it lies, or he can drop a ball 2 club-lengths from the point of entry.
A "local rule" could shed some light on this.

I've seen OB stakes between holes, but never lat hazard.

Here's one for you. Par 5, big dogleg left (probably 80 degrees). Short if you stay in the left side of the fairway, and you'll have only about 200 in. Big sign that says you CANNOT go for the green here, or else you're responsible for any damage to the houses on the left of the green.

I'm thinking, what idiot build a house at the corner of a dogleg, and then complains about it later?

Here's the hole:
http://www.captainsclubatwoodfield.com/ind...ge=5&hole=7