It’s that time of year again: aeration and top dressing.
Aeration is in the grand scheme of things a necessary annoyance. While we’d always like to play on pristine greens, courses need to aerify to keep them that way.
Still, it makes putting difficult, at best. No matter how accurately you hit a putt, the ball will deflect off at least one aeration hole on the way to the cup. Thus, I have an aerification rule in the GolfBlogger’s Official Common Sense Addendum To The Often Absurd Official Rules of Golf: close is good enough. A putt that is making tracks for the hole, but manages to miss by an inch or three is counted as in.
Other rules in the Common Sense Addendum:
In spite of USGA rules to the contrary, treat poison ivy as you would a dangerous animal. The only reason this isn’t a rule is that the USGA rules makers play on pristine courses and don’t need to worry about poison ivy.
When the course is crowded, turn stroke-and-distance penalties into two strokes and hit the ball from a likely spot. Heading back to the tee puts your health in danger from the angry groups behind you.
A ball lost in plain sight among fall leaves results in a dropped ball with no penalty. It’s under one of those bazillion leaves, but who has the time to turn over every last leaf. Again, this is probably something country cub USGA rules makers don’t have face.
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I totally agree with your rules, especially the fall leaves rule. This becomes more critical later in the season. Also, the lost ball rule is modified with my group. If you don’t see it on the first pass, you get one more quick look, and then take your penalty and drop. If everyone saw it go in the junk, no looking. In addition, any balls found go to the guy who has lost the most, hopefully, encouraging him to keep playing without looking too much.
After a poison ivy experience at Springfield Oaks, I am going to invoke your rule! Hahahah!