Rollin' Balls

We begin Week #4 of 2025.... Just finished the midpoint appraisals for all of my employees and I have NOT been in the mood to write until tonight.

Another quirky local rule. I'll pull it verbatim from the REGL rules:

"Players may roll their ball IN CLOSELY MOWN AREAS ON THEIR OWN HOLE ONLY! Closely mown areas include fairway, fringe, putting green and tee boxes. The ball may be rolled using the player’s club only (no touching by hand), within the length of a REGL scorecard turned longways (approx. 8”) and (without cleaning), no closer to the hole for purposes of finding an acceptable hitting surface without penalty. After the ball has been so rolled, it is in play, and if it moves after the player had addressed it, ‘the penalty shall be one stroke.’ Whenever the player is in doubt as to whether his/her ball is in a closely mown area, the player must ask their opponent and abide by their opponent’s decision."

I know the genesis of the "rule" goes back before I entered the league in 2006, and I believe the author may have been former commissioner Steven G. Hensley. As you may know very well, the fairways at Ruggles Golf Course are (searching for a word here..... spotty). Sometimes you draw a great lie, sometimes you get bare soil, crabgrass, clover, an old divot hole, etc.) I can guarantee you will never find anything like this local rule in the Rules of Golf. There are only a few occasions when you can move a ball at rest, and ALL of them require you to mark the ball's location before you touch the ball, usually to lift it and maybe inspect it or move it temporarily before you place it back in the same spot unless you're seeking relief from an abnormal ground condition. Preserving the condition of the ball (and any attached soil) is important in most of those rules. Not so much in REGL.

The closest thing I can equate this "roll the ball" thing to is "Winter Rules" - which you also won't find in the Rules of Golf. In order to play in miserable conditions in cold weather, many people agree to play with so-called "Winter Rules", the intent of which is to be able to lift, clean and place the ball on good grass near the initial location of a golf ball at rest - no closer to the hole. Some people also call this "Preferred Lies". Until last year, you may remember that the words "Winter Rules" were in this specific REGL local rule and created some confusion. There's a full blog entry devoted to it called "The Confusion Factor of Implied Rules". Anyway, the "Winter Rules" verbiage has been deleted from the local rule and we're left with rolling the ball in your own fairway.

The PGA tour also has their "Lift, Clean and Place" rule if conditions warrant it's use in tournament play, and we have the same available rule which we'll discuss in a different blog entry.

For those of us who know him well, Mr. Hensley has a devious side. I have an idea that Steve's rule language was built in to potentially remove mud from balls (even though it says "no cleaning"), since you're allowed to roll the ball around a bit to find a nice lie. While you're rolling that ball around, you might just have that mud clump roll off the ball. I've never seen anyone lay his scorecard next to the ball to measure the amount of area available to locate an acceptable hitting surface, but the idea behind that was to give a common unit of measure that everyone has with them during league nights.

As stated in the rule, this applies in your own fairway only. If you pound a drive dead right on #15 and end up in 14's fairway, you have to play the ball as it lies. Rough? No roll. If you can't decide if you're in the fairway or not, consult your opponent.