They are a magnet for your members’ golf balls so deciding how they should be ‘labelled’ is a crucial part of the on-course experience…
This article is part of GCMA Insights – topical content for golf industry professionals, discussing the things that matter to those who work in golf clubs.
There is not a golfer on the globe who hasn’t hit a ball, twitched in agony, and then watched a splash as it landed slap in the middle of a pond.
Penalty areas aren’t always lakes – they don’t always even need to have water within them – but they are one of the five areas of the golf course as defined in the Rules of Golf and they affect everyone who plays.
We know there are two options for club competition committees when it comes to marking a penalty area. These are red and yellow.
That isn’t a fashion choice; there is a material difference between the two – with a red penalty area offering a third lateral relief option (two-club lengths) as opposed to simply stroke-and-distance and back-on-the-line relief with a yellow penalty area.
So which should it be? How should you decide whether a penalty area should be marked red or yellow? For clubs grappling with that question, or undertaking a golf course review, there is best practice found within the committee procedures in the Official Guide to the Rules of Golf to help them decide.
Red or yellow – how do we mark penalty areas?
The default position of the R&A and USGA is that most penalty areas should be marked red. There are two reasons for this. The first is to give golfers that third lateral relief option. The second is to remove confusion in the heat of a round.
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Having most penalty areas marked in the same way stops players potentially worrying about whether a relief option applies or not. If it is red, they can easily understand all are available.
However, there are occasions where the character of the hole may give a competition committee pause for thought.
The course marking guidance around penalty areas in the Official Guide outlines a situation where part of the challenge is to carry over a penalty area.
An example it gives is where a stream “crosses the front of the putting green and there is a good chance that a ball that carries over the stream could fall back into it”.
If successfully executing that shot is important to the way the hole should be played, committees can choose to mark that penalty area as yellow.
This means “a ball that lands on the far side of the penalty area before rolling back into the penalty area cannot be dropped on the far side under the lateral relief option”.
The Official Guide also asks where areas are marked yellow that committees ensure there is an ability to drop back-on-the-line.
To do that, Rule 17.1d (2) says players must keep the estimated point where the ball last crossed the edge of the penalty area between the hole and the spot where it is dropped.
That can often mean going back in a completely different direction to what might be considered the usual line of play. If that isn’t possible, the only option a player would otherwise have in a yellow penalty area would be to take stroke-and-distance relief.
Where this is likely, committees can think about adding a drop zone for that penalty area to give a second option.
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Can a penalty area be both red and yellow?
Yes, committees might consider doing this with large penalty areas or those that transition – say, from a lake to a stream. The point to press home to golfers is their relief options are “based on where the ball last crossed the edge of the penalty area and not where the ball came to rest in it”.
Where the penalty area changes from red to yellow, it is recommended to place the two colour stakes right next to each other to make it obvious where the status changes.
It is also possible to define a penalty area differently depending upon the tees which are being used. “But this is not recommended when multiple tees are being used for the same competition”.
This article is part of GCMA Insights – topical content for golf industry professionals, discussing the things that matter to those who work in golf clubs.
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