Love the fall but hate the leaves. Does your home course do a good job of keeping up with the leaves or are you on your own to feel like a squirrel looking for a nut?
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We have a lot of trees and no blower. They don’t mow daily in the fall either. So, fall golf means bring out the junk balls lol
Fall is my favorite time of the year to play weather wise. But all the courses I play are very wooded munis with little to no leaf removal it seems.
My normal group of guys I play with usually have an agreed upon rule. If we saw it go into a specific area that is heavily covered you get a free drop
We are heading into spring were the grass grows quicker than they can mow it and you lose your ball just off the fairway. As soon as the rough gets to golf ball height balls get hard to find.
A couple of months ago they sprayed a broad leaf killer and it dropped white golf ball sized blobs of foam as it went. In the early morning sun it was very hard to find the balls.
We are lucky to have a leaf blower that gets towed around the course blowing the leaves into the rough.
Our course keeps them cleaned up. I miss the days of my childhood looking for balls in the leaves.
NO. Arrrgh! I have yet to find a ball color that I can find in the fall, AND one of my local courses has lots of oaks so there are always plenty of leaves blowing around!
We’ve fortunate that our club uses blowers to move the leaves off fairways and the rough. That doesn’t mean that the “leaf rule” is called a few times each fall, but for the most part, our maintenance crew does a standup job keeping the course leaf-free.
My course does a good job of blowing leaves off fairways, rough, greens and tee boxes. All bets are off if you go in the woods though. I turn to yellow balls in the fall and winter.
Wait, is it possible to find a ball that misses the short grass in the fall??
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Always wondered why Rules Of Golf don’t prominently allow for free drop on lost ball under autumn leaves. Might that get a few more golfers in slow season?
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It’s not just the leaves… The low angles of the sun in the morning and afternoon make it hard for these old eyes to follow the ball sometimes, and it can get lost anywhere…!
The 14th at my course is an uphill drive facing west. At the moment when I play at 1500 I get there with a low sun making it hard to see where you are aiming. Then I hit a drive having no idea where it is going. Luckily I always find it. Same in the morning. The 4th and the 6th both face east with a low sun. luckily if I play in the am I have playing partners to watch my ball(hopefully)
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Check out Model Local Rule F-14, designed for just this case:
“During play of the [specify hole number], any ground with temporary accumulations of [identify types of loose impediments ] in the general area or in a bunker is treated as ground under repair from which free relief is allowed under Rule 16.1.
And then lobby for your local committee to use it.
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