By John M. Bodenhamer, Executive Director, Pacific Northwest Golf Association
(first published in Pacific Northwest Golfer, June 2001)

The Rules of Golf are based upon one main principle -- play the ball as you find it or as it lies. However, this basic concept is often at odds with wording that is actually listed in the USGA and RCGA Rules of Golf Booklets. And that is the wording that outlines "Preferred Lies," more commonly known as "Winter Rules."

I would venture to guess that Winter Rules are probably adopted here in the soggy Pacific Northwest more than anywhere else in North America. After all, it’s just not fair to have all that mud on your golf ball, now is it?

Well, if you live by that supposition, then you also probably think it’s not fair that your ball ended up in a divot in the middle of the fairway. Or that it’s not fair that your ball found the small patch of long grass a few feet from the green that the "incompetent" golf course superintendent missed when he was mowing. Maybe so, but was it fair that your badly sliced drive that was heading out of bounds hit a tree and ricocheted back into the fairway? Or how fair was it when your errant approach shot hit that rake in the bunker and bound up onto the putting green? No, golf is not always fair, but isn’t that also part of its allure?

Winter Rules are an optional condition that should be used only in rare instances, such as when severe weather has prevented mowing for long periods of time. So before your club adopts Winter Rules, it should consider the following:

Winter Rules are sometimes adopted under the guise of protecting the course, when, in fact, the practical effect is just the opposite. They permit moving the ball to the best turf, from which divots are then taken to injure the course further.
Winter Rules tend generally to lower scores and Handicap Indexes and Factors, thus penalizing players in competition with players whose scores are made without preferred lies.

Extended or indiscriminate use of Winter Rules will place players at a disadvantage when competing at a course where the ball must be played as it lies.
Winter Rules slow down play. After all, what takes longer? Simply addressing the ball and hitting it. Or, before each shot, marking, lifting, cleaning, and replacing it and then, addressing it and hitting it?
Now I recognize that my remarks are a little bit like the pot calling the kettle black since the PNGA adopted its own set of Winter Rules guidelines back in the 1970’s. But we recommend their use only in extreme circumstances. In recent years, we have worked closely with the state and provincial amateur golf associations in the region, as well as the Pacific Northwest Section of the PGA, so that we are all adopting the same conditions under similar circumstances.

But if you still don’t buy my arguments limiting the use of Winter Rules, then ask yourself this: Why, if they are Winter Rules, are you still using them in the heat of June, July, and August? Hmmm?