[DzjwMKo5]

Plus always carry a rules book in your bag if you play tourneys

That's like trying to decipher hieroglyphics.

This is an interesting rule and it's come up before in a tournament I played in:

Drop ball in drop area.
You don't have to be standing in the drop area to do so.
Ball can roll out of the drop area, but has to strike drop area first.
Ball can roll nearer the hole, but not more than 2 club lengths.

[asivisepo]

Remember the final hole of the 2008 US Open playoff between Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate? It was a par 4, and Rocco hit his second shot into a place where he was entitled to get a free drop. He took the drop, and almost got a penalty because of it:

Mediate took what should have been a routine drop. But the ball landed in the drop circle then rolled out. He went to pick it up -- and there were both Vernon and Davis to stop him.

"The ball's in play as long as it hasn't gone more than two clubs lengths, and it can actually roll forward and still be in play," Davis said. "This happened in a split second, and Rocco leans over to pick up the ball because it had gone out of the drop zone. I screamed at him, 'Rocco, ball's in play.' If he had picked that ball up, it would have been a 1-stroke penalty, and it would have basically been over at that point. That would have been horrible." The quoted section comes from this article: http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/usope...bob&id=4256164

[GinaIsWild]

Remember the final hole of the 2008 US Open playoff between Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate? It was a par 4, and Rocco hit his second shot into a place where he was entitled to get a free drop. He took the drop, and almost got a penalty because of it:



The quoted section comes from this article: http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/usope...bob&id=4256164

Yeah, I remember this occasion actually, but not because of the drop, but because he pretended like he was gonna throw it at the hole instead of dropping. It was pretty funny, and the correct ruling.