[PhilipBartew]

If the situation I give myself on the drop is better than the likeliest situation from playing the shot, then I declare it unplayable. I will say that I am pretty good at getting out of bad places (I get far too much practice at it ), so I will examine every possibility before I give up and take the penalty. I am honest about my limitations though.

One guy I was playing with on Saturday took 4 strokes to get out of the native rough (about 3 feet tall), when he could have dropped about 20 feet back in the adjacent fairway and had a perfect lie with just 2 strokes (one penalty and one to play back to the correct fairway). Even after the 4th stroke to get free from the deep grass he was still in the second cut of rough, 230 yards from the green, and with a tree still in his way. He took a 12 on the par 5 hole, where he probably would have been on the green in no more than 6 if he had just thought it over.