I Play A Lot Of Winter Golf… These Are The 8 Key Rules To Know

While some courses, such as links or hilltop layouts, may not play radically differently from season to season, others will play very differently from winter to summer, especially some of our parkland courses laid out on clay, where drainage can be an issue in the off-season. With that in mind, I’ve picked out eight Rules that it will be handy to know when conditions turn a little wetter or softer…

Preferred lies
Although golfers use the terms ‘preferred lies’ and ‘winter rules’ interchangeably, Model Local Rule E-3 (preferred lies) makes no mention of any specific season and can actually be implemented at any time of year for the fair playing of the game or to protect the fairways, so always check whether or not preferred lies are in force via your club’s local rules. That said, they will still be far more common in winter.

Preferred lies are invariably confined to fairways or areas cut to fairway height or less (as per R&A recommendations) and when taking preferred-lie relief you don’t have to mark the ball’s position first before lifting and cleaning it (though it’s not a bad idea to do so). You are then allowed to place the ball on a spot not nearer the hole within a specified limit from the reference point of where it was lying. This distance is often 6ins but can vary – maybe a scorecard’s length or a club’s length, for example. But once you’ve let go of the ball, that’s it unless it rolls nearer the hole. So, if you try to cleverly pop it on a tuft and it then rolls backwards into a poor lie, you’ll have to play it from there!

Embedded ball
Balls are more likely to embed or plug in their own pitchmarks in winter, but thankfully the Rules don’t expect you to play an embedded ball anywhere in the general area (other than in sand – e.g., a native waste area) these days, though there is no free relief for embedded balls in bunkers or penalty areas.

When taking free embedded ball relief under Rule 16.3, your reference point is the spot right behind where the ball is embedded, from where you then have a one club-length relief area arc, no nearer the hole, in which to drop.