Under Decision 1-4/10 of the Rules of Golf, when a ball that comes to rest in a dangerous situation—near an alligator, for example—a player may, without penalty, drop a ball on the nearest spot not nearer the hole that is not dangerous.

But the USGA also has decided (in Decision 1-4/11) that the same rule does not apply to patches of poison ivy, poison oak or poison sumac.

Clearly, the overlords of golf need to get out past the finely manicured lawns of their tony country clubs. Here on the public courses of Michigan (and other locations), these plants all too frequently border our fairways and greens.

And they’re clearly a threat to a player’s health. For many, even casual exposure to those plants can result in severe illness.  For others, the result is a severe rash that can result in infection. Even mild cases are annoying and not to be wished on your enemies.

So until the USGA changes it’s ridiculous ruling,  golfers in the real world need to keep a sharp eye out for the big three of poisonous plants in North America: poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac.

For identifying these plants, the best rule of thumb is “leaves of three, let it be” (that won’t help you with sumac, however).

Poison Ivy appears as a shrub or vine along the ground, or climbing on trees or poles. The leaves come in groups of three, are pointed and glossy. The edges can be either smooth or toothed. They start red in the spring, turn green in the summer, and then to various fall colors as the weather gets colder. You may also notice greenish-white flowers and white-yellow fruit in hanging clusters.

Poison Oak looks like poison ivy, except that its leaves are lobed.

Poison Sumac is a little tricker. It appears as a tall shrub or small tree with alternate leaves with 7-11 leaflets arranged in pairs, and an additional single leaflet at the end of the midrib. Yellowish green flowers and whitish green fruits hang in loose clusters. You may confuse this with the more common and harmless staghorn sumac.

The best solution for exposure is immediate treatment. The traditional treatment is to wash the area with isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol, and then with soap and water. Exposed clothing should be washed, since the urushiol from the plants can last for years. There also are quite a large number of commercially available products that work to prevent a rash.

If you get a rash, your doctor ls likely to prescribe a hydrocortisone creme, or even an oral antihistamine. I’ve always had luck with calamine lotion (the pink stuff). Some traditional treatments have also included oatmeal baths, and baking soda salves.

It’s best just to avoid the pants altogether. When your ball lands in a suspected patch, leave it there (the urushiol will be on the ball), ignore the stupid USGA ruling, and play it as though you had landed in a herd of alligators.

I ran across this massive snapper in the middle of the fairway on a local course.

What’s the ruling if your ball lands next to a snapper, and he doesn’t want to move?

Here’s a golf rule I’ll never have to ponder In Michigan (unless Al Gore comes through on his promise of Global Warming): What to do when your ball is lodged in a coconut tree.

It’s a topic of discussion in the Fiji Times:

Rules of the Week

This week Golf Rules refers to the common problems of golf ball lodged in Palm or Coconut Trees or other trees, lining our fairways. Under the circumstances for a ball lodged in trees unreachable by the player he or she then incurs a penalty under the “unplayable ball” rule and the player play a substitute ball at the original spot from where the last stroke was played

I’m pretty sure this problem was never imagined by golf’s founders in Scotland, either.

A couple of weeks ago, Stuart Cink was disqualified from the Zurich Classic for one of the most bizarre rules violations ever. During the third round, he hit a ball out of a fairway bunker into a greenside bunker some yards away. Cink left the original bunker, and his caddy raked it before he hit his next shot.

Not good. Cink didn’t think about it at the time, but later—after he had signed his scorecard—he realized the error. He should have taken a two shot penalty, and so was disqualified for signing an incorrect scorecard.

Even The GolfBlogger—a certifiable rules junkie—had not thought about that one. You see, he’d never actually gotten out of a hazard, so he still couldn’t test the conditions. And having a caddy rake is testing teh conditions.

Fortunately, the USGA has acted on the incident—and this no longer is considered an offense. It’s now not considered testing if you are in a similar, but different hazard.

Good. Now if they will just reverse the stroke-and-distance rule for lost balls and go back to the old rule of stroke only.

[A CLARIFICATION]

It seems that from 1961 to 1968, you could drop a ball within two club lengths of where a ball went out of bounds, or where it seemed lost, and take a stroke penalty.

For the casual golfer or fan, match play can be confusing. With terms like All Square, Halve, and Dormie, 1-UP, 5 and 4, Match Play is a whole new ball game.

Most golf tournaments are “stroke play.” In these events, all of the golfers play a certain number of holes, and the player who has the lowest combined total score is the winner.

In Match play, golfers are pitted directly against each other. A player is not concerned with the entire field—only with beating the opposing golfer (or side, in team play).

Scoring in match play is quite different from stroke play. Each hole in Match play is scored as a separate event. The player (or team) who finishes a hole in the fewest strokes is the winner of that hole. At the end of the match (however many holes they are playing), the player who has won the most holes is the winner.

The scoring system leads to some unusual terminology. The results of match events are not reported by strokes, or by the total number of holes won, but by how many MORE (or fewer) holes a player has won, along with the number of holes left in the match. So, if after 10 holes, Tiger Woods has won six holes and Phil Mickelson has won four, the announcers would report that Woods is 2-Up through 10. At the same time, Mickelson is 2-down. If both players have won the same number of holes, the match is “All Square Through 10.”

This weekend’s International Tournament is going to produce some funny golf scores. Instead of winning by -11 or some such, the winner is going to have a score that looks more like +22. No, it’s not because the course is so difficult. It’s because of a unique method of scoring called the “Stableford System.”

The Stableford System was invented by an Englishman named Barney Stableford, who was attempting to devise a scoring system that rewarded risk taking. In regular stroke play, players often will avoid risky moves because they can quickly balloon a score. Under the Stableford system, the cost of taking a large number of strokes on a single hole is minimized.

Here’s how it works:

The winner of a Stableford Tournament is the player who scores the most points.

Players get no ponts for a par, 2 points for a birdie, 5 for an Eagle and 8 for a double eagle. On the down side, you lose a point for a bogey, and lose three for a double bogey or worse.

The effect of this is that if you blow up on any single hole, the worse you can get is a -3. Also, note that a birdie is worth two, while a bogey costs you just one. With that kind of calculus, it pays to “go for it.”

Stableford Scoring is often used in club tournaments for precisely reason. And it’s a reason to pay attention to the International. It could be a pretty exciting weekend of golf.

As reported last week, the USGA and R&Q have announced 111 changes to the book “Decisions on the Rules of Golf,” which will be effective for all golfers starting Jan. 1,  2006.

The 2006-2007 Decisions book includes 37 new Decisions and 66 revised Decisions, while eight Decisions have been withdrawn.

There’s a summary on the USGA site.