I’ve heard that it’s always harder the second time around. Finding a topic for today has certainly been a lot harder than last week, but hopefully you won’t get bored to death before you reach the end of the post. If you start to lose feeling in any of your limbs, please take a pause or stop reading all together. That being said, let’s get to the topic.

The borderline. A little piece of red tape or red line drawn straight across the lane, which the ball has to pass in order for you to be allowed to play from another position that the tee. On three of our systems there’s not much to discuss. On concrete and eternite you can continue playing once you have passed it, even if the ball comes back out and to rest on the “wrong” side of the red line. You just position it on the red line, or on the repositioning line, and continue playing. When playing on an adventure course, at least those I’ve played on, as long as you have hit the ball you continue where it stops.

Now, we have the fine Nordic felt-system. When I started playing the rule of the border line was really easy. If the ball passed the line and came to rest there you were allowed to continue. If the ball came to rest between the tee and the red line, you played your next shot from the tee. This would apply even if the ball had passed the red line and come back.
But at the 2001 World Championships in Vaasa there was a disagreement with the Nordic countries on one side and pretty much the rest on the other side. Or at least there was Sweden on one side and Germany on the other. The problem was that we, having felt as “our” system, insisted on that if a ball came back across the red line on a lane with elevated green, you had to play from the tee again. In the rule book I believe it said the “The ball has to stay in the green”. The others used this not quite perfectly phrased rule by saying that if the ball the cut the hole and jumped over the back board of the green, then you’d have to play from the tee. This of course weren’t acceptable to us and I believe that in the end our interpretation was turned down altogether.

Nowadays, in Sweden, we play felt by rules that have been adapted to the International rules, but we still keep some of our old rules. The most noticeably are the two on lanes with elevated greens and German ledge with plateau. I’m a strong believer of that you shouldn’t be allowed to use a much to fast ball to clear for example a fishbone by having it reach the green and come back down again. There’s an art of playing an accurately paced shot on those lane just like it is on concrete and eternite in order to get an ace. I don’t think anyone can convince me that be allowed to replace the ball in the green is a better way, but you’re all invited to try.

On the German ledge with plateau we play the ball from the tee as long as it doesn’t come to rest on the plateau, while the international rules states that you should, of course, reposition the ball on the plateau. I can’t understand that either; you’re taking away a tactical option the player has. At my home course in Uppsala we have this lane as no 17 and that invites us to play the first shot to the plateau and then have a much easier second shot if that’s enough to win a round or match. If we choose to go for the ace, it could easily end up in a 4, 5 or even worse. With the international rule it would be ridiculous, since you would almost never score higher than a 2.

Now I guess that the two or three that read this and doesn’t know me think that I’m a grumpy old player who likes to complain about a lot of things. The rest of you know that I am. Well, it might not be completely true; at least I hope it isn’t. But I do have a lot of ideas for changes and I normally relay them to someone who can do something about it. With this blog I can air my ideas and get a lot of good comments on them first.

One final thing is regarding a felt lane on which we use the international rule in Sweden and it’s not, according to me, a good one at all. I can see the problem with changing it back to how it once was, but for me the pros are much greater than the cons. The lane in question is the Gentleman and the rule is what happens when a ball comes to rest on the edge of the metal arch. This is called trough in the rule book which translates to washing-up sink or wooden rectangular container. It might be a correct use of trough, but I think I’ll go with metal arch for the time being. The rule book simply states that if the ball comes to rest at the top of the metal arch, the ball will be replaced at the tee. Why the ball isn’t considered as in is beyond me. It must be much harder to play a shot and have the ball stop on the edge and if anything you should get a lower score for accomplishing that. Of course that’s not possible, but surely it should be better for all if the ball was considered to be in the hole. We wouldn’t have to call on the referee to judge if the ball is actually on the edge or 0.5 mm inside the edge, in which case the ball is in the hole. If every ball that stops on the arch is counted as in there’s no discussion and the player is happy and moves on. There’s a problem that could arise if there’s a green on the lane. Then the border line is at the beginning of the green and then of course since the ball hasn’t passed the border line you’d have to play from the tee. I could accept these different rules for the same type of lane, but I would prefer that the ball is counted as in also when there’s a green. The only thing you have to do is to place the ball in the green, but I guess that the rule when there’s a green is tough to change.

Maybe we should just adopt the adventure golf's use of the red line and get rid of all discussions. Imaging the interesting positions you could end up in on different lanes. Between the first and second pyramid would be a challenge for players of all skill.

I will now leave those few of you that have survived this post with a couple of encouraging word from the Murphy part of life. “If anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway.”