The governing bodies know the walk back is killing pace of play. So they published an optional Local Rule that lets a committee offer an alternative: instead of trudging back to replay the shot, drop out near where your ball was lost or went out of bounds, and take two penalty strokes instead of one.
Almost every casual group in America is already playing a fuzzy version of this. The official version is worth learning, because it is meaningfully different from the fuzzy one — and because you should know whether your course has actually adopted it or whether you have all just been making it up.
The cost is two strokes, not one
This is the part groups get wrong most often. The penalty is two strokes, and that is deliberate. The idea is to make the outcome roughly equivalent to what stroke and distance would have cost you: one stroke of penalty, plus the shot you would have had to replay.
Drive off the tee goes out of bounds, you use this Local Rule, you drop out near where it crossed the line — you are playing your fourth shot. Same as if you had gone back and re-teed. You have just saved the walk.
The relief area, exactly
Here is where the official version differs sharply from the house version. You do not simply drop where the ball went in. You establish two reference points, and the relief area is the whole span between them.
The ball reference point
The spot where your ball is estimated to have come to rest on the course, or where it last crossed the boundary edge to go out of bounds.
The fairway reference point
The nearest point of fairway on the hole you are playing to that ball reference point — but not nearer the hole than it. For this Local Rule, "fairway" means any grass in the general area cut to fairway height or less.
The relief area between them
Draw a line from the hole through the ball reference point, and another from the hole through the fairway reference point. You may drop anywhere between those two lines — plus two club-lengths outside the first and two club-lengths to the fairway side of the second.
The drop must be in the general area — not in a bunker, not on the green, not in a penalty area.
And it must not be nearer the hole than the ball reference point.
In practice this gives you a wedge-shaped corridor running from roughly where you lost it across to the edge of the fairway. It is genuinely generous — usually far more room than the two club-lengths people assume. But it is also a defined area with edges, not "somewhere around here."
What it does not cover
- Not for an unplayable ball. If you found your ball and do not like the lie, that is Rule 19, and this Local Rule has nothing to say about it.
- Not for a ball known or virtually certain to be in a penalty area. Water is Rule 17, always.
- It can be adopted for the whole course, or just for a hole or two where it is especially useful — the blind par four with the boundary down the right, for instance.
One useful wrinkle: if you played a provisional and then neither ball can be found, you may apply this Local Rule for the provisional.
Who it is not for
The official text is unusually blunt about its own audience. It says the Local Rule is appropriate for general play — casual rounds and golfers running their own competitions — and that it is not appropriate for competitions limited to highly skilled players, meaning professional and elite amateur events.
Note what that does and does not say. Golf media has a habit of flattening this into "not for competition," which is not right. Your club championship flight, your Thursday league, your member-guest — a committee can absolutely put this in play there. What it is not for is the state amateur and anything above it.
And if your committee runs it for general play but switches it off for competitions, the official guidance says they need to tell everyone before play begins. Worth knowing if you show up to a tournament at your home course and assume the everyday rules apply.
Handicaps
The Local Rule points committees to World Handicap System guidance on whether scores made under it are acceptable for handicap purposes. That is a question for your handicap committee and your local association, not something to settle in the parking lot. If it matters to you, ask — do not assume in either direction.
The short version
Model Local Rule E-5 at a glance
- Status
- Optional Local Rule — only in effect if your committee adopts it
- Penalty
- Two strokes
- Covers
- Ball lost, or out of bounds
- Does not cover
- Unplayable balls; balls in penalty areas
- Reference points
- Where the ball was lost or crossed out, and the nearest fairway not nearer the hole
- Relief area
- Between the two lines from the hole, plus two club-lengths outside each
- Must be
- In the general area, not nearer the hole
- Not for
- Professional and elite amateur competition
If your group is going to play a version of this — and you probably should, for everyone's sake — play the real one. It is better designed than whatever you have been doing, and it means the number on your card is a number that means something.
Written against the 2023 edition of the Rules of Golf, which remains the edition in force. The R&A has said the next full edition arrives 1 January 2028. Local Rules at your course can change any of this — the card and the notice board win.