raggmann54 Do as you please, but it isn't particularly difficult to tell whether a ball has entered a lateral hazard or is out of bounds. Off the course property or outside the white stakes equals out of bounds, and everybody knows it.
It has been my experience that when people want to just drop and take a 1-stroke penalty it's not because they don't know whether their ball is out of bounds versus in a lateral hazard; it's because they don't want to take a 2-stroke penalty. And to be fair, who does? It seems excessive. But it is that way for a reason, and the reason is that under the old rules you would have to take a 1-stroke penalty on the tee, not at the spot your ball went out of bounds. So it would have taken you another shot to get down the fairway, right? So that's two shots. One penalty stroke and one shot.
In the old days, the excuse for not playing out of bounds by the rules was not wanting to go back to the tee. Well, now you don't have to. But if you play OB as a drop with a 1-stroke penalty, you are not accounting for how you could get that far away from the tee, because the 1-stroke penalty is supposed to applied at the tee box.
In short, I don't buy your excuse for just taking one stroke. I'm fine with your doing it, provided all your buddies are fine with it, too, and you are not submitting your scores for establishing a handicap. I don't care what kind of rules you and your friends agree to play by. But be honest about it. The reason you don't take two strokes is because you don't want to, not because it would create some sort of logistical mind-bending, rules-interpreting nightmare.
