Orlimar1
People are free to play by whatever rules of golf that they want to play by. Do whatever you want as long as you enjoy yourself.
BUT, unless you follow the rules of golf you cannot count a score as legitimate or contribute a score towards an index or handicap.
For the past several years I have been playing in a number of tournaments that require official handicaps to be tracked so do follow the ROG religiously. It has added a few strokes to what Previously estimated my h/c at before.
Two of my regular golfing groups , I'm the only one who does unless we are playing for money then we all do.
The only exception is at DS where we have a local , tournament rule of using the desert as either play as it lies or a point of entry hazard and not counting stroke and distance for lost ball etc.
game is hard enough, for the casual golfer who doesn't care about score , go ahead and play by whatever rules you like .