[David Ober]

If in doubt, hit a provisional was the mantra I was told as a youngster and is one I’ve adopted ever since.
Oh, and more short grass would be pretty helpful as well. Much, much shorter.
Atb

Exactly.  This isn't so hard!  And I also like to get some more "practice" in as you usually need it if you will be searching for your ball.

Guys, everybody agrees with you about hitting provisionals, ok?  We're talking about a VERY specific situation that comes up from time to time when nobody in the group suspected that anything would be wrong, and the ball either can't be found, or turns out to be OB.  It happens.

The last round I played, my second shot on 18 was a 6 iron that missed the green to the right, into "standard" rough.  All three of us saw the shot and knew where it had landed and walked directly there; we never found the ball.  The three of us didn't find it in three minutes, and I picked up on the hole and kept looking for my newish $4 ProV1x while they finished the hole.  Never found it, and this has NOT been uncommon in the Southeast this summer as the Bermuda grass has enjoyed PERFECT conditions for growth. 


I KNOW you are not saying that I should hit a provisional ball EVERY time my ball is out of the fairway, cause that's the ONLY way to avoid unexpectedly lost golf balls, and I KNOW to hit a provisional under circumstances where there is a reasonable possibility of the ball being lost or OB.  I never object to hitting a provisional because, as Wayne points out, at the worst, it's a little bit of practice legally. 


But that's NOT what we are talking about here, and wouldn't have anything to do with difference between searching three vs searching five.

Haven't you figured out that making sense on this board gets you nowhere??? 

[JohnVDB]

When we were working on the new Rules, I thought that changing the time to 3 minutes might end up being one of the more controversial changes.  The feedback we got from the March 2018 proposed wording showed that it really wasn't that big a deal to most people who filled out our surveys.
Some important things that go hand-in-hand with the time change are that there is no longer a penalty for accidentally moving your ball in searching and, as long as your actions are reasonable, you may end up improving the conditions affecting your next stroke while searching without penalty.  Both of these mean you can get in there and search quicker and with less concern about possibly getting a penalty.  We saw cases where players wouldn't search but let the other players in their group, officials and marshals do so in order not to get a possible penalty.  Now there is really no excuse for that.

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