Post
by bryan k » Wed Nov 15, 2017 9:51 pm
I completely agree that having the pin in helps in a lot more cases than it hurts.
However, when it comes to the old and worn out hole placements, the only thing that I believe would hamper the ball from falling in is the volcano effect that you mentioned.
I'm actually kind of convinced, though, that the volcano effect is caused more by people not using care when removing the pin from the hole than any other reason. It's something I see with regularity. People will pull the pin out at an angle, and it will brush the lip of the cup. Do that 20 times in a day from different angles, and pow. You got your volcano.
I would think that a beveled edge would have the opposite effect, though, and be more conducive to having the ball fall in the hole. More commonly, I would think that it would cause a lip-out when, if the hole was in pristine shape, the ball would cruise by the lip with no effect. In other words, most of the time I have seen people complain that they didn't get a lip-out to fall because the hole was in crappy shape, I don't think the ball would have even lipped out if the hole wasn't in pristine shape. With the volcanos, though, the effect is obvious. The ball will veer around the hole at the last second rather than continue on a straight path. It is far more common to see a volcano than a bevel. The bevel is usually caused by an old hole combined with lack of play whereas the volcano is caused by heavy play.
I also suspect that some volcano edges are sometimes caused by a lack of care by the person cutting the hole.
With all of that being said, I am fully in support of allowing the pin to stay in the hole. It would go a long way towards speeding up play, as one of the common errors I see players make is not having a concrete understanding of how to get the pin back into the hole. I've always followed the philosophy that the first in gets the pin, but I constantly see situations where the only person left on the green is the only person who has yet to hole out. It probably costs less than a minute a hole, but by the end of the round, you're still looking at 15 extra minutes to complete the round due to that one little error.