Was doing some voluntary work at the club today and became involved in a discussion about OOB’s penalties and actions you should take….

Two players where discussing how they dealt with an OOB issue and one of the players was stating how good the new rule change was about OOB’s….... What???

He was referring to this
Rule 20-7c. Playing from Wrong Place; Stroke Play

Note 3 is amended so that if a player is to be penalised for playing from a wrong place, in most cases the penalty will be limited to two strokes, even if another Rule has been breached prior to his making the stroke.

Stating this was the new way of dealing with a ball OOB…....

I said Nope you are wrong, you have to go back and re-hit from place you originally hit from and add appropriate penalty…...
Reply was that the above superseded OOB in this years book of rules…..

To my mind if the player drops a ball near the point where his ball has gone OOB it could well be decided by the committee that the player had commited a serious breech & therefore could be disqualified.
Tell these 2 that you cannot pick one sentence out of the notes to a rule *& ignore the rest of the note
The note mentions no extra penalty for playing a a stroke at a ball played from the wrong place..
The rule & note do not apply to OOB IMO.

That is the same as my thinking…....

Will be interesting to see what else come to light….

I am sure you would be correct Peg. If you follow their thinking (if I understand their logic correctly), you could hit your drive OOB on a par 5, drop a ball next to the hole, and tap in for a four!
Pom is right…you can’t ignore the serious breach clause.

The change in Rule 20-7 has nothing what so ever to do with Rule 27-1 and how anyone would read that into it is beyond me.

What the note is about is additional breaches made by a player playing a ball from a wrong place.

If he let his caddie drop the ball, if he changes his ball, if the places the ball instead of dropping – no additional penalty to the 2 strokes for playing from a wrong place.

RulesDoc

I was 99.99% confident. The bloke thinks he knows it all and I was sure I was right and next time I see him I will be making sure that he knows the correct thing, not something he has misread….

You were right being confident :-)
If a major change to Rule 27-1 on a ball lost or OB had been made 1.1.12, it would have been the most significant change for many, many years!