round that isn't being used towards your index..

practice round, 9 hole round, course that doesnt have correct slope/rating, etc
?

Especially when the stupid liberal leaves decide to do a mob march on the ground in autumn.

It's just that simple.

Why not just score it in accordance with USGA handicap rules?

I took you to mean you didn't score it that way for "score" purposes (i.e., saying "I shot X").  Please correct if wrong.

You do have the USGA handicap approach correct.

And sorry, perhaps your "circumstances described" meant inactive-season and I just missed that.  The gist of the latter part of this thread was, to me, the misunderstanding most people have about a round not being used toward handicap.  I didn't catch that yours was permissibly not to be used (e.g., inactive season).

Are you saying that you'd call a lost first ball, dropped second (lying three in your approach) and three more to get down a 6 for scorecard purposes?  I have no problem with that if your group has agreed to it (I'm quite non-militant in that regard).

But that's like taking a 3 shot penalty, because your vicinity drop is typically in or near jail, right?  But when a ball is lost, the ruling is to go back and hit it from the same spot as before. 

But here, it's like you're playing a hazard drop, only adding on the distance penalty.  So what you are doing is a sorta self-flagellation.  NTTAWWT, to each his own, etc and so forth, but its strikes me as an extremist act.

It's probably something this guy would do to himself if he was also a devout adherent to golf.



 
If I didn't take a provisional on the tee, because I wrongly assumed I'd find the original tee shot, I basically go to the middle of the fairway, to a spot where I should have been in the first place, and take a stroke and distance drop, there.  If by surprise I find that I've actually lost the ball, I just pretend I would have pured the provisional I should've taken in the first place.

I've run the calculations, and this practice 'improves' my official handicap index by a factor of 0.00000000007865109.

What is your point?

Again, the dude simply asked what I do. 

I'm in "finish playing the hole because I've paid a lot of good money to play the *goshdarn* hole" mode in those sorts of moments, so I give myself a choice middle of the fairway lie. 

I write down the score I most likely would have shot on the hole in the situation where I've lost a ball and am taking the S&D, which 9.99999999999 out of 10 times is a double bogey, which happens to be my ESC limit, which is convenient.

It could be, it could also be like stealing strokes since I have zero chance of going back to the tee and losing another ball, or hitting another ball OB. When I lose one it's usually ball that's hit pretty long, and wrong. Not returning to the tee also eliminates the chance of hitting one short and into jail as well.

So while it could be self flagellation, I figure in the long run the difference between what I put on my card using my method, and what would have happened if I had returned to the tee (all pissed off and hitting in front of a pissed off audience), is around 0.00000000007865119.