The 90-degree cart rule, which is a lot better than cart path only and only slightly worse than driving wherever you damn well please, splits the difference between a course's need to dry out after rain and the out-of-shape
player's need to finish a round without collapsing.But just as people have different interpretations of barbecue - you can tell I am in the Carolinas - they interpret 90-degree rules a little differently. My first experience with the rule was in New England a couple of decades ago. There, the 90-degree rule means you leave the cart path directly across from your ball in the fairway, drive to the ball, hit the ball and then drive back to the cart path along the same route. Then you proceed down the cart path until, again, you arrive at the 90-degree line across from your ball and repeat the process.
When I tried this on a 90-degree cart day at Pawleys Plantation many years ago, the starter caught up with me and asked what I was doing. He explained that 90 degrees in the Carolinas meant you drive to your ball at 90 degrees to the cart path but then proceed down the fairway, hit your ball, and continue down the fairway until, basically, you run out of short grass and are within 30 yards or so of the green.
The difference, those of you who are turf experts realize, is that the long roughs in New England can handle the traffic a lot better than the delicate Bermuda rough of the south can. In the south, for whatever agronomical reason, you can turn cartwheels without doing much damage to the fairways.
That said, Cherokee Valley's fairways and rough seemed to be covered in Bent grass. In the absence of the starter, I made a command decision. Even if I wasn't driving the ball straight, I could at least drive the cart straight.
