Heard another war story from league play last week from a couple of guys on another team. Seems as though they ran into a player on another team that is rather arbitrary regarding his own method of marking his ball on the green. He apparently plops his putter behind the ball location. When its his time to play he picks of the putter and drops the ball. When pressed, my informants thought it might be lucky if the guy ended up putting his ball within 6 inches of the original ball location.
Sorry, that's just not good enough. If you pick up your ball on the putting green, you must mark it first or you incur a penalty. If you replace the ball, you must place it back in the same spot or you incur a one-stroke penalty from "playing from the wrong spot".
The definition of "mark" in the rule book is "to show the spot where a ball is at rest by either placing a ball-marker right behind or right next to the ball, or HOLDING a club on the ground right behind or right next to the ball." A ball-marker is defined as "an artificial object... such as a tee, a coin, and object made to be a ball-marker or another SMALL piece of equipment."
A putter is NOT a small piece of equipment. You can use a putter to mark your ball temporarily by placing the putter behind the ball, picking the ball up, cleaning it or identifying it, and then placing the ball back down directly in front of the putter. Laying the putter down on the green to mark a ball? No. If the guy did that in match with me, I'd make him remove it and place a marker down instead - I'd even offer to give him a penny out of my pocket. It's a distraction and it's poor etiquette. Dropping the ball onto the green after he picked up his putter? That's just ridiculous or just plain lazy.
I know the Ruggles Evening Golf League isn't the PGA tour. Not even close. But even though we're not on TV, that doesn't mean we can't play in the spirit of the Rules of Golf. Proper marking of your ball on the putting green is important and is not unduly taxing. If you can't bend down to place a coin behind a ball, put the ball back down and remove the coin, I bet there's a couch and a television calling your name.