Hi gang, what do you think of this;
1. Hit an almost perfect putt about 25 feet, it stopped hanging over the hole.
I slowly apporached the ball (within 10 seconds), as I come within five feet of the cup,
the ball falls in. My opponent tells me I must add a penalty stroke.
(as I see Rule 16.2, it's a little bass-ackwards).

2. I hit an approach shot about 160 yards to the green, over clubbed and went out the
back of the green, I told my Opponent the ball is unplayable and dropped a ball, he claims
I add two strokes (after the argument, with help from the official, I won) Rule 28, one
stroke with 3 choices of where to play the dropped ball from.

Golf rules, not confusing at all....

If I remember the rule correctly, you only have to approach the ball in a reasonable amount of time, not within 10 seconds. Then after you get over the ball, you have a certain amount of time to stand there and HOPE it falls in. Could be all wet on this, but that's the way I remember it. I sure wouldn't have called for a penalty stoke to be added to your score if I was your opponent.

I think the first example is wrong, I don't think you should have penalty since clearly you approached your ball, as Don says, within a reasonable amt of time...you didn't jump up and down to make the ball fall in...
Second case, I guess your opponent was thinking one penalty stroke for calling unplayable and one for playing the ball from the "wrong" location...
shows how esp when competing, you must be aware of all of the rules so as to not cost yourself strokes!

Bo,
No penalty, you made the putt.

You're right about that Aimee, if you don't know what's right. you don't have a leg to stand on.

The problem come into play when one insists that you took too long. Well when I play
a shot and it doesn't do what I want, I take a couple of seconds after the shot to tell
myself what I did wrong, then I move on, not a long time at all.

Sounds like you need to find some nicer golfers to play with, one's that aren't mean nasty old goats. This exaxt same thing could have happened on an approach shot, with you needing to walk a lot farther to get to the green. Would the same guy say you took too long to walk to the green while your ball was hanging over the edge of the cup? You did what you had to do, and you didn't take too long to do it. Might want to print out the rule on this and show it too him next time you see him.

Bo, was this a casual round or a tournament? Who knows when the "10" second count actually begins, I'm sure there's some general time point to base it from but with no official to call it, it's your word versus his, so play both and let the club house decide.

Hi Scott, it was during a tournament, and as Don said, my word against his,
the club house knew him better then me. Declairing the ball unplayable on the
approach shot, I got my shot back. I got one last tournament of the year
to play this Saturday, temps are supposed to be in the 40s, rain and wind..,
it's times like these I wish I were in Fla or Calif.

It's raining and windy here in California too, with high's in the mid-50's. It rained about 2 inches in the last few days. We're awaiting the next storm to hit us next week.