Watch Your Step!
RULES CORNER
R
efs sometimes monitor landing zones that are soggy, hoping to help players find and take free
drops for balls that become embedded in the fairway. A Ref friend of mine told me the following
quirky tale about approaching a player who had just pulled his ball out of the muck in a stroke
play tournament.
The player cleaned his ball and was preparing to drop when my buddy suddenly, and without a word,
pushed the player hard on the shoulder. The shocked player regained his balance and gasped, “What
the hell are you doing?”
My friend responded, “Saving you two strokes.”
Right before the player was going to drop he raised his foot to stomp down on the irregularity of surface
caused by his removal of the embedded ball. He apparently didn’t know that’s a violation of Rule 13-2:
Improving Lie, Area of Intended Stance or Swing, or Line of Play. (Decision 13-2/10 describes this exact
case, and note that it’s also a violation of 13-2 if you repair the area after your drop if it improves your
situation.)
Fortunately, the surprise shove prevented the player from leveling the surface and from getting the
resulting 2-stroke penalty. (My quick-witted friend, with virtually no time to think and even less to
verbally dissuade the player, deftly transformed this otherwise rude act into one of kindness.)
Here are a couple of other things to keep in mind when dealing with an embedded ball; the details can
be read in Rule 20-2c, Rule 25-2, and Rule 25-2’s related Decisions:
• You may clean your ball after lifting it.
• You must drop your ball “as near as possible to the spot where it lay” (but no closer to the hole) even
though the disturbed ground there may end up causing interference for your next shot.
• If your dropped ball rolls back into the hole from which you lifted it, you must drop again, and place
on the spot it last hit the course if it rolls back in a second time. (Same thing if it stops closer to the
hole than the point it embedded.)
• If your ball embeds in a new place when you drop it, you are again entitled to relief. If it embeds yet
again, place the ball as near as possible to the place it last embedded, but no closer to the hole.
• By the base Rule, you get free relief for embedded balls only when they are in a “closely-mown area
through the green.” But there is Local Rule that might be in force which extends the free relief
to most other areas through the green — not just those which are closely-mown. (The PGA Tour
regularly employs this Local Rule, see Appendix I of the Rules for more details.)
• Any doubt as to whether a ball is actually embedded “should be resolved against the player.”
• You may (really, should) fix the surface when you and your group are done so it doesn’t impact players
in following groups
One last thing, while you may not repair the irregularity of surface you create when you remove your
ball from its embedded position, there’s nothing in the Rules which says that you can’t be careful when
extracting it. Try to keep the surface as undisturbed as you can, it might end up helping you with your
next shot.
Take care, and play well!
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