BALL SEARCHES :
What ’ s Fair and What ’ s Foul ?
by Chris Lang
PATRICK REED AND THE RULES OF GOLF TEND TO MIX LIKE OIL AND WATER , and Reed once again found himself embroiled in a Rules controversy in late January at the DP World Tour ’ s Hero Dubai Desert Classic . player . Take it to the amateur level ( at an event like the VSGA Amateur Championship , perhaps ) and there ’ s basically no video from which to gather facts . It ’ s on the player to honestly try to identify a ball .
The Reed situation provides a perfect opportunity to discuss Rule 7 , which covers ball searches , and finding and identifying your ball . Rule 7.2 states that a player ’ s ball at rest may be identified in
The setup : During the third round , Reed ’ s drive on the par-4 17th drifted to the right of the fairway , where three tall palm trees stood . His ball settled in one of them . The big question : Could he identify the ball in one of the trees or was it lost ?
The purpose of this is not to litigate the multitude of videos that showed that the ball maybe landed in a different tree than the one Reed searched for his ball in . In a full-field event , there just aren ’ t going to be cameras tracking every shot of every
Clearly marking your ball before putting it in play is always a good idea .
BIGSTOCK ( 2 )
14 V IRGINIA G OLFER | M ARCH / A PRIL 2023
vsga . org