Rules #4-Relief Options, Part III: Water Hazards

This is the third and final installment of Relief Options. In the first section (published March 7) I explained the situations in which you are entitled to take free relief and how to find the nearest point of relief for the drop. The second section (published March 16) discussed the relief options for an unplayable ball. Today I will talk about how to find relief from a water hazard.

If your ball lies in a water hazard, you have several choices on how to proceed. You may try to hit it out of the hazard – water hazards are not always filled with water, and you might have a decent lie within the hazard. If you choose to attempt to hit it out of the hazard, please remember that you may not test the condition of the hazard, touch the ground or water with your hand or a club, or touch or move any loose impediments lying in the hazard (Rule 13-4). You may place your clubs in the hazard (no penalty), and the rules are also very considerate in allowing you to trip and fall in a hazard (also no penalty, but they won’t go so far as to foot your laundry bill!).

If you decide to take relief from the water hazard, here are your choices, all of which require that you add one penalty stroke to your score:
1. Play a ball from the spot where you hit your previous shot (this is known as “stroke and distance”).
2. Drop a ball behind the hazard on the line-of-sight to the hole (draw a line from the hole through the spot where your ball last crossed the margin of the hazard, and drop anywhere along that line).
3. If your ball happens to lie in a lateral water hazard (red stakes), you have the additional option of dropping within two club-lengths no closer to the hole than either the spot where your ball crossed the margin of the hazard, or at a spot equidistant from the hole on the other side of the hazard.

Please remember that choice #3 (the two club-length option) is only available for LATERAL water hazards. Would you like to know why the rules provide this additional option for lateral hazards? It’s because the rules would like a player to have two relief choices. When a ball is in a regular water hazard (yellow stakes), both “stroke and distance” and “line-of-sight” are always available options. In a lateral hazard, “line-of-sight” is seldom an available option; the addition of the two club-length option gives a player a viable second choice.

You may have noticed the new wording in the water hazard rule (Rule 26) this year that states that in order to proceed under the water hazard rule, it must be “known or virtually certain” that a ball that is not found is actually in the water hazard. So how can you be virtually certain that your ball is in the hazard? Here are some guidelines:

A. You may assume that the following balls are IN the water hazard:
1. A ball that you hit a mile high that splashes in the middle of a lake
2. You hit the ball straight towards the hazard, and the area surrounding the hazard is all fairway
3. A spectator or a player from another group tells you he saw your ball land in the hazard

B. You may NOT assume that the following balls are in the water hazard. If you do not find your ball in these situations, you must treat it as a lost ball and proceed under Rule 27:
1. A low screamer that skips in the water (it may have skipped out)
2. Deep rough (tall grasses, fescue, unfriendly vegetation) surrounds the hazard (meaning the ball could conceivably be lost someplace other than in the hazard)
3. There is disagreement as to whether your ball went into the hazard among the players in your group (“You say yes, I say no,” to borrow a line from the Beatles)

There must be a high degree of certainty that the ball is in the hazard in order to proceed under the water hazard rule. Otherwise, you must treat it as a lost ball (proceed under stroke and distance).

INTERESTING SITUATIONS
1. If your ball touches both the margin of a water hazard and a bunker, the ball is ruled to be in the water hazard.
2. If your ball comes to rest in a ditch (river, pond lake, etc.) that has not been marked as a water hazard (it is sometimes the case that a golf course has a lack of manpower or resources to properly mark the hazards), you are responsible to recognize it as a water hazard and treat it as such.
3. In taking relief from a water hazard, you may drop in a bunker or another hazard (you must be playing one tough course if these are your best options!).
4. Let’s say you believe your ball is in a water hazard, drop another ball behind the hazard, and play it. (This should raise a warning flag that bad news is coming, since “belief” is not “knowledge” or “virtual certainty.”) Afterwards, within five minutes, you or someone in your group finds your original ball outside the hazard. Well, since you played a ball under the line-of-sight option of the water hazard rule without knowledge or virtual certainty that the ball was in the hazard, you played from a wrong place. In match play you lose the hole; in stroke play it will cost you three penalty strokes: the stroke-and-distance penalty that you would have incurred if you had proceeded correctly (you didn’t “know” your ball was in the hazard, and you didn’t find it, so you should have treated it as a lost ball); plus the two-stroke penalty for playing from a wrong place (Rule 20-7). You might also be disqualified from a stroke play event if you gained a significant advantage by playing from a wrong place and not correcting the error before teeing off on the next hole (Rule 20-7c).
5. In number 4 above, if the player drops a ball but DOES NOT play it (another player finds it just in time), he must abandon the dropped ball and play his original ball (no penalty) under Rule 20-6, affectionately known as the “Eraser Rule.” Rule 20-6 states that “a ball incorrectly substituted, dropped or placed in a wrong place or otherwise not in accordance with the Rules but not played may be lifted, without penalty, and the player must then proceed correctly.”
6. Suppose you hit a ball over a water hazard, over the green, and into a bunker behind the green. Your shot out of the bunker then flies over the green and lands in the hazard. What are your options?
a. You may hit a ball from where you hit your previous shot (stroke and distance), which means you would have to drop it in the bunker.
b. You may proceed under the line-of-sight option, which means you will be dropping behind the hazard and will have to cross it again.
7. What if your ball crosses a hazard and then rolls back in? Well, where is the ball? It’s in the hazard, isn’t it? So you must proceed under one of the relief options under the water hazard rule. If you choose the line-of-sight option, remember that your reference point is where the ball LAST crossed the margin of the hazard. In this case, it last crossed at a point on the far side of the hazard. Look at the hole, draw a line through that point, continue that line straight across the hazard and drop somewhere along an extension of that line.

REMEMBER: If your ball is in a water hazard (yellow stakes), and you are taking relief, your next shot will have to be hit over the water. The only time you may not have to hit over the water when taking relief is if your ball is in a lateral hazard (red stakes).

If you would like to read about MORE unusual and interesting situations, check out the Decisions for Rule 26 at the USGA website:

http://www.usga.org/playing/rules/books/rules.html

Copyright © 2008 Linda Miller. All rights reserved.