Linda, a situation has received conflicting answers from
pros. Please help.
A player's ball lies on the fringe. There is a large
"pebble" (about half the size of her little finger nail) lying on the
fringe in front of her ball. She picks the "pebble" up to move it and
part of it crunches enough that she realizes it is actually a clump of sand.
She did not make a sweeping motion to remove loose sand and
her belief was that she was picking up and removing a pebble.
Would this be considered cleaning sand off the fringe and
would it be a penalty?
Thanks for all you do.
Lulu from Texas
Dear Lulu,
There is no penalty.
I checked with the rules officials at the USGA. Since the clump of sand is not
loose and separate, as typical sand would be, it is not readily recognizable as
sand and fits into the category of “clod of earth” [Decision 23/13]. Clods are
not loose soil, and may always be moved.
Linda
Copyright © 2012 Linda Miller. All rights reserved.
