Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Ask Linda #686-Drop on near or far side of hazard


Hi Linda,

Yesterday I played a course that has a water area marked with yellow stakes and about 20 yards around the opposite side it is marked with red stakes.  I hit my ball across the yellow area and my ball hit on land above the stakes but being a bank it rolled in a semicircle and into the water.  My opponents said that I had to hit another ball from the same side as before since it went into the water even though it did cross the water initially.  Was that a correct ruling?

Lulu

Dear Lulu,

With regard to water hazards, where you have to drop depends on where your ball last crossed the margin of the hazard. If your ball first crossed the margin of the hazard where it is marked with yellow stakes, crossed the water, landed on the other side past the stakes, and rolled back into the hazard where it is marked with red stakes, your ball last crossed the margin of a lateral hazard. As such, one of your relief options is to drop your ball within two club-lengths of the point where it last crossed the margin of the hazard, no closer to the hole. You would not have to hit across the water.

If this were a standard water hazard (yellow stakes only), the fact that your ball hit land on the far side and rolled back into the water would not entitle you to drop on the other side. The ball would be in the hazard, and your next shot would again have to cross the hazard.

Linda
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