Dear Linda,
If another player hits my ball in the fairway, do I have to
put my ball back in the original spot or leave where it lies?
Lulu from Perkins, Oklahoma
Dear Lulu,
When another player hits your ball, you must place a ball on
the spot from which she played it. If your lie was altered by her shot, you must place a ball in the nearest lie that is most similar to your original lie, within one club-length, and no closer to the hole [Rule 20-3b (i)]. If you can't determine the exact spot, you will have to drop a ball as near as possible to where you suspect it originally lay [Rule 20-3c]. You do not have to retrieve your original
ball – any ball in your bag will do.
There is no penalty to you, of course. The story does not
have such a happy ending for the player who hit your ball. Hitting another golfer’s
ball is called hitting a “wrong ball.” In match play, the player loses the
hole. In stroke play, the penalty is two strokes, and the player must correct
her mistake before she tees off on the next hole. If she fails to make the
correction, she is disqualified [Rule 15-3].
Linda
Copyright © 2017 Linda Miller. All rights reserved.
