Linda,
I need help with the lost ball rule! What does “mistakenly identified his ball” while searching mean as a reason for interrupting the search time? Just because you see a ball in the water...can that be a reason to interrupt the 3-minute time for search? Can that be interpreted as identifying your ball and when you finally retrieve the ball...you find out it’s not yours...please explain.
Thanks in advance.
Lou from Avondale, Arizona
Dear Lou,
The time spent searching, retrieving, and identifying your ball counts in your search time. Merely seeing a ball does not stop the search clock.
What is meant by “mistakenly identified his ball” being a reason to stop the clock is explained in the first bullet of Interpretation 18.2a(1)/1, which I have pasted below for you. Basically, if you search for two minutes, find a ball, mistakenly identify it or assume it is yours and play it, and then discover that it is not yours, you have one more minute to search for your original ball. The time you spend playing the wrong ball does not count in your search time.
Interpretation 18.2a(1)/1
Time Permitted for Search When Search Temporarily Interrupted
A player is allowed three minutes to search for his or her ball before it becomes lost. However, there are situations when the "clock stops" and such time does not count towards the player's three minutes.
The following examples illustrate how to account for the time when a search is temporarily interrupted:
• In stroke play, a player searches for his or her ball for one minute and finds a ball. The player assumes that ball is his or her ball, takes 30 seconds to decide how to make the stroke, choose a club, and plays that ball. The player then discovers that it is a wrong ball.
• When the player returns to the area where the original ball was likely to be and resumes search, he or she has two more minutes to search. The time of search stopped when the player found the wrong ball and stopped searching.
Linda
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