Dear Linda,
Yesterday we were in the following situation:
Player A tees off on a par 3 hole and his ball goes
right into the trees. He announces that he will play a provisional ball and he
does. He gets a "Hole in ONE” with the provisional. He is not willing to
search for his ball in the trees, and he is walking towards the green.
What is the ruling here?
I assume that the other players have now to go and search
for him (for 5 minutes) – this is not very “polite”…
I know that Player A cannot just declare his provisional
ball as the new ball in play (in this situation is Player A allowed to just
wait for 5 minutes, in order to declare his provisional as the ball in play?).
So now the rest of the players have to search in order to
“protect” their scores? Correct?
Thank you,
Lou from Athens, Greece
Dear Lou,
The provisional ball will become the ball in play as soon as
the player takes it out of the hole, provided the original ball is not found within
five minutes before he does so [Decision 27-2b/2].
The other players are not obligated to search for the ball,
but they may certainly do so, even if Player A requests that they not search.
If they find the original ball within five minutes and before Player A picks
his provisional out of the hole, Player A must complete the hole with the
original ball.
If Player A is Rules-smart and fleet of foot, he will race
to the hole in an attempt to remove the ball from the hole before anyone finds
the original. If he wins the race, his score on the hole is 3.
Linda
Copyright © 2017 Linda Miller. All rights reserved.
