Know the Rules

One from the inbox

Q: I was playing "Beat The Pro" with my club professional. The first hole is a par 3 over a lake. One of the players teed off and hit the ball very close to going in the lake except no one saw a splash. We went to the area where the ball either went into the water or would be on the fairway beyond the water. We searched but could not find the ball until the pro found it, embedded in the lip of the lake where the fairway was edged around the lake. The water hazard was marked with yellow stakes with no connecting yellow boundary lines. Drawing a sight line between the two stakes on each side of the embedded ball, as you would do for an OB test, it was determined that the ball was outside that line. The pro ruled that the ball was not in the hazard and was embedded in its own divot (mark) and, thus, the player could lift, clean and drop the ball no closer to the hole without a penalty. What is the ruling?

A: The player proceeded correctly. Since the ball was outside the hazard, the player could take relief under the embedded ball rule, dropping it as near as possible to wear it lay but not nearer the hole. (This ruling applies when the local rule providing relief for an embedded ball through the green has been adopted. If this local rule is not adopted players are only entitled to embedded ball relief in any closely mown area through the green (Rule 25-2).

— Mike Sweeney, SCGA Director of Rules and Competitions

Get it right, Nick!

Nick Faldo has joined the long list of announcers (and others) who have misused the term Rub of the Green. In today’s second-round Buick Invitational telecast, Faldo described a ball rolling on a putting green knocked offline by a tuft of grass or the condition of the grass as a “rub of the green.”

Bogey, Nick!

Rub of the green is not a synonym for bad luck. In The Rules of Golf, it has a specific definition: “A rub of the green occurs when a ball in motion is accidentally deflected or stopped by any outside agency (see Rule 19-1).”

And, as so often happens, one Rule or Definition leads to another. An outside agency in stroke play “is any agency other than the competitor's side, any caddie of the Side, any ball played by the Side at the hole being played or any equipment of the Side. An outside agency includes a referee, a marker, an observer and a forecaddie. Neither wind nor water is an outside agency.”

Nor, it should be added, is the ground.

— Robert D. Thomas
SCGA Senior Director of Communications