In my discussion of Rule 11, part 1, we talked exclusively about accidental deflection of balls in motion – ‘cause stuff happens. In part 2, we talk about much more sinister stuff…. Deliberate actions to deflect or alter the flight or roll of a golf ball.
Accidents (we talked about this exhaustively in Part 1) will happen on the golf course when you hit something you don’t expect to hit – they generally don’t earn you a penalty and you must ACCEPT that the accident happened AND the location in which the ball comes to rest. Then there are deliberate events – those are not accidental, which could lead to some rather nasty penalties for the player that perpetrates them. Accidental. Deliberate. We’re getting into thought versus thoughtless crimes this week.
To refresh some memories, here’s an example of accidental deflection. You’re on the tee box on #2 (the par five…) and you hit a short but straight drive right down the fairway. Unfortunately, the smack of your driver striking the ball disturbed the doe grazing near the pond on that hole and she bolts into the fairway and your ball caroms off of her and makes a right turn into the pond. Accident. Unfair. True on both counts. The result? You’re in the red penalty area, and unless you want to try to play the ball from the bottom of the pond, you’ll be taking a drop and a penalty stroke. Damn deer! Now, say the ball is heading for the pond, hits the deer in the noggin and bounces left into the middle of the fairway. All good – you play where the ball came to rest. Deer, the beer cart, a player on an adjacent hole – striking them with your golf ball means you have to accept the result of your shot.
While playing in our league, typically the only people you’ll encounter are fellow competitors or Ruggles staff. We don’t have spectators, so if you have to deal with deliberate acts to alter the flight of a golf ball, it will likely mean that you, your playing partner, or a member of the opposing team deflected or stopped your ball. Remember, we’re not dealing with accidents, this is deliberate actions to deflect or stop your ball. The rule also cites actions by a player to deliberate place his equipment so that a ball might be deflected or stopped – this rule would apply in this case as well. On to the examples!
Paul’s having a rough day on the links. He pulled his tee shot left of the green on #12, ran his second shot over the green and into the rough. His third shot races through the green and down into the left-hand greenside bunker on #12. Paul’s shot from the bunker makes it out of the bunker and then stops precariously on the slope between the bunker and the green. Paul attempts to pitch the ball (shot #5) onto the green but hits the ball too softly. The ball reaches the top of the slope and starts to trickle backwards into the bunker. In anger, Paul hits the moving ball with his club and knocks it onto the green. How does Paul proceed? Well, first Paul has to assess himself a penalty. He deliberately hit a moving ball and deflected it from it’s inevitable descent back into the bunker. When you make that stroke at a moving ball, you have to count the stroke and then add the two stroke (general penalty) for the infraction. He’s now laying 8 with his ball on the green. However, the rule also states that Paul can’t play from that location on the green. He must estimate where the ball would have ended up if he hadn’t hit the moving ball. He plays his eighth stroke from the bunker, estimating where the ball would have rolled, and dropping in the bunker within a club length of that estimated spot. He’s gone from bad to much, much worse. In golf, you generally have to take your lumps.
Another example. Tommy’s hit his tee shot on #11 into the trees on the corner of the dogleg, and his ball’s nestled up against the trunk of one of those trees. He has no play other than to send the ball back toward the fairway and toward the tee box. However, he decided to park his golf cart on that line, and he figures he will try to bank the ball off the cart and back toward the green. Of course, he pulls it off, banks it off the cart and ends up right in the middle of the fairway with 150 yards in with a big smile on his face! Not so fast, Tommy. When questioned whether he intended to bank the ball off the cart, he said “Yeah, and I can’t believe I pulled it off!”. 2 stroke penalty, and he once again has to estimate where the ball would have come to rest if the cart hadn’t been there. His fifth shot will be played from an area near the red tees.
Our previous two examples dealt with a player altering the flight of his golf ball deliberately. How about someone else’s ball? Greg’s in a frustrating REGL match with Bob. Greg’s played against Bob before and can’t stand the running diatribe about the golf course, the golf league, slow play, his hole-in-one last year, etc., etc. Greg’s tried to block out Bob’s comments, but after 8 holes, Greg is irritable and one down with one to play. The best he can hope for is a tie in his match. Team net is hopelessly lost after Greg dribbled a ball of the tee box on the previous hole and into the water with the follow up finding the same watery grave on the way to a score of 8 on a par 3. Greg’s partner isn’t much help since he likes Bob and has been Bob’s sounding board all night. Greg, bound and determined to earn a halve hits a beautiful drive and an approach that come to rest a foot from the hole for a conceded birdie. However, Bob’s getting a stroke. Bob’s tee shot caroms off of the trees on the corner of #13 and comes to rest in the middle of the fairway, and his approach is a worm burner that somehow ends up near the green. Bob skulls his chip, smacks straight into the flagstick and leaves him with an eight-footer for par. Inevitably, the putt has perfect pace on the perfect line. Just before it falls into the hole, Greg blows a cork and kicks the ball off the green to deny Bob the satisfaction of winning the match and seeing his ball drop in the hole for par. How do Greg and Bob proceed? If Greg can be reasoned with, he’ll accept a two-stroke penalty for his action, and card a bogey (5) for the hole. Since Bob’s stroke was deflected and was played from the putting green, that stroke will be cancelled, and Bob will have to estimate the previous location of the ball and repeat the stroke. (Hopefully he makes that one as well). If Bob’s match with Greg would have been using match play rules, instead of getting the general 2-stroke penalty, Greg would have lost the hole due to his deliberate act.
Similar scenario, except this time Bob’s chipped beautifully from off the green and the ball is rolling majestically to settle 2 inches to the right of the hole. Just before it stops Greg runs over to kick the ball off the green. Two stroke penalty on Greg (bogey again!), and since Bob was not on the green when he made the stroke, he has to estimate where the moving ball would have come to rest (2 inches from the cup), and Bob taps it in for par.
Like I said before, this is thought-crime stuff. My examples were pretty cut and dried, but what about a more sinister and less obvious case? Mike makes a putt from 50 feet that looks to be on a great line with perfect speed. His opponent, Mark, sees his easy win of the hole in jeopardy. His putter slips out of his hand and lands just in front of Mike’s moving ball with about 10 feet to go. An apologetic Mark says “Oh, I’m so sorry! The putter accidentally slipped out of my hands! Please try that over!” Mike tries again, and can’t find the speed or the line he had on the first putt and ends up with a 10-ft putt to halve the hole, and of course he misses it. Did Mark accidentally drop his putter or was it deliberate? There’s only one person who knows if the 2-stroke penalty (or loss of hole penalty in match play) applies, and that’s Mark.
And here’s another example. Good intention, bad result for all. Nick is walking in the rough toward the green on #2 adjacent to the driveway into Ruggles. Alex has hit a ball from the fairway that catches a tree on the left and the ball caroms right toward Nick. Nick has plenty of time to get out of the way, but instead, stops Alex’s ball so it doesn’t cross the road and become “out of bounds”. How do we proceed? First, Alex’s ball was clearly headed out of bounds, and under the stroke and distance penalty, has to replay from his original location in the fairway with a one-stroke penalty. Nick gets a 2-stroke penalty for deflecting Alex’s ball in motion.
One more. Nick is walking on the cart path of #2 toward the green when Alex’s ball bounces next to him on the path and Nick playfully knocks it back into the fairway. Again, 2 strokes added to Nick’s score, and now Alex has to estimate a “reference point” where he thinks the ball would have come to rest. It’s a guess. Alex then would drop the ball within 1 club length of that reference point, no closer to the hole in the same area of the course (if the reference point is in a bunker, you can’t use the 1 club length to get out of the bunker).
Our next installment will wrap up Rule 11 with a discussion of what can and can’t be moved when a ball is in motion. Riveting stuff!