{"id":812527,"date":"2026-07-19T17:13:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T17:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/812527\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T17:13:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T17:13:15","slug":"scottie-scheffler-lost-his-golf-ball-but-got-a-free-drop-heres-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/812527\/","title":{"rendered":"Scottie Scheffler Lost His Golf Ball But Got A Free Drop. Here’s Why…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Golf fans can be forgiven for being a little confused as to why Scottie Scheffler<\/a> got a free drop on the 17th hole during the Open final round despite losing his golf ball.<\/p>\n

The World No.1 found himself in the rough off the tee and pulled his second shot into a hospitality unit. His ball was not found but thanks to the Rules of Golf, he was able to take a free drop before getting it up-and-down for an unlikely birdie.<\/p>\n

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Scheffler’s ball flew into the hospitality unit on the left of the 17th, which is considered a ‘TIO’ – a Temporary Immovable Object<\/a>. These are very common in professional golf and include things like grandstands and other pop-up structures.<\/p>\n

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If a TIO impedes a golfer’s shot, they are allowed a free drop within two club lengths of the object. This is very standard, but the interesting point relating to Scheffler’s was the fact that his ball was never found.<\/p>\n

Usually a lost ball would result in a stroke-and-distance penalty<\/a>, meaning he would have had to go back to where he played his original ball from with a one-stroke penalty. Yet Rule 17.1d saved him, as it was considered to be ‘known or virtually certain<\/a>‘ that his ball had gone into the TIO.<\/p>\n

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If you can’t find your ball but you saw it go in and are ‘virtually certain’ of it, you may take relief. If you’re virtually certain your ball went into a bush or a part of the general area<\/a>, you would have to take a penalty drop, but if you’re virtually certain your ball went somewhere where you can get a free drop, like a TIO or Ground Under Repair<\/a>, then you can take free relief.<\/p>\n

The incident took some ten minutes and following his drop, Scheffler wedged it to around 10ft on the par 5 and holed the putt for a remarkable birdie.<\/p>\n

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It got him to eight-under for the tournament and within one of clubhouse leader Cameron Young<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Golf fans can be forgiven for being a little confused as to why Scottie Scheffler got a free…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":812528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-812527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}