The Rules of Golf are tricky! Thankfully, we\u2019ve got the guru. Our Rules Guy knows the book front to back. Got a question? He\u2019s got all the answers.<\/p>\n
During a friendly 4-ball, teeing off on a blind par-4, my playing partner could not find her tee shot. The group searched for more than 3 minutes for her ball. My partner decided to \u201cpick up\u201d rather than head back to the tee. Soon enough, another player in the group checked the hole for fun \u2014 no one had thought to look there, since it was a par-4 \u2026 and there it was. A hole-in-one! But was it really, given the circumstances? \u2013 Teresa White, Purchase, NY<\/p>\n
Really, it was, even if it sounds like the group didn\u2019t get the free round of drinks owed at the 19th hole. <\/p>\n
Your partner indeed made a hole-in-one \u2014 and, even rarer, an albatross to boot! The fact that the ball wasn\u2019t found in the search time didn\u2019t matter, nor did her \u201cpicking up,\u201d because she had already completed the hole. Rule 6.5, \u201cCompleting Play of a Hole,\u201d completely covers this situation.<\/p>\n
For the answer to another hole-in-one query, read on \u2026<\/p>\n
A member at our club made an ace, then called a penalty on himself, claiming he teed the ball ahead of the marker. All this to avoid paying for drinks after the round, when tabs have reached $2,000. Was this legal? \u2013 John Karam, St. Petersburg, Fla.<\/p>\n
The thrill of victory and the agony of\u2026 the bar tab.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s say this occurred in match play. Under Rule 6.1b, which covers playing from inside the teeing area, the opponent gets to choose whether to cancel Mr. Cheap Ace\u2019s stroke, so if that opponent prefers a free drink and losing the hole, so be it \u2014 don\u2019t cancel the stroke and the hole in one stands.<\/p>\n
In stroke play, once the player has called the penalty on himself, he gets two penalty strokes \u2014 but remember, the stroke into the hole now doesn\u2019t count and the player has to correct the mistake by playing from within the teeing area (as opposed to \u201cThat\u2019s a 1 with a 2-stroke penalty for a 3\u201d).<\/p>\n
If he doesn\u2019t correct the mistake, he\u2019s disqualified. Some might argue that a player calling a penalty to gain an advantage is antithetical to golf\u2019s spirit, and the Committee could go the DQ route via serious misconduct under Rule 1.2a.<\/p>\n
But the game of golf assumes honorable golfers and takes them at their word, unless there\u2019s hard evidence to the contrary. Suspicions aren\u2019t facts, and the \u201cadvantage\u201d here is purely financial, not competitive \u2014 quite the contrary, since he has cost himself strokes. Maybe it seems a bit naive, but Rules Guy, for one, prefers it that way, even if it means paying for his own single-malt Scotch at the 19th hole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rules of Golf are tricky! Thankfully, we\u2019ve got the guru. Our Rules Guy knows the book front…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":816282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-816281","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\/816281","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=816281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}