Can I ‘tee up’ my ball on a wormcast when preferring my lie?

I’m looking at a long-range weather forecast and, for the first time in weeks, it doesn’t have a blue dollop smeared across the page.

There is a strange yellow object in the sky and a chance – I’m not going to get carried away – that my golf course might open again soon.

Let’s not kid ourselves, though. Even if the course closed signs get taken down, and even if we escape another bout with Noah in the next few weeks, the ground is still going to be wet for a while.

And where it is wet, you get wormcasts.

When I think about difficult course conditions, I think about the slimy, oily, little balls of mud that just love getting in between golf club and ball.

If you don’t know ‘exactly’ what they are, I can tell you they’re gross. They play havoc with your greenkeeper’s mowers and there’s not very much they can do about them.

We know they are loose impediments and you can shift them so long as you don’t move your ball while doing so.

But is there a way you can also use them to your advantage? I read this question online recently and it intrigued me. We’re all playing with preferred lies right now under ‘winter rules’, so can you place your ball on a wormcast to effectively tee it up?

Wormcast on a golf course

Can you tee up your ball on a wormcast?

When you take preferred lies relief, you’re not replacing a ball on a spot you’re placing it in a specific area. It’s normally about six inches.

Within that area, you can put the ball wherever you like. If there happens to be a wormcast within it – and you fancy sticking your ball on it like a cherry on a cake – I can’t see anything in the rules to stop you.

Before you get too carried away, there are a couple of things to consider. You’re allowed to take relief once under this rule.

So if you let go and your ball falls off the wormcast, or natural forces (wind, water, gravity) moves it before you’ve taken your shot, you’re stuck with the outcome.

You can’t just pick up the ball and put it back on top.

And while you can remove loose impediments from a relief area where a ball is dropped or placed (Clarification 15.1a/1), the reverse isn’t true. You can’t just scoop up a wormcast from somewhere else as you’d fall foul of Rule 8.1a (2).

That says you can’t “move a loose impediment or movable obstruction into position”. The general penalty – two shots in stroke play or loss of hole in match play – is there to punish players who get a bit too “smart”.

Got a question for our expert?

Despite the changes to the Rules of Golf in 2019 and 2023, there are still some that leave us scratching our heads. I’ll try to help by featuring the best of your queries in this column.

What do you think of this wormcast rule? Let me know by leaving a comment below, email me at s.carroll@nationalclubgolfer.com or get in touch on X.

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