Autumn light on a golf course is mesmerising. The soft sun combining with the gorgeous reds and browns of the remaining leaves – look at me getting all poetic.
But as the clock winds towards the end of the year, that sun doesn’t stay in place for long. It’s not much past noon when long shadows are cast all over the golf course.
We notice them most on the green, where they’ve just got that knack of looming into focus as we’re standing over a putt.
That often means some careful movement. Are you getting in the way? Is someone happy to putt through your silhouette? What if they want you to move? And what if they want you to stay?
What’s the deal? If someone wants to get out of the road, can you stop them in their tracks? For the answer to this one, we need to go deep into Rule 10…
Casting a shadow over the golf ball: What do the rules say?
I find shadows quite distracting, so I spend my time trying to keep mine away from someone’s line. I think most of us do that as we regard it as good etiquette.
There are rules that stop players getting protection from the elements. Rule 10.2b (5) says a player can’t make a stroke while getting physical help from their caddie or “any other person”, or an object “deliberately positioned to… give protection from sunlight, rain or other elements”.
But – there’s always a but in the rules isn’t there? – the same rule doesn’t stop a player asking “any other person who was not deliberately positioned by the player to remain in position or move out of the way”.
An example given in the Rule is where a spectator is casting a shadow over a player’s ball but a clarification to this rule gives further explanation – reiterating that while a player can’t “position a person for the purpose of blocking sunlight from the ball”, it can ask that they don’t move if that person is already there “so that a shadow remains over the ball”.
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And as we already know, they can also ask that the person moves, “so that their shadow is no longer over the ball”.
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.
Casting a shadow over the golf ball: What do you think of this 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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