Torrential rain poured during the days of tournament week before the 2025 PGA Championship.
Soft conditions are usually the stuff of dreams for the world’s best players, but moist turf can also bring complications when what is underneath is exposed.
Mud balls, we’re talking about. The dreaded mud balls.
“All of us. I’m not the only guy. I’m just in front of the camera. I wouldn’t want to go in the locker room because I’m sure a lot of guys aren’t super happy with sort of the conditions there,” defending champion Xander Schauffele said after the first round.
“I feel like the grass is so good, there is no real advantage to cleaning your ball in the fairway. The course is completely tipped out. It sucks that you’re kind of 50/50 once you hit the fairway.
“The mud balls are going to get worse. That wasn’t your question, but they’re going to get worse as the plays dries up. They’re going to get in that perfect cake zone to where it’s kind of muddy underneath and then picking up mud on the way through. I mean – maybe it hit it a little bit lower off the tee, but then unfortunately the problem with hitting it low off the tee is the ball doesn’t carry or roll anywhere, so then you sacrifice distance. It’s a bit of a crapshoot.”
“It’s one of those deals where it’s frustrating to hit the ball in the middle of the fairway and get mud on it and have no idea where it’s going to go,” World No.1 Scottie Scheffler said. “I understand it’s part of the game, but there’s nothing more frustrating for a player. You spend your whole life trying to learn how to control a golf ball, and due to a rules decision all of a sudden you have absolutely no control over where that golf ball goes.”
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Evidently, this isn’t the first time this issue has arisen at the PGA Championship. The last time preferred lies were implemented at a major was at this event in 2016, and as round one of the 2025 edition at Quail Hollow Golf Club got underway, it became clear why whispers suggested preferred lies could be used again.
What is a mud ball in golf?
A mud ball is a golf ball that has a lump of mud on it. This can happen when the golf course you are playing has soft and wet conditions and if you hit your ball in the rough or even in the fairway, mud can cover the ball fairly easily. Finding the fairway and still having mud on your ball is the root of some players’ frustration at the PGA Championship.
Golf rules: Mud on ball issue rears its head at the PGA again
On the eve of the Quail Hollow tournament, PGA officials said: “We do not plan to play preferred lies. The playing surfaces are outstanding and are drying by the hour.”
This is in contrast to the standard protocols of regular PGA Tour events, where ‘lift, clean and place’ can often be in operation and – had the PGA of America allowed it – the Rules of Golf actually give them a couple of options.
They wouldn’t have necessarily had to implement preferred lies, for a start. They could have chosen the aforementioned Model Local Rule E-2 instead, which allows players to mark, lift, clean and replace the ball on the same spot.
That rule, designed for when ground conditions might cause mud to stick to the ball, can be used throughout the general area. That also means the rough.
Players have to mark the spot of the ball before picking it up and if they don’t do that – or replace it on its original spot – they get a penalty. It’s one shot for not marking and that can grow to two if they play from a wrong place.
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Preferred lies, which you will all be familiar with if you’ve played any kind of winter golf, allows players to lift their ball and replace it in a specified area – usually about six inches. It can apply when a ball is in a part of general area cut to fairway height or less.
Mud on ball golf rule: When can you clean your golf ball?
But if these Local Rules aren’t in play, it does beg the wider question – “when can you clean your ball, and when shouldn’t you?”
Most of you will already know that, under Rule 14.1c – Cleaning Lifted Ball, you can always clean a ball lifted from the putting green.
You can also always clean a ball lifted from anywhere else except in four situations:
- To see if it’s cut or cracked (Don’t clean it)
- To identify it (You are allowed to clean it only as needed to identify it)
- When the ball interferes with play (Don’t clean it)
- To see if it lies in a condition where relief is allowed (Don’t clean it, unless you then take relief under a Rule)
If you clean a ball when you’re not allowed to do so, you’re going to pick up a penalty shot.
There’s another potential sting in the tail.
Think about this for a minute. You’ve lifted your ball and it’s one of those exceptions where cleaning is not allowed. So what constitutes cleaning? Could you inadvertently do it, even if it was unintentional?
A clarification to Rule 14.1c spells it out quite nicely: Player Must Be Careful When Lifted Ball May Not Be Cleaned.
Two examples given reveal the potential problems and may give some of you a bit of a wake up call.
The first describes how a player lifts a ball that has grass or debris attached to it and throws it to a caddie, who catches the ball in a towel. Because it’s likely that, in that action, some of the grass or debris has been removed, the ball is classed as being cleaned.
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But the second example is the one that might really have caught some of you out. “If the player places that ball in their pocket or drops it onto the ground, these acts could result in some of the grass or other debris being removed from that ball, meaning that it has been cleaned.”
It’s why, on tour, you’ll see players sometimes holding a ball as if it’s diseased.
Got a question for our expert after this mud on ball golf rule piece?
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 about these mud on ball golf rules? Let me know by leaving a comment on X.
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