Sometimes I need to hold my hands up. This potential wrong ball in golf situation, described over email by Evan Cantor, has popped up a few times in various different guises in my inbox over the last few months…
“During stroke play, I hit my ball into the rough. When I located my ball, the logo, number, and my personal marking were visible so I correctly identified my ball without disturbing it.
“When I hit my shot from the rough I also hit – with the same swing – another, second ball, that was directly under my ball. This second ball was not mine nor visible prior to my hitting it due to my ball being above it and the grass of the rough being around it.”
Yet I’ve not addressed it, dear reader. Why? Because I couldn’t quite seem to locate the answer when rolling round the rule book. It does happen. So what’s the answer?
Is this a case of hitting a wrong ball in golf?
So I’m grateful to the USGA Rules team, for coming to the rescue after someone popped a similar scene, this time in a penalty area, into their online Facebook Rules of Golf discussion group.
Some of you may be wondering whether you faced a sanction here. Evan thought it might be two-strokes for hitting a wrong ball.
But this is what the USGA had to say about the similar scenario: “No penalty. The player only intended to strike his own ball and therefore a stroke was not made at the unknown abandoned wrong ball.”
Let’s see if we can figure this out a bit further. A stray ball is defined in the rules as a wrong ball, yet an abandoned ball is also a movable obstruction.
But the definition of stroke is the “forward movement of the club made to strike the ball”. There is intent there and a clarification to the definition says as much: “starts the downswing with a club intending to strike the ball”.
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So the hidden, abandoned, ball would be classed as a wrong ball if a stroke was made at it. That’s not what has happened here. The stroke has been made at the player’s own ball.
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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.
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