Is there anything worse in golf than playing a lovely shot only to find out you’ve hit the wrong ball?
It’s probably yet another reason why you should doodle marks on your golf ball like you’re a three-year-old standing in front of a white wall with a felt tip pen but, even with the best of intentions, the worst can still happen.
Enter this email scenario: “In match play, player A thinks he has identified his ball and is away. He hits the ball onto the green.
“Player B then hits his ball from a trap, within five yards from where A played and is short of the green. B chips onto the green and putts first.
“A, from a similar spot, putts. It is then realised that A and B each played the wrong ball for their second and subsequent shots. What is the ruling?
“If it had been medal play, could each player return to the location of their second shots – since they can correct the situation, unlike in match play?”
My head hurts just following that sequence. But if this feels like a Rubik’s Cube of a problem, don’t worry. We won’t be here all day. For this exact scenario is described in the Rules of Golf and this is the solution…
Playing the wrong ball in match play: What are the rules?
The penalty for playing the wrong ball in match play is loss of hole. Who is suffering this fate?
Rule 6.3c says if you and your opponent play each other’s ball during a hole, it’s the “first to make a stroke at the wrong ball” that is going to get penalised.
So, in our timeline, if A hit the first shot with a wrong ball, B is winning the hole.
What if it’s all got lost in translation and you can’t work out which of you did the deed first?
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There is no penalty. Not only that, you’ve got to play out the hole “with the balls exchanged”.
In stroke play, which obviously includes medal, it’s bad news for both of you. It doesn’t matter who played the wrong ball first, you’ve both done it.
Each of you is getting a two-shot penalty and you both need to correct the mistake. That means going back and playing your ball. That’s not a ‘could’ by the way. It’s a ‘must’. It’s laid out in Rule 6.3c (2).
If you’ve been racking up strokes with the wrong balls, none of them count. If you don’t fix the error, and carry on regardless, more bad things will happen.
Make a stroke to begin another hole or return the scorecard if it was the last hole of the round and you’ll be disqualified.
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 these hitting wrong ball in match play rules? Let me you what you think, and send me your own rules questions, by emailing me at s.carroll@nationalclubgolfer.com or by leaving us a comment below, or on X.
