It’s amazing the odd things that can happen when you hit a small ball around a big field.
Loyd Jones emailed this agonising tale: “During a round I was hitting my second shot from an adjacent fairway, after pulling my drive left.
“I hit a low punch shot to get back on my correct fairway. It was a blind shot to the green with water, so I was laying up.
“At the same time, a member of my group drove his buggy into the fairway. My ball struck his buggy and careened into a bunker.
“He required me to play it from the sand. I thought I got a free re-hit because it hit an object not a part of the course – similar to sprinkler control boxes. Who’s right?”
Golf ball hits buggy: What do the Rules of Golf say?
You can question his driving skills Loyd – it sounds like it was real-life pinball out there – but you can’t fault his rules knowledge.
Rule 11.1 applies here: ‘Ball in Motion Accidentally Hits Person or Outside Influence’.
His buggy – or ‘cart’ for our US pals – is an outside influence, which in this situation is defined in the Rules as “any natural or artificial object or anything else…except for natural forces”.
First up, the good news. There’s no penalty to any player. The sickener, for you, is that the ball must be played as it lies.
Unfair, isn’t it? You had a nice little lay up and now you’re trying to hack one out of a trap – those dreams of a save in tatters.
But those are the breaks.
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 about these golf ball hits buggy rules? Let me know by leaving a comment on X.
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