Note 30/6/26: This article originally mistakenly said the provisional ball would be the ball in play. Many apologies for the error.
Summer sun and a dollop of rain. Put the two together and you find grass starts growing very quickly. The rough at my course has gone skywards in the last couple of weeks and hitting it into stuff at waist – and even shoulder – height in a couple of places is a very clear and present danger.
Yes, some lost ball situations are going to crop up and this email question sums up some of the posers you might be facing on the golf course as the heat continues…
“My playing partner hooked his ball into incredibly heavy rough. Wisely he decided to play a provisional, this went straight down the middle.
“Amazingly we found his original ball, which was in thick grass. He decided to play it and stepped away a few yards to survey his shot.
“He then was unable to relocate his original ball so thick was the rough! After much searching and some discussion, we agreed he could take a penalty drop from the approximate area where the ball had been found then lost.
“Is this correct or should he have gone back to the tee?”
Lost ball golf rule: What if a found golf ball becomes lost again?
Assuming the sands of time have run out, The answer is you would have to go back to the tee under stroke and distance.
The Rules of Golf address what happens if you’ve found a ball and then – for whatever reason – can’t subsequently locate it.
It’s in a clarification to Rule 18.2 and gives the example of a player who has hit their ball into some high rough. They find it after two minutes and leave to go and get a club. When they return they can’t find it.
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You all know you get three minutes to search for a ball.
The clarification reveals is that, when you find it, the clock stops. If you then get into a situation where you’re unable to detect it, the timer starts running again.
You’ve then got what remains of the three minute search time before the ball becomes lost.
Does finding the ball in the first place make a difference to what happens next? It does. I’m grateful to members of the online rules community for pointing out my initial mistake after I made an error in believing the provisional ball would still be in play.
I’d felt that would be the case because the search subsequently continued. Was the ball ever found if the clock started ticking again and then the ball became lost?
But Rule 18.3c (3) – When Provisional Ball Must Be Abandoned – says a provisional “must be abandoned” when the original ball “is found on course” before the “end of the three-minute search time”.
So at that point, the provisional ball is no more. When the original ball becomes lost at the conclusion of the three minute search time, the provisional ball has already been abandoned, and the only option is to go back to the tee under penalty of stroke-and-distance. If you hit the ‘provisional’ you would be playing a wrong ball.
If any of you have any views on it, I’d welcome them in the comments. But for those who read the initial piece, please accept my apologies again.
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 this lost ball golf 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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