Pete Lis, CGA Director of Rules and Competitions – Feb. 5th, 2007
Rule 12-2 in the Rules of Golf state, “The responsibility for playing the proper ball rest with the player. Each player should put an identification mark on his ball.” The key word there was “should.” The player does not have to put an identification mark on his golf ball, but the rules strongly suggest that you do so, so incidents do not occur similar to the one that happened at this year’s Mercedes Championship.
KJ Choi played his ball into an area of very thick rough. When searching for his ball he came across a ball that was identical to the one he was playing, but didn’t have any identification marks on it. Now the question arose as to whether he could positively identify the ball as his. The one thing he had going for him was of all the golf balls that were found in the area where they were searching, only one of them looked like it had been played in the last year. KJ insisted that this ball was his. And even though the Rules Official that was helping him was questioning KJ to make sure it was his, the rules are written to assume honesty. He had no reason to doubt KJ because it is up to the player to make sure he is playing the proper ball.
But, let’s assume the ball was not his. If KJ could not positively identify the ball as his, he would have been left with one option. He would have had to take a penalty of stroke and distance (Rule 27) and play from the spot where he played his previous stroke. This would also be the case if he had found two balls that were exactly the same as the ball he was playing. Because he could not identify which one of the two was his, he would again have to take the penalty of stroke and distance.
Hopefully KJ learned a valuable lesson and will now start putting an identification mark on his ball. If he doesn’t, next time could cost him not only a penalty stroke, but also a paycheck.
