For a long time I have been my father’s on-call rules advisor. Anytime, day or night that a rules question popped into his head, he called me for what he hoped will be an immediate answer. That is until recently when he called and gave me the following scenario: His ball had gone into a water hazard that had a bridge going across it. The bridge was marked as being in the water hazard. Luckily, he was able to find his ball, and, had the bridge not been there, would have been able to make a stroke at the ball in the direction of the hole. However, with the bridge there, he couldn’t make a swing at the ball. After consulting with his fellow competitors, it was agreed that he could take free relief from the bridge and therefore the water hazard, because the bridge was an immovable obstruction.
As it turns out, my father’s fellow competitors misunderstood Rule 24 ““ Obstructions, and that mistake cost him dearly. According to the note under rule 24-2, “if a ball is in a water hazard, the player may not take relief from interference by an immovable obstruction. The player must play the ball as it lies or proceed under Rule 26-1, Relief for Ball in Water Hazard.” Unbeknownst to my dad, when he dropped his ball outside of the water hazard, he was in fact taking relief from the water hazard and was subject to a one stroke penalty for doing so.
To further complicate things, he also needed to evaluate where the ball hit the ground when he took his drop. If the place where he dropped happened to fulfill the requirements of taking proper relief, then no further penalty would be assessed. However, if he dropped in a place not allowed by the rules then he would either need to re-drop his ball or, if he played it from that wrong location, need to add one more penalty stroke to his score for that hole.
After spelling this all out for him, I added that if he had signed his scorecard without adding the proper penalty strokes, then he was to be disqualified from the event. There was a long pause, and then he cautiously asked “”¦Do I need to return the trophy too?”
He hasn’t called me for a ruling since”¦
