Suppose you hit an errant tee shot that you think might be OB but you can’t see where it landed. You announce that you are hitting a provisional ball and hit it to approximately the same spot as the first one. If you find both balls and they are marked the same way, what do you do? The obvious answer is “play the better one” but what do the rules say? I looked at Rule 27 but didn’t find an answer.
Surely you aren’t supposed to mark each ball differently. That would seem to defeat the purpose of marking them.
Interesting question. And tho I don’t know the answer, I’m sure someone does. Seems there is an answer for just about any conceivable occurrance.
I think you’d incur a penalty because you are unable to identify which was your first shot. Which means you should mark your provisional differently. And I suspect the rules would require that you rehit from the tee, or would impose strokes or loss of hole if you played either ball.
One little wrinkle kinda suggested by your question is that you need to state the reason for your provisional. For example, say you hit it into the woods and think it might be lost, so you hit a provisional. When you get out there, you find your ball, but also find that there was OB in the woods and your 1st drive was OB. You are not allowed to hit your provisional, because that was provisional on your 1st drive being lost, not OB.
Crazy game. And one respect in which I question the utility of the “pro” rules to the vast majority of amateur players (with the exception of tournaments).
That’s interesting. I was under the impression that hitting a provisional ball couldn’t hurt you but this decision seems to indicate otherwise. I guess the lesson to be learned here is that a provisional ball should be re-marked before hitting.
This actually happened to me yesterday when I was playing with my son who is on his junior high team. I asked him the rule and he didn’t have a clue either. His coach wasn’t around but I doubt that she would have known either.
This actually happened to a friend of mine as well not too long ago, so we had to look up the rule then. My guess at that time was that you might have to consider both balls lost, like in the situation where two players are playing the same type of ball and can’t distinguish between them.
But, if I understand correctly, you’ll only be penalized 1 stroke. So, say it is a blind tee shot to the green on a par-3, why not hit a billion tee shots and simply choose the one that ended up in the cup as your par?
If you can’t determine if it is your ball then back to the tee you go hitting 5.
I think.
Kind of like hitting one in the weeds and finding two of the same numbers and types. If you can’t determine conclusively that one of them is yours then neither is.
