TeeTime - Longboat Key News

Page 24
Longboat Key News
Friday, February 25, 2011
TeeTime
Answers to your golf questions
May a player apply gauze or tape to the grip of a club during the round?
HAL LENOBEL
Contributing Columnist
golf@lbknews.com
During the last few weeks, several quite interesting, if
not perplexing, questions have arrived at my desk. I will
try to answer them, hopefully to the reader’s satisfaction.
If a ball lies under the lip of
a bunker, touching the sand,
may the player declare the
ball unplayable?
Yes. The player may proceed in
accordance with Rule 28 by dropping the ball in the bunker within
two clublengths of the spot where
the ball lay, but not nearer the
hole. In addition, he or she may
also drop the ball from the position the original shot
was made into the bunker.
What is the proper order of play for hitting
a provisional ball on the tee?
In accordance with Rule 10-3, you must
wait for the others in your group to
play from the tee before playing
your provisional ball. If you
fail
to do this, you are playing out of turn. In stroke play,
there is no penalty for playing out of turn. However, you
would be disqualified if you played out of turn to give a
fellow competitor an advantage. In addition, your fellow
competitor would also be disqualified if it were done to
give him an advantage.
In match play, hitting out of turn has other ramifications. Your opponent may require you to cancel your
stroke and play the ball in proper order, without penalty
(Rule 10-lc).That decision must be made immediately by
your opponent upon the stroke being played out of turn.
May a player apply gauze or tape to the grip of
a club during the round in order to assist her in
gripping the club during a rainstorm?
No. Rule 4-2a prohibits a player from purposely changing the playing characteristics of a club during a stipulated round. Adding gauze or tape before the round is
permitted, provided the grip still conforms to the Rules.
A and B are playing C and D in a four-ball match.
During the play of a hole, A hits his ball into a
wooded area. While looking for A’s ball,
his partner (B) kicks A’s ball. A was so
excited to find his ball that he failed
to replace his ball before hitting
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it. What are the consequences?
Player A breached Rule 18. A is responsible for his
partner’s actions as they relate to his (A’s) ball. Failure
to replace his ball meant that A is disqualified for that
one hole.
A’s ball is lying in the rough, very close to B’s
ball. A marks his ball, thinking it might interfere
with B’s stroke. Is this action by A correct?
Player A would incur a one-stroke penalty in both
match and stroke play, and he must replace his ball.What
did A do wrong? Rule 22 states that any player may lift
his ball if he considers it might assist any other player,
or he may have any other ball lifted if he considers it
might interfere with his play or assist any other player.
Thus A did not have the authority to lift his ball because
he believed it interfered with B’s play.
•••
The USGA and the R&A, the two governing bodies
that oversee the rules of golf, are in discussions about
the changing of disqualification policies for situations
in which players sign scorecards they don’t know to be
in violation.
“We’re all bothered by what is a narrow set of circumstances where someone can get the facts right and still
be disqualified,” Mike Davis, the USGA’s senior director
of rules and competitions, told GolfDigest.com.
Recent disqualifications of Padraig Harrington and
Camilo Villegas prompted the reassessment. Both
stemmed from TV viewers contacting the PGA Tour and
PGA European Tour about the players’ rules infractions.
Harrington was DQ’d Friday from the Abu Dhabi
Championship after the Irishman was judged to have
illegally moved his ball without assessing a penalty shot
during Thursday’s first round.
Earlier this month, Villegas was sent packing following the opening round of a PGA Tour event in Hawaii
after swatting at grass near the ball while it was still in
motion, which also should have been a penalty.
“In Harrington’s situation, he thought ball was
replaced and only television is telling us otherwise,”
Davis said, according to the Web site.“He knew the rules,
he thought he did everything right, he just didn’t know
all the facts.”
The USGA is the governing body of golf rules in
the United States and Mexico. The R&A, which takes
its name from the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St.
Andrews, administers rules for the rest of the world.
“So the USGA and R&A will open it up again, but we
also have to make sure we don’t do something that has
domino effect,” Davis said.
Harrington acknowledged that he touched the ball
but felt it hadn’t moved.
“I’m well aware of the ruling on that situation, and it’s
happened many times over the years,” Harrington said.
“You know, I’m quite comfortable, if you touch a ball and
it doesn’t move and you feel it hasn’t moved, it hasn’t
moved, and you don’t need to — there is no replacing.
“If you called the referee at that moment in time,” he
added, “in all good conscience, I couldn’t have put the
ball anywhere else but where it was.”
Villegas was chipping up the slope to the 15th green
when the ball twice rolled back toward him.The second
time, Villegas walked over and casually swatted away
some loose pieces of grass in front of the divot as the
ball was still moving down the slope.
That is a violation of Rule 23-1 that says, “When a ball
is in motion, a loose impediment that might influence
the movement of the ball must not be removed.” The
penalty is two shots.
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