I’ve Played 3,000 Rounds Of Golf And I Recently Experienced This Rule For The First Time

Golf is a sport of tremendous variety. Each hole on every course offers a slightly different challenge and that challenge will vary day to day depending on the weather, the course conditions, the tee placement and the pin position. There are always new scenarios to deal with out on the fairways and new challenges to face. The Rules of the game are complex, and they need to be as they must cover a huge range of potential situations.

I’ve been playing golf for 40 years now and, making a rough estimate, I reckon I must have played something like 3,000 rounds during that time. One might think I would have encountered every possible Rules situation in the book. Well, a situation I was involved in a couple of weeks ago proved that not to be the case. Here’s what happened.

Playing on a wet, wintry course there was quite a bit of temporary water about, some sizeable puddles and a few streams that had formed across a couple of the more sloping fairways.

Teeing off on one hole, I hit my ball down the middle of the fairway but it rolled out into one of those impermanent streams. I saw it go in.

No problem I thought, I’ll get a free drop from there. I knew that even if I couldn’t retrieve the ball, I’d be able to drop another.

As I was walking up the fairway though, I caught a glimpse of something white heading across the fairway. The temporary stream was flowing so strongly that it was carrying my ball away. That wouldn’t have been too much of a problem if it hadn’t been moving so quickly. I watched on helplessly as I made my way towards it as my Titleist disappeared off the edge of the fairway, through the rough and away into the trees, on the edge of which was the out of bounds line.

My ball had been swept out of bounds. “Wait a minute,” I said to my playing partner. “What do I do now?” He looked confused and said – “Surely you drop a ball at the nearest point of relief beside where we saw it go into the temporary water.”

That would have seemed fair, but I wasn’t so sure. I knew from a previous ruling I had that a ball can move in temporary water and you then drop at the nearest point of relief to where it ends up.

I checked The R&A Rules app and was very disappointed to find Clarification 18.2a(2)/1. It reads,

“If a flow of water (either temporary water or water in a penalty area) carries a ball out of bounds, the player must take stroke-and-distance relief (Rule 18.2b). Water is a natural force, not an outside influence, therefore Rule 9.6 does not apply.”

I was scuppered. I hit it down the middle, but because of the temporary water, I was out of bounds. I had no option but to trudge back to the tee and play my third from there. I made sure to take a 2-iron the second time so as not to find the stream and face the same fate again.

That was a very unusual thing to happen, and a Rule I had never encountered before. I hope I don’t encounter it again for at least another 3,000 rounds!