And start that recording uh tonight’s topic is going to be on mistakes errors and Corrections um this is not typically a topic we go over in some of our rules education seminars and sessions um there there’s some Concepts in here that are are getting a tiny bit into the weeds
Getting a tiny bit little bit more towards the advanced end of of our rules content but it’s an important thing to go over because as you’ll see in the first Slide the kind of the first thing I’ll talk about is that none of us are
Perfect none of us ever play the game of golf perfect and more likely than not there’s times where we’re going to come across something that we get wrong or something that we screw up or something that we don’t apply the correct way and there’s certain mechanisms in the rules
Of golf that either allow us to make a correction and go back and fix what we got wrong or fix what we didn’t do right and there are certain things in the rules of golf that are going to tell us that we have to go back and make a
Correction or we have to go back and fix what we did wrong or if we don’t later on along the line if we get to a certain point we might have some other things to deal with in our round of golfs based on that error so uh again it’s an important
Topic to kind of go over um and and I think it’s some of these things that we we Branch out into a bunch of different rules throughout this presentation with some of our other presentations like free Rel penalty relief we kind of stay around the same either one or two rules
Um you’ll notice in tonight’s presentation we’re going to be jumping around the rule book a lot so if you’re following along at home with your rulebook open or you have something else that you’re kind of following along with where you have the usj rules app on your
Phone or you actually have your rules of golf book at home cracked open we’re going to be kind of jumping around a lot so just keep that in mind if you need to be flipping Pages or changing the screen in your app so we will go ahead and get
Started again no round of golf is perfect e even the best of us that play really good golf and we make a ton of pars and a ton of birdies and maybe we play the round of golf with one single golf ball sometimes maybe it’s not in that
Round but sometime in our golf career at some point we might make a mistake or an error and we might have to fix it or might have to just deal with it might get a penalty and it might not be the perfect round of golf so no round of
Golf is perfect no matter how hard we try again we’re all human and there are sometimes in the rules that no matter how hard we’re trying we might get it wrong but the rules might give us some leeway or they might accept our reasonable judgment that we were trying
To get it right we were trying to do the best we could to get something right even though we might get it wrong or we have some scenarios like we have in match play where even if we might totally get it wrong and we didn’t know
We got it wrong the rules are just going to let us go and act like we got it right so just keeping that in mind with with how we’re moving forward with the concept of this presentation when I talk about the difference between an error and a
Mistake and again this is this is kind of me Lewis Harry making this up this isn’t really something you’ll find in the usj rules of golf this is not something you’re going to find um outside of this present but this is something that I kind of try and keep in
My own head that there is a difference between making an error on the golf course and making a mistake and when I think of an error on the golf course I think of it’s one it’s a breach of a rule that sometimes is going to require a correction and typically a penalty is
Going to be attached to that mistake that or that error I just made so he usually follows all of those things it’s usually checking the boxes on all of those things breaching a rule sometimes requiring a correction sometimes maybe not requiring a correction and usually that penalty is
Going to be attached to what we just did when I think of a mistake or making a mistake during the round I usually think of it being an incorrect procedure or the incorrect application of a rule that might or might not have applied to what we were
Doing so with so going back to error breaching that rule the rules was existing and we did something that went against what the rule says in this case with a mistake the rules existing and and we’re trying to kind of get it right and we’re almost there but just something wasn’t exactly
All the way there and and again we’ll we’ll see this as we kind of go forward here with with the presentation if there’s something for some reason that we did a mistake or we made made a mistake with an incorrect procedure or incorrectly applying a rule
That didn’t apply to us and then we don’t take any actions to correct that mistake usually at that point then it becomes an error and then a penalty is going to kick in so you can kind of see there’s a slight difference between the two when we talk about an error versus a
Mistake so I want to talk about there’s I want to talk about errors first and there when we talk about errors these things that are going to require a correction and when we’re talking about requiring a correction we could do a lot of different things after we’ve made
This error but no matter how much we do we’re going to have to go back to that original point and fix something when we’re talking about requiring that correction so there are five actions or errors that are going to require the player to make a correction before
Making a stroke to start another hole or if we’re talking about the final hole of a round before turning in that player scorecard and you’ll see this a lot when we talk about these next five things about before making a stroke to start another hole or again for the for the
Final hole of the round before turning that scorecard in what I like to think of those things is I everyone’s probably heard the term Crossing the Rubicon and if you’re not familiar with Crossing the Rubicon it boils down to the point of no return we’ve crossed a point and there’s
No possible way now to go backwards or to go back where we came from so I like to think of starting the play of another hole or turning in your scorecard those are things in the rules that I consider rubicons once we have done that we have crossed the Rubicon
And we have shut off the door to doing something else usually making a correction there’s a lot of other rubicons in the rules that we have uh if we’re requesting a ruling in math play we usually have a Rubicon to request that ruling and match play it’s usually
Before someone else tees off on the next hole we haven’t done so before that happens that Rubicon has been crossed and if we haven’t requested that ruling and match play we can’t go backwards so you’ll see that there’s handful of rubicons that we’re going to cross tonight or that exist in these
Rules but if we’re going to have a correction that needs to happen we can’t cross that Rubicon yet to make that correction so all these things of these next five actions they’re only going to apply to stroke play the reason why they’re only applying to stroke play is
Because one they’re either carrying the penalty of a general penalty and in match play the general penalty is loss of hole so there’s no correction required in match play because the hole is over someone lost that hole or and you’ll see in one of these others one of these things isn’t a
Requirement of match play so there isn’t really a a correction needed because there wasn’t a requirement of match play to begin with and those are our five actions on the screen there that require a correction in stroke play before we cross a Rubicon that making a stroke to
Start the next hole or turning in our scorecard after the final hole of the round we got to make that correction before we cross that Rubicon and those are those five things we’re going to talk about you’ll see that they cross over a bunch of different rules so like
I said before we’re going to be jumping around to a few different rules here we’re going to go to Three 6 14 and 22 over these next five slides we’ll kind of see a little bit of how each of these things function and how they work so we’ll talk about the first one
The first one is pretty simple it’s just the failure to Ho out typically as we all know if we watched our first virtual rules hour from a few handful of weeks ago with match play versus stroke play we all know that is a requirements of individual stroke play to get the ball
In the hole every single hole for all those 18 holes or nine holes or whatever that round is we got to get that ball in the hold because we got to add up all those scores so we can compare ourselves to everyone else in the field now with other forms of stroke
Play like stableford Pari Max score those things aren’t necessarily going to require us to whole out those rules are modified in a way to where they don’t necessarily require whole out but with talking about just the regular form of individual stroke play we need the player to hole out on every single hole
And if we have a failure to hole out on every single hole the players got to correct that mistake before again we cross that Rubicon of teeing off on the next hole or again for the final hole of the round before returning that score card if we don’t correct that mistake and
Then we cross that Rubicon and we don’t have a score on that hole because we haven’t HED out there’s no way for that player to compare themselves to every other player in the field by adding up all of those Strokes so the only option for the committee now is to disqualify that
Player because we don’t have again we don’t have that total stroke comparison because we didn’t finish that hole we had a failure to hole out again if that mistake is not corrected in time if we cross that Rubicon the player is going to be disqualified and we see our call out to
Our other forms of stroke play stableford Max score par bogy where that scoring does function a little bit differently and if we do have a case where a player fails to hold out in one of those other forms of stroke play we’re not going to disqualify that
Player we’re just going to do whatever the rules say that we’re modifying in those forms of play and we’re going to apply the rules that way so if we’re playing stableford and stableford is a game that works based on we’re giving you x amount of points
Based on what you make on the whole stroke wise and that’s how we’re going to compare you to the rest of the field well in stableford there’s a point where you just can’t earn any points it might be double bogey the committee might modify it to be bogey triple bogey
Whatever that committee says that that number is at some point in stableford you just can’t make any points so it’s going to be okay if you pick that ball up or if you don’t P out in stableford if we have a failure to hold out in stableford the player is
Just not going to get any points same thing in maximum score if if a player fails to hold out in Max score we’re just going to apply that maximum score to whatever it is that the committee says it is to that players’s whole and with par Bogi it’s a game where you play
It’s essentially a stroke play game or you’re playing a match against par or Bogey and if you don’t hole out you’re just going to lose that hole and you’re not going to count that pole is not going to count as a win for you in that
Game so when we have this failure to Ho out where we don’t have a score and the players is getting disqualify we’re talking about that individual form of stroke play you’ll notice on this this rule as well that the disqualification is the only penalty is that is applying
Here this isn’t a one-stroke penalty rule this isn’t a general penalty rule this is only a disqualification penalty it’s possible that a player might get other penalties before correcting that mistake you know if I’m a player on the green and I haven’t marked my ball and I just pick the ball up and
Move on to the next hole then I’m G to get a penalty of one stroke if I then replace that ball to go correct my mistake of not haing out because I’ve moved my ball in play I picked it up and it wasn’t accidental so I’m getting that penalty for something
Else so notice on this this you’ll as we go forward other rules that require the correction they might have the general penalty attached or something else attach them before we get to disqualification this one is one it just has that disqualification penalty but it leaves the door open for other penalties to
Apply based on how a player does does get to the failure to Ho out jumping a little bit forward to our next one this is kind of be when we get into rule six we’re talking about the play of a hole and how we play a hole
And the ball we use to play a hole so now this one is talking about we’re starting the play of the hole we’re starting from the we’re supposed to start every hole from the teing area playing a progression of Strokes to the putting green and then Hing out on the putting
Green So based on having to have that requirement of starting every hole from the teting area we need a rule that tells us what happens when we play from outside the team area and again this one is one where if we’re playing match play this rule applies very differently if we’re playing individual
Stroke play it’s going to apply another way and again there’s going to be some penalties attached to it in stroke play so if we’re talking about individual stroke play and we have a player that plays the ball from outside the teeing area that player is getting the general
Penalty so two penalty strokes and stroke play and again they must correct that mistake and they got to do it by playing a ball from inside the teting area back to the first part of rule 61 it’s telling us that you have to start your hole from the teting area the
Committee has put those team markers there for a reason they didn’t just put them there for decoration they have put them there because they want every player in the field to play from the same place or the same area in starting the play of all the holes throughout their
Round so we got to correct that mistake by playing a stroke from inside the teting area that original ball we played from outside the teing area that’s not a ball in play We there’s no way we can make a score with that golf ball we know we’re
Going to have to make that correction at some point so that ball is not in play we have started the play the hole because the rules tell us that any stroke we make to start the play of the hole whether it was from inside or outside the te area we have started the
Play of the hole so the hole is started for us but there is a correction required now and we got to get that ball inside the tting area and make a stroke from there so if we were starting a hole and we teed off from outside the teeing
Area that stroke’s not going to counts any other Strokes we make with that ball aren’t going to count until we make the correction and the general penalty is going to apply so we’re going to get the two strokes and then whenever we go make that correction of playing from inside
The tting area we are making our third stroke from there and then going on and playing the hole with our normal progression of Strokes again strokes and any more Strokes they’re not going to count here we see our Rubicon again that player does not correct that mistake
Before making a stroke to begin another hole or for the final hole of the round before returning that scorecard to the committee we’re going to see another disqualification here with if we don’t correct that mistake again back to that second bullet point that ball played from outside the teeing area it’s not a
Ball in play when we talk about status of the ball and having a ball that is in play versus out of play you know what is a substituted ball when does the substituted ball become the ball in play or a provisional ball when does that become the ball play we can only score
Or we can only put a score on our scorecard with a ball that is in play we don’t have a valid score for a ball that is not in play so again that ball played from outside the teeing area there is no score we can make with that ball we need
To make that correction apply that General penalty and then get a ball in play from the correct area and go on from there contining along on with our rule of playing a hole and what ball do we use to play that hole and where do we
Play that ball from we see another rule that requires a correction after we’ve made that error in rule six and it’s simply stroke at a wrong ball and I’ll be the first person to raise my hand and I’ll tell you that I have made a stroke at a wrong ball at
Some point in my golfing career I’m sure probably a lot of us on this call tonight have probably made a stroke at a wrong ball at some time in our golf career happens all the time from casual General play to the club level highlevel competitions like our CGA championships USGA qualifying USGA
Championships all the way up to the PGA Tour level we even saw a wrong ball this year on the PGA tour earlier in January at this at caloa Justin Rose hit a wrong ball in one of his his holes he was playing forget who he was playing with
But seemed like it was a blind lining area at some point they got the ball’s switched he didn’t check to see or he didn’t identify his ball before he made a stroke at it made a stroke at that ball turns out it was a wrong ball so it doesn’t necessarily matter if
You’re a beginner and your media player or someone who plays golf for a living it’s possible that at some point you might make a stroke at a wrong ball and the rule simply tells us that you can’t make a stroke at a wrong ball you you need to make sure that the ball
You are playing is your ball again it goes back to my whole thing about playing a golf hole is like a chain with a progression of strokes and when you play a wrong ball that chain is broken you have played the wrong ball you’ve got off of your chain
And now we need to do something to reconnect that chain and get back on track of what you were doing before you played that wrong ball so we can’t make a stroke at a wrong ball if we do thankfully the stroke we make at that wrong ball
Doesn’t count it’s not going to be a stroke that counts in our score and we got to correct that mistake under the rules by playing the right ball from its original spot or we got to for some reason take relief to get another ball into play that is our
Ball playing that wrong ball comes the penalty of the general penalty so again this doesn’t require correction in match play because as soon as you play the wrong ball in match play the hole’s over you lost you lost the hole move on go to the next hole no correction required but
In stroke play the stroke’s not going to count but we are going to apply that two-stroke penalty to our score and then go make that correction by playing the right ball if for some reason we play a wrong ball and we continue with it all those Strokes we’re making with the wrong ball
Are also not going to count there’s still a wrong ball a wrong ball is not in play for us so again a ball that is not in play can’t count for our score so none of those Strokes are going to count for when we’re playing a wrong ball
Whether it’s one stroke or whether it’s five Strokes they’re all going to go away the general penalty is still going to apply because that applies to our score no matter what we got to make that correction by playing the right ball from somewhere whether that’s going back and searching
For three minutes for the ball we should have hit and then if we can’t find that ball by searching for it taking another penalty stroke under stroke in distance going back to where we last made a stroke of the ball however we need to get a ball back into play or play that
Right ball our ball that was in play we need to make that correction we do have one exception to this Rule and this is kind of a weird exception and it’s an exception not a lot of people ever apply to their situation not a lot of people ever come
Across but we have an exception for a ball moving in water whether that’s temporary water or water in a penalty area that if we make stroke at a wrong ball that was moving in water there’s going to be no penalty however we’re still going to be required to go play
The right ball we still need to go get back on that chain of events rejoin our chain and go play the right ball from somewhere but if that ball was moving in water for some reason again whether it it’s temporary water or in a penalty area no penalty for making a stroke at
That wrong Ball moving in water I don’t necessarily know if this audio is gonna work but we have a video here to show the video kind of talks a little bit about some wrong ball stuff for anyone that doesn’t know this video or hasn’t seen this video ever before it’s
Happened in 2014 United States open at Pinehurst this was a situation with Hunter Mayhem and Jamie Donaldson believe this was on nine or 18 it was somewhere before they made their turn to go back to the other side um but they both each hit each other’s balls as a
Wrong ball uh the video talks a little bit about you know Hunter Mayan thought he hit his drive down the left side Jamie Donaldson thought he hit his drive down the right side for some reason the balls were on opposite sides of the Fairway from where they thought those balls should have
Been again neither player identified that golf ball before they hit it they both hit those golf balls got up to the green discovered that they had both hit a wrong ball and then started their procedure to go back and correct that mistake e she sh
So again back to I I know the audio kind of gets lost a little bit I think it has something to do with us recording the zoom so if anyone didn’t hear that I think it has something to do with the recording of the zoom but to kind of
Summarize that whole video the whole chat through that whole thing was talking about you know Thomas pel is talking about you know there this is a rule that requires a correction you know Jamie Donaldson and Hunter man they have to go back they discovered this up on the
Putting green they’re going backwards to where those shot those where they hit that wrong ball had occurred both Hunter Mayhan and Jamie Donaldson in correcting this mistake they’re gonna have to replace a golf ball wherever that stroke was made from or wherever their ball previously was at
They’re replacing a golf ball there and then making that stroke from there because in you take the wrong ball part out of it what had happened to their original balls it was moved by an outside influence whether it was played as a wrong Ball by another player is a
Different story but the basis of their ball was it was played by an outside influence so getting a ball back in play for them is just going to require them just to replace the ball back to where it was previously and with both of them playing the wrong ball both of them
Should have a pretty good idea of where they played those wrong balls from and have a pretty good idea of where they need to replace their own ball back to proceed forward in correcting this mistake the end of that video just talks about I think Paul ainger asked a
Question about what happened if they would have holed out and then walked over to number one t making the turn again Thomas Pagel just makes that um kind of wraps up there with saying you know they would have been okay with holding out that turning point or that
That trigger point there I think is the term he used in the video is when they te off on the next hole so again we see that same Rubicon of making a stroke to start the next hole as kind of our our window or our threshold to get to that
Disqualification penalty if they did not correct that mistake so kind of a long long summary there of wrong ball the other thing that we see with an error that we see has the word wrong in it we have two wrongs we have we saw a wrong ball now we see wrong place both
Of those things having a definition on the rules of golf but now we’re jumping over to rule 14 of playing from wrong place and now we see that we have something also attached to it that says serious breach and with playing from a wrong place this could go two different
Ways we have kind of a fork in the road but I like to call it with serious breach it’s possible that we might play from a wrong place but we don’t have a serious breach or we might take the other path where we do go down a serious breach
Situation and with having a serious breach with wrong place that’s when we’re going to get into the requiring the correction of this mistake the non-serious breach we’re probably just going to let you go on and move forward with a penalty and then let you go about
Your day the serious breach part of this well we may need to back up here so just like with a wrong ball we can’t play wrong ball in this rule it’s going to tell us we can’t play our ball from a wrong place if we play our ball from wrong
Place we’re going to get a general penalty we’re going to get that General penalty whether it was serious breach or non-serious breach so either way this General penalty is going to stand here and again this whole deal in match play if we play from a wrong place in match
Play HS over because we lost the hole we’re going to move on whether it was a serious breach or not but in stroke play we’re going to get the general penalty and then we need to figure out what do we do from here if it was a serious breach
We got to correct that mistake by playing out the hole with a ball played from the right place under the rules and a lot of the times with wrong place serious breach the majority of how this is going to happen is someone’s usually going to be taking relief and they’re either
Going to be taking relief in the wrong spot or they’re going to be dropping outside the relief area to get to a wrong place outside the relief area probably not a serious breach because it’s going to be close enough to where they should have been dropping
Taking relief in a wrong place like on the other side of a pond or a bunch of different Club lengths away or way way off the line for back on the line relief that could possibly get into the scenario of serious breach and if we don’t correct this
Mistake of playing from wrong place to the serious breach we see our Rubicon again if the player is uncertain about whether the breach is serious or not we have a scenario here where a player can play out a hole with two balls they can play out a hole with the ball
They don’t know if it’s a serious breach or not and then they can play a hole the ball out that maybe is on the more conservative side of where they should have dropped where they should have played a ball from and see where the committee can decide of what they need
To do from there anytime we’re trying to correct this mistake of having a serious breach of playing from a wrong place we got to report it to the committee just like playing a second ball with doub us a procedure under rule 20.1 C3 we got to report this to the committee that we
Tried to correct this mistake of playing from wrong place got to report those facts before we return our scorecard and it’s going to apply whether we played out the hole with only that ball or we completed it with two balls even if we played with the same uh the same score with both
Balls if we don’t report those facts to the committee we’re going to get to that disqualification penalty when we get to that point of trying to determine whether it’s a serious breach and I kind of glossed over the definition of serious breach with wrong place we get to that serious breach
Point when we’re considering that where the ball should have been the distance from where it probably should have been dropped all the conditions affecting the stroke the lie all that stuff the difficulty of the shots all those things kind of factor into whether it was a
Serious breach or not so if we get to that point where we think it’s a serious breach and we have now played a second golf ball to try and correct that mistake and we have now reported to the committee that we have played a second golf ball and trying to correct our
Mistake of playing from the wrong place now we’re going to get to the point where the committee is going to decide the players score for the hole if the score with the ball that was played to correct that mistake of playing from wrong place if that’s going
To be the score that counts the committee is going to decide that hey you did the right thing and you got that ball corrected by playing from the right place you’re just going to be stuck with one General penalty just the original General penalty you got from playing from the wrong
Place the stroke made in playing that other ball from the wrong place and any more Strokes with that we’re just going to throw him out that ball is not going to count we already know which Ball’s going to count here if we played that second golf ball
And we tried to correct that mistake of playing playing from wrong place to Serious breach but by playing that second golf ball we also got it in a wrong place so now we have two wrong places we’re dealing with if the committee decides that we got that second golf ball and trying to
Correct the mistake in a wrong place but it wasn’t necessarily a serious breach we almost got it right we were close enough to getting it right but we were still in the wrong place we’re going to get another General penalty because we’re going to get the general penalty of that original ball
From the wrong that with a serious breach from the wrong place but unfortunately we got to get you another General penalty for playing from the wrong place twice even though you almost got it right we’re still gonna have to give you another one for trying to correct it and still getting
It wrong so we’re getting that total of four penalty Strokes adding to that ball and then adding up our score from there if for some reason that we have played from a wrong place with a serious breach and we tried to correct it by playing a second golf ball and that second golf
Ball we played was also from a wrong place with another serious breach the committee is just going to decide hey we can’t there’s nothing we can do for you here we’re gonna have to disqualify you because you tried twice you never got the ball in the right place to begin
With and both of these things were so egregious that we just can’t score you here the only choice left is to disqualify you last error that requires our correction going to take place in fourms and threesums so a form of play where we are alternating Strokes with a partner
And the basis of alternate shot or forums is that we got to make alternating Strokes with our partner and if we don’t make alternating Strokes if we play twice in a row or if we play when it’s not our turn to make a stroke that’s going to be an error and we’re
Going to have to do something with it so on each hole we got to make those Strokes alternating between partners on the side if for some reason we make a stroke in the wrong order we’re going to get a general penalty again if this is four sums match play or three sums match
Play we just lost the hole we’re going to move on but if it’s for some stroke play or three some stroke play we’re going to apply the general penalty and we got to correct that mistake by getting the right partner whoever was supposed to be making that stroke
We got to get them to make that stroke we got to get a ball back and replace a ball we got to get them to make that stroke stroke made in the wrong order just like with a wrong ball and any more Strokes before we correct that mistake
We’re going to throw those away because the right partner didn’t do it the wrong partner made a stroke so we’re just going to discard those we’re going to get them out of there we got to correct that mistake again we see the same Rubicon that we’ve been seeing for the last
Three uh rules we got to correct that mistake before making a stroke to begin another hole or before returning our scorecard for the last hole of the round without making that correction see the same penalty we’ve seen for the last four or so rules we’re going to get the side
Disqualified I kind of already gave the answer to this question away so we’ll just Breeze through this one real quick it talks about a player lying on the putting green they never marked their golf ball waiting for their fellow competitors to putt out maybe they’re the last person to go they lift their
Golf ball without marking it and they’re just walking over to the next hole with their other two players because they’re not paying attention but 14 off on that next hole they realize they never hold out on the previous hole and they never marked their golf ball and they did pick
It up so they got to go back and correct that mistake they Place their ball back down where it was and then hole out and it talks about what penalty did we get I again when we were talking about the failure to hold out I kind of already
Gave the answer away they’re getting the one penalty stroke in that case because one we had the failure to hold out and we had to correct that mistake so we knew we had that we also had the air or the mistake of lifting our golf ball without marking it and moving our golf
Ball so we have that mistake as well so we have the one penalty stroke there went back corrected the mistake we were all good there before we move on to the last handful of slides here was there there any we have any questions about those five mus corrects and stroke play or
George anything in the chat nothing in the chat right now okay sounds good we can uh we can keep moving on and like I said we’ll probably finish finish maybe five 10 minutes early and we can leave some time to address some questions uh ra as we finish up
So we’ll keep moving on we’re going to shift gears from errors now we’re going to talk a little bit more about mistakes again all these things with mistakes are just either incorrectly applying a rule or getting some part of a procedure as part of a rule wrong
Maybe dropping wrong dropping in a wrong place doing all those things that are correctable before a penalty kicks in so we’re talking first about correcting a mistake and either substituting a golf ball replacing a golf ball dropping replacing the ball anything with what call our ball procedures rule 14 issues we’re going to
Try and see if we can get some mistakes here and how do we correct those mistakes and so if we have any mistakes made with any of our ball procedures and anytime we get the ball in our hand and then are dropping it or doing something
Else with it we’re going to have the opportunity to lift that ball and then correct the mistake before we make a stroke at it this is another Rubicon we’re seeing here that making a stroke at that ball that’s the Rubicon to correct these mistakes once we’ve made
The stroke at that golf ball after we’ve got either a procedure wrong or applied a rule wrong that’s the Rubicon has been crossed then another penalty might kick in we lose the opportunity to correct our mistake when for some reason we substitute another ball for the original
Ball we not allowed under the rules so maybe we’re on the putting green we mark lift our ball put in our pocket and then dig another ball out of another pocket and put that ball down so we’ve incorrectly substituted a golf ball when not allowed we’re going to be allowed to
Lift that ball we just substituted in incorrectly without penalty and correct that mistake by putting the right ball back down where it should be and we’re going to be able to avoid the penalty before making a stroke at it again it’s only allowed before the ball is played we haven’t crossed that
Rubicon yet of making the stroke so we still have the opportunity to fix what we just got wrong this is kind of the heart of this correcting mistakes portion of it uh you can find the majority of all this in rule 14.5 rule 14.5 we sometimes call the
Eraser rule because all these procedures we’re using to correct these mistakes it’s kind of like we just took a little bit of an eraser on that pencil and and just erased all those things we got wrong before we made the stroke and now we’re doing the right thing and correcting all these mistakes
So uh the heart of this involves whether we can change to a different rule or a different relief option or maybe change a wrong drop we made or maybe we didn’t meet all the requirements of 14.3 with our dropping requirements we’re going to see some procedures here of our eraser rule that
Before we make that stroke here’s some things how we can fix here’s some things we can change or maybe we can go to a different rule completely so anytime we’re correcting mistake in taking relief so dropping placing and replacing all those ball procedures whether we’re going to have
To use the same rule or same relief option or a different rule or we have the opportunity to change to a different rule or change to a different relief option it’s going to depend on the nature of the mistake or what happened or what the mistake exactly
Was and I want to preface this by saying that anytime that we’re changing to a different rule or changing to a different relief option or changing where we might be dropping that golf ball before we make those Corrections we’re going to be stuck with what we get
Right so if we got right the rule we’re using if the rule applied to our situation we got that right we’re going to be stuck stuck with that rule if we got a bunch of different things right we’re going to be stuck with all of those different
Things we might just have to change this one little thing at the end or if we got nothing right to begin with then we might be able to go all the way back to the beginning with our eraser Rule and just completely start over and correct our mistake from the
Beginning so we’ll see here we have a few different flowcharts we’ll go through in each of those things so if we put a ball in play under a rule that didn’t apply or if we put a ball into play that with a rule that did apply but we
Dropped or plac it in the wrong place or we put a ball into play with a rule that applied was dropped or placed in the right place but we just have to maybe drop it again because it rolled somewhere outside the relief area or it did something else or requires a redrop
So there’s three different things there that he shows the levels of the things we got rights and the things we’re kind of sticking with so if we put a ball into play under a rule that didn’t apply to our situation at all we didn’t get anything right to
Begin with because the primary starting point here was what rule are we using and we didn’t get that right to begin with so if we didn’t get the rule right nothing going forward is going to be right so this is kind of starting all the way back the
Beginning if we’re going back to correct that mistake we can use any rule that’s going to apply to our situation so if we are starting our flowchart let’s pretend our ball is in a penalty area and we’re going to go forward with proceeding with our golf
Ball if we lift our golf ball to proceed under rule 19 which is unplayable ball and we know that we can’t use the unplayable ball rule in a penalty area so again we we’re using a rule that’s not applying to our situation here and then we dropped that golf ball for
Some reason maybe we went two Club lengths away from the ball but dropped in the penalty area whatever we might have done and then we realize or maybe we’re alerted or another player tells us hey I don’t think you can use a unplayable and penalty area or hey you
Need to use a different rule you can’t take an unplayable there so now we know that that rule is not applying to our situation now we can just erase everything we can pick that ball up with no penalty erase everything we just did and then go on to use a rule that does
Apply to our situation so rule 17 penalty area then we can go and use any of those options with rule 17 if we put them all into play with a rule that did apply to our situation so we got that part right we got the the first stepping stone right
But then we’re going to drop it or place it in a wrong place we got to go on to use that same rule because we got that right so we got to stick with that but because we dropped it in a wrong place or placed it in a
Wrong place we still have the option to change to any other relief option under that rule that applies to our situation so we’ll we’ll see the same flowchart here we’ll kind of go through it step by step so we have our ball back in that penalty area we’re deciding to proceed under
Back on the line relief so we know we’re going to go back on the line here and this is some I got to update this and this is some old stuff from before 2023 but for this let’s just pretend that we dropped off the line in
This case and we know with 2023 going forward is back on the line we have to drop on the line so if we drop off of the line we dropped in a wrong place we never dropped it in the right place to begin with and then we realize that we’ve made that
Mistake we can change to any other option or that penal tary rule with correcting that mistake to try and avoid playing from the wrong place so with changing to any other option we can now pick up that ball go back under stroke and distance go back and go maybe use that lateral relief
Option if it’s a red penalty area we can change to any other relief option at that point because we got the rule right we just didn’t really get the relief option right so that’s the that’s what we’re being able to change in this scenario here we saw this same scenario happen to
Rory mroy at Pebble Beach when he was taken back on the line of relief granted he was doing it for an unplayable ball not a penalty area but he did drop off of the line dropped in a wrong place so Rory maloy’s case if he had realized his
Mistake before he made the stroke at the ball before he crossed Rubicon he could have picked that ball up and either proceeded with the same relief option back on the line and just chosen a different spot on the line or he could have now gone back in a stroken
Distance or used the lateral relief option if he wanted to because he got the relief rule right he didn’t get the relief option right so that was kind of what he was able to change there he didn’t he went on to play from the wrong place unfortunately but this was kind of
That same thing where Rory could have used this rule picked that ball up and corrected this mistake before making the stroke so now we’re going to talk about getting pretty much mostly everything right just very very at the end we’re gonna have to try and do something over
Again so we’re going to put a ball in a play under a rule that did apply dropped or placed in the right place but maybe the rule is just going to require us to do a redrop or drop it over again if we did that we got to go on to
Use the same Rule and the same relief option again we were pretty much stuck with everything we got right which was pretty much everything up until the end where we needed to redrop it so we got to go use the same rule same relief option here see our last flowchart here ball in
The penalty area we’re going to decide to proceed under lateral relief players going to drop that ball in the correct relief area they’re going to drop it from knee height but the ball’s just going to roll slightly outside the relief area so we got the rule right we got the relief option
Right we drop the ball from the right spot we drop the ball in the relief area so we’re meeting all these requirements of a good drop but since the ball rolled outside the relief area the rules just going to tell you hey drop again you got everything else right just drop again
And in this case we got to continue on with our lateral relief option from that penalty area and do our redrop anytime that we’re correcting those mistakes again there’s no penalty for that ball lifted when we’re trying to correct those mistakes of either changing to a different rule changing to
A different relief option changing where we’re dropping on that line potentially no penalties for lifting that ball to correct that mistake and player action does not count anytime we’re working with that ball under that eraser rule anything that’s happening before we make that stroke before we’re lifting
It even if we’re accidentally causing it to move while we’re trying to apply this eraser rule we’re not going to apply any penalties here because we’re trying to make a correction we’re trying to do something under the rules if for some reason though we breached another
Rule that would have CAU or would have applied to a ball that was correctly put into play or maybe it was applying to something that applies to our conditions effect the stroke for a ball now put into play that penalty is still going to apply whether we correct the mistake of
Our ball procedure or not I know that’s kind of a complicated thing to kind of wrap around your head but if for some reason that we were trying to correct dropping in the wrong place and while we were doing that we affected our area of intended stance
By stamp stomping down on the ground a lot and even though that that area of intended stance was for the ball we were trying to correct that still might apply to the Future ball we’re putting in play so by improving that area of intended stance while we’re trying to correct
This mistake that penal that all this is saying is that penalty is still going to apply because it could apply to a future or it could apply to that ball that could be put into play correctly did pretty good on time tonight we’re just shy of 7 p.m. 7
Minutes early uh let’s open it up to any questions so leis we did have one question in the chat from dawn he was asking basically a scenario where um a player picks up his ball on the passing green marks and lifts it he then replaces it with the wrong ball
Puts the ball realizes realizes that he plays the wrong ball and goes back and replaces to correct ball and puts again um he’s basically asking how that scenario would play out um and um may see if you can clarify that for him yeah sorry I’m just I’m reading in
The chat just making sure I’m getting all all the facts correct here and making sure we’re getting it all straight so uh player a marks the ball puts it in their pocket then takes out another ball and then replaces that ball down on the putting and plays that ball
So with with the the second ball they put down on the putting green it’s not necessarily a wrong ball that would be the ball in play because they’ve now put it down on the putting green and replaced it or placed it down with the intent for it to be in
Play so that becomes the ball in play it is however an incorrectly substituted ball in that case because we weren’t when we were marking and lifting our original ball we were required to put the original ball back down and we didn’t do so so we have now incorrectly
Substituted a golf ball in that case and in that case we’ve made a stroke of that incorrectly substituted golf ball so we get a penalty stroke for making a stroke that incorrectly substituted golf ball by trying to correct that that’s not necess that’s not a thing we need to
Correct so by trying to correct it we are now playing from the wrong place in trying to correct that mistake the the fact that we’ve already seen that put or how it breaks or we’ve already made that stroke once it’s kind of that that piece of this puzzle is a
Little bit of relevance in this scenario um the fact that we tried to correct that mistake of the incorrectly substituted ball which did need to be corrected to begin with that’s where we’re now going to get the penalty of a wrong place penalty and that’s going to be a general
Penalty and if we didn’t have any knowledge of a breach in between those two actions we’re just going to wrap all this up into the one General penalty of playing from the wrong place apply those two strokes and stroke play and then go from there
So I don’t does that whole I know that was kind of a lot to kind of Juggle there does that kind of answer your question or is that kind of all fall in order and make sense for you okay anything else there George yeah we just had a followup from
Hillary and she basically asked what if no stroke was made and the error was caught before that so if we marked and lifted the original ball put it in our pocket then went down to replace the incorrectly substituted golf ball and then before we made the stroke of that incorrectly substituted golf
Ball realized that that was you know oh shoot sorry I put the wrong ball down I don’t think I you know maybe I made a mistake here if we catch that before we make that stroke so again we see another Rubicon here making that stroke the incorrectly substituted ball is the
Rubicon this scenario if we catch it before we cross that Rubicon we can simply again pick that incorrectly substituted ball up and replace our original ball back down with no penalty and then make our stroke at our original ball we were supposed to make the stroke at okay
That was a so I know there’s a lot to sink in there on that topic with mistakes and errors and all of those different rules were kind of jumping around and all those penalties and then we’re adding in that concept of the Rubicon of of where we
Can’t go past until we make that correction so there’s a lot to SN in there so um if if nothing if there was something that didn’t quite sink in tonight maybe go back when when we upload this hopefully the the recording will be uploaded possibly by the end of the week but
Um go back rewatch it see if something else sinks in but if there’s something with some of those errors or some of those things that require Corrections or maybe even in the last part we’re talking about the Eraser rule about changing relief options if something didn’t quite sink in or make sense there
Shoot us an email be happy to to kind of walk you through it or or to try and further break it down and get that concept to sync in but um George if there’s nothing else I think we might wrap it up and it’s probably dinner time for most of us great I
