I understand why Rule 11 needs to be in the book, but we’re going to be talking about some pretty odd stuff in this blog entry, and probably quite a bit of it you’ll never encounter during your playing days. Nonetheless, we shall proceed.
I love the “Purpose of the Rule” section that precedes the text of the rule in the book. I love it so much, I’m not even going to paraphrase or even take out the King’s English spelling of “favorable”….”Purpose of Rule: Rule 11 covers what to do if the player’s ball in motion hits a person, animal, equipment or anything else on the course. When this happens accidentally, there is no penalty and the player normally must accept the result, whether favourable or not, and play the ball from where it comes to rest. Rule 11 also restricts a player from deliberately taking actions to affect where any ball in motion might come to rest.”
You’ve now read the key concept of this rule. Accidents will happen on the golf course when you hit something you don’t expect to hit – they generally don’t earn you a penalty and you must ACCEPT that the accident happened AND the location in which the ball comes to rest. Then there are deliberate events – those are not accidental, which could lead to some rather nasty penalties for the player that perpetrates them. Accidental. Deliberate. We’re getting into thought versus thoughtless crimes this week.
A couple of examples: You’re on the tee box on #2 (the par five…) and you hit a short but straight drive right down the fairway. Unfortunately, the smack of your driver striking the ball disturbed the doe grazing near the pond on that hole and she bolts into the fairway and your ball caroms off of her and makes a right turn into the pond. Accident. Unfair. True on both counts. The result? You’re in the red penalty area, and unless you want to try to play the ball from the bottom of the pond, you’ll be taking a drop and a penalty stroke. Damn deer! Now, say the ball is heading for the pond, hits the deer in the noggin and bounces left into the middle of the fairway. All good – you play where the ball came to rest. Deer, the beer cart, a player on an adjacent hole – striking them with your golf ball means you have to accept the result of your shot.
The provisions of Rule 11 only apply to balls in motion. A snapping turtle wandering onto the green and knocking your stationary ball into the hole is not covered by this rule (you’d have to replace the ball at the estimated spot where the snapper moved it from…). The beer cart moving your stationary ball off the cart path is also not covered.
Some of the provisions of Rule 11 are VERY different than some of the rules prior to 2019. There was once a time not so very long ago when if you hit yourself with your own ball (this can happen pretty easily when playing out of a deep bunker when the ball caroms off of the lip toward you). You get hit now, no penalty – and you have to accept where the ball ends up. This specific case happened while I watched the 2nd round of the PGA on one of the par 5’s. Kramer Hickok hit his 2nd shot into a greenside bunker, tried to get out, caught the lip and the ball rolled into his shoeprint. Frank Nobilo groaned and initially got the call wrong, thinking there was a penalty. Not so by the 2019 rules, but he was still right in his footprint. Does he get to rake? Not in REAL golf. In REGL? By virtue of the new local rule, rake and place…. Kramer tried to get the ball out onto the green but again hit the lip, but fortunately the ball rolled away from the footprint. His next swing was golden – the holed out for par. Didn’t whine throughout the whole mess, accepted his fate and took his lumps like a man. I’ll get on my soapbox for a second here and say I was damn proud of Mr. Hickok. There are some players who I know would have said that playing from your own footprint was unfair, and I will concede, it was a bad break, but trying to make the best of the situation probably taught Kramer some invaluable lessons, and some of those lessons had little to do with golf. I will continue to say that bunkers should be avoided, they require special skills, and you will encounter problems in there that you’ll never encounter anywhere else on the golf course.
So, to clarify. If a moving ball strikes ANY player, caddie, outside influence or any golfer’s equipment – no penalty and you have to accept where the ball came to rest (even if it’s in a footprint in the bunker). It’s probably good at this point to describe an outside influence. That could be a spectator, the beer cart, Lucy the beer cart rider, a bird, a helicopter, a power line, a drone, another ball in motion, an animal (deer, geese, ground hog, etc.). A golfer’s equipment includes his clubs, his golf cart, his golf bag, etc. A ball striking any of these things is treated exactly the same. No penalty and you must accept the consequences. Sometimes those deflections are wonderful – might keep you from going out of bounds or into a penalty area. Sometimes the deflections aren’t so wonderful. Regardless of the outcome (unless there is a local rule (like #6 down at the Edgewood 9-hole course where you get to rehit if you hit the power line)), you accept the result of the carom.
There is one very important BUT in this rule, and that has to do with a ball striking another ball on the green. If you’re putting from on the green and you strike another stationary ball on the green, you incur the dreaded 2-stroke penalty. Have your opponents and teammates mark their balls even if you think you have no chance of hitting their ball and you can avoid this one. To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never had to call that penalty on myself.
There are also a couple of EXCEPTIONS to the rule. The first one deals with your ball coming to rest ON TOP of a person, animal, or outside influence. Let’s explore that one. Lucy is driving the beer cart down the cart path on #8 and you catch a drive flush and pull it left. The ball strikes the cart path and jumps into the open cooler – never to be seen again. How do the rules handle this? First you have to estimate where the ball and cart intersected (probably on the cart path). You then would drop a ball within a clublength (no closer to the hole) of that spot. However, if this is on the cart path, you can also take relief from the immovable obstruction and drop within a clublength of the point of nearest relief with no penalty. This exception also works for the ball that ends up on a snapping turtle’s back. It also works for balls that end up on the floor of a golf cart. You estimate a point directly underneath the ball on the ground, move the golf cart and get to drop within a clublength. Keep in mind that the drop must be onto the same area of the course – in other words, you can’t use the clublength to drop outside a bunker or outside a penalty area if the estimated rest point was within those areas. The second exception deals with deflections on the putting green. You make a great putt that’s headed right at the hole and a rabbit runs across the green and deflects it away. By rule, the stroke is cancelled, the player must estimate the point where the ball originated and he shall replay the shot. However, if the object he strikes is someone’s ball marker, he has to accept the result of the shot. If you think someone’s ball marker might influence your putt, have that player move the ball marker out of your way before the stroke.