In stroke play, when you’re not sure whether the ground your ball lies on is abnormal for the purposes of Rule 25, or whether you are required to drop out of a flowerbed, or whether you get relief from the staked tree or just the stakes, you can play a second ball under Rule 3-3 and get a ruling later. The procedure is pretty straight forward. Before taking any further action, you must announce to your marker or a fellow-competitor that you intend to play two balls and which ball you want to score with if the Rules permit. Before you turn in your scorecard, you have to tell the Committee what happened. Simple. Right? Sure.
Suppose you have already played your original ball from the flowerbed before your fellow-competitor tells you that he thinks a local rule requires a drop away from the flowers. Can you save the situation by playing a second ball under Rule 3-3? No, it’s too late. You already took further action when you played the original ball. So although you may be in doubt as to the correct procedure, you just have to live with the result.
What if you are dealing with a disturbed area you think should be Ground Under Repair. You did everything right, told your marker you want to score with the second ball and then knocked your original ball stiff. Seems kind of unnecessary to drop a second ball and take up so much time now, doesn’t it?
Can you just change your mind and not even drop the second ball? If you do and the Committee decides that you were right about the GUR, then you will be disqualified for not holing out with the ball you wanted to score with.
Now, suppose your original ball lies on the green and your second ball hits it and causes it to move. Do you get penalized for moving your ball at rest under Rule 18 AND for deflecting your own ball under Rule 19? No, that’s too cruel, even for Golf. If the second ball was played from the green, you’ll add two strokes if the score with the second ball is the one that counts, Otherwise, no penalty, the moved ball must be replaced and the second ball is played as it lies.
Whenever you invoke Rule 3-3, we have to be able to identify the location. If you took relief from a burrowing animal runway deep in the Piney Woods, it might be hard to find. So, draw a diagram, put down a mark. After all, how many pirates finally got back to the island and couldn’t find their Treasure Chest? (Lots, hence the popularity of Treasure Maps.) If we can’t locate the situation where you wanted relief, the chances of your getting a favorable ruling are mighty slim. It will also help if you will use something other than a brown tee to mark a spot in the brown dirt.
Every time you use Rule 3-3, even if you score the same with both balls, you must report to the Committee that you invoked Rule 3-3 and why, or you have to be disqualified.
The moral to this story, like so many other golf stories, is that unless you are just hitting the ball, finding it and hitting it again, you really need to know what you’re doing. That’s why we study the Rules.
