Drop Flop and Re-Drop?

On hole #18, a player’s ball came to rest near a drainage grate in the fairway. The grate interfered with the player’s stance, so he was entitled to take free relief under USGA Rule 16.1 Relief from Immovable Obstructions.

The player and I found the nearest point of complete relief (NPCR) as prescribed in Rule 16.1b. The Rule goes on to state that the player must then drop his ball within a “Relief Area”. The Relief Area is defined as an area on the course that is within one club length of the NPCR, but not nearer to the hole than the NPCR. In this instance, the Relief Area was a semi-circle with the NPCR as its radius:

Question #1: Is a player required to actually retrieve a club from his bag and then use it to demarcate the official relief area? It may surprise you to learn that the answer is actually NO! However, the reasoning behind this answer is a bit complicated…

Interpretation Nearest Point of Complete Relief/2 states: Although there is a recommended procedure for determining the NPCR, if a player does not determine the NPCR accurately, the player only gets a penalty if this results in him or her dropping a ball into a relief area that does not satisfy the requirements of the Rule and the ball is then played. This means that as long as a player’s dropped ball comes to rest within the relief area that would have been defined by the accurate placement of the NPCR and the one-club-length radius of that point, the player has fulfilled his duty.

But if the player doesn’t go through that whole routine, how can he know that his dropped ball is in fact lying within the appropriate relief area? Well, I think the USGA is saying that the “innocent until proven guilty” standard applies in circumstances like these. In other words, if nobody objects to the dropped ball’s location, then the player is assumed to have taken relief correctly, and he is under no obligation prove this to anyone but himself. But if some other interested party, such as a fellow competitor or a referee, does object to the ball’s location, the player must THEN prove that his dropped ball is in fact within the appropriate relief area by formally executing the recommended procedure. So in all but elite levels of competition, “close enough” is officially good enough.

Question #2: Despite not having to do so, the player laid his driver on the ground to help him visualize the extent of his relief area. When he dropped his ball, it struck the ground within the relief area, then bounced and struck his driver, and then finally came to rest on the ground within the relief area. Does the player have to re-drop? It may surprise you to learn that the answer is, once again, NO!

Rule 14.3c(1) states: [When a ball dropped in the right way] comes to rest in the relief area, the player has completed taking relief and must play the ball as it lies. It does not matter whether the ball, after hitting the ground, touches any person, equipment or other outside influence before coming to rest. Consequently, the dropped ball was in play, and the player was required to play it as it lay.

What is the benefit of structuring and interpreting the Rules in these seemingly informal ways? Although I’m not privy to the thought processes behind such decisions, I can imagine two great reasons: time savings and ease of compliance.

Before the 2019 Rules re-write, the list of circumstances that necessitated a re-drop was long… and a couple of those Rules were downright impenetrable. Experts in the Rules could easily forget or misinterpret them, so the average player had no chance of avoiding mistakes.

That all changed in 2019. The current philosophy seems to be that if you make a reasonably accurate, good-faith attempt to abide by the Rules, then get on with it. Don’t waste time proving your compliance, and don’t waste time on re-drops except in the very limited circumstances where it is absolutely necessary (such as having dropped in a wrong way). Instead, play on… and know that everyone playing behind you thanks you!