On hole #18, I pushed my tee shot to the right and my ball came to rest in this lie:
If this isn’t the very definition of “unplayable”, then I don’t know what is. Luckily for me, USGA Rule 19.1 states: A player is the only person who may decide to treat his or her ball as unplayable. Unplayable ball relief is allowed anywhere on the course, except in a penalty area.
The good news is, I don’t have to get permission from anyone to declare my ball unplayable. The bad news is, the cost of this largesse is one penalty stroke—which also ended up costing me $20 for a share of the win!
Rule 19.2 prescribes three relief options: a) Stroke and Distance relief (which is ALWAYS available, no matter what the circumstance), b) Back-on-the-Line relief (which is the same option available in taking relief from a Yellow Penalty Area), and c) Lateral relief. I chose option C, which states: The player may drop the original ball or another ball within two club-lengths of the spot of the original ball, not nearer the hole than the spot of the original ball.
There are two very important takeaways from this Rule.
First, you don’t have to continue playing with your original ball. I was entitled to substitute a different ball if I had wanted to, which also means I could have cleaned my original ball if I had wanted to. This is true for all cases where penalty relief is taken. In fact, it is also true in all cases where a ball is to be dropped in the course of taking relief, including all free relief situations. This is very different from pre-2019 Rules, where continuing to use the original ball was mandatory in nearly all cases where the original ball was readily available. I think the post-2019 Rules are a huge improvement in this regard.
Second, the two-club-length lateral prescription is true for all cases where you are taking penalty relief. So if you suffer a penalty stroke, you get an extra club length to help salve the wound.
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