In a rare hot-mic moment on the PGA Tour, we got to watch and listen as Justin Thomas tried to avoid a penalty for accidentally moving his ball in a waste area during the third round of the RBC Heritage in April. He eventually won, but only after getting a one-stroke penatly for telling a PGA Tour rules official that he caused his ball to move while trying to remove loose impediments.
This incident might seem cut-and-dried, and you might think the definition of a moving golf ball is obvious, but there are some nuances when you look in The Rules of Golf.
Rule 9.2 is where you’ll find out if your ball has “moved” or if it didn’t. For example, if your ball on a windy day is rocking back and forth in the rough, it’s clearly moving, right? Well, it is, but it’s only considered to have moved it two things occur: 1) It leaves its original spot and comes to rest in any other spot; 2) The movement is seen by the “naked eye.”
That second stipulation was added after several incidents on the professional tours where a TV camera picked up the movement of a player’s ball and it was virtually undetectable otherwise. Now there must be knowledge or “virtual certainty” that the ball moved without the use of technology. Virtual certainty is actually defined in The Rules of Golf, and it means there is a 95-percent chance the event occured.
It also should be noted that if a ball moves, and no one sees it move (no evidence), there is no penalty for playing from the wrong place. An example given from the rules book is when a player hits a shot and his or her ball hits another ball and moves it. If no one saw that happen, it’s like it didn’t happen. Normally you would have to replace that ball before playing the next shot or it would be a penalty.
Getting back to JT’s situation at the RBC, if Thomas removed a loose impediment but didn’t know his ball moved as a result, he would still be penalized because “the player’s lack of knowledge of their own breach does not exempt them for penalty.” If Thomas had hit a shot after his ball had moved, and there was subsequent evidence his ball did move, he would have been penalized for playing from the wrong place (two shots in stroke play, loss of hole in match play).
The takeaway from all of this is an oscillating ball is not a moving ball unless it comes to rest in a different spot, and someone has to see your ball move (naked eye) for it to be considered a ball-moved situation. When it does happen, replace it or you’ll get the general penalty for playing from the wrong place. And that compounds getting the one-stroke penalty for moving the ball in the first place.
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This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
