I like this one! In casual play most players don’t even know of the requirement and in tournament play it’s most often an unnecessary inconvenience.
2018 Rule: A special procedure applies when you intend to lift a ball in three specific situations. Before lifting the ball, you must announce the intention to do so to another player and then allow them to observe the marking, lifting and replacing of the ball. This applies when a ball will be lifted:
- for identification, or
- to see if it has become unfit for play, or
- to see if it lies in a condition from which relief is allowed.
New 2019 Rule: In all three situations above, under the new Rules you would be allowed to mark and lift the ball and proceed under the Rule without first announcing your intention to another player or to give them a chance to observe the process.
Well, why did they make this change?
In other relief situations, including when a ball may be lifted and played from a different place, you are allowed to proceed under the Rules without being required to involve another player in any part of the process. For example, you may take relief from cart path without having to announce your intention to another player or to allow them to observe the process.
Eliminating the announcement requirements for these three situations simplifies the Rules and brings consistency to the idea of trusting the player. The requirement for the player to have a good reason to lift under the Rule is a sufficient safeguard against inappropriate lifting or abuse of the Rule.
This might be a good place to mention “marking” the ball. The Rules only ever required you to mark the spot of the ball before picking it up if the Rules require you to replace the ball. Can you list those times? No, I didn’t think so. So, let’s adopt this practice . . . each time you have some good reason to pick up your ball, go ahead and mark it.
You have to bend over anyway, why not stick a tee in the ground. I’ll bet the ranch that no one has every received a penalty for marking a ball when it wasn’t required. Conversely, failure to mark, a one stroke penalty, is a Homer Simpson maneuver.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laTgKys8cnI
Ok guys… could use some help here. What rule in the book does this fall under? Rule 7.3? I am missing any verbiage where it directly speaks to not announcing to other players.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am loving these daily posts as I try to increase my knowledge of the rules for the February Pinehurst rules workshop.
Hi, Chris,
Old 12-2 says, “Before lifting the ball, the player must announce his intention to his opponent in match play or his marker or a fellow-competitor in stroke play and mark the position of the ball.”
New 7.3 omits the “must announce” words.
I think you’ll find the same with the other two cases in which the announcement is no longer required.
As far as I can tell there are for 2019, only two times in stroke play when some sort of announcement is required, play of a provisional ball and play of a second ball under 20.1. Though I suppose declaring an excess club out of play could be added to the list. 🙂
The match play requirements haven’t changed, I don’t think.
The old list was longer:
REQUIRED NOTIFICATIONS BY THE PLAYER
1 Making a claim, R2-5
2 Play of a second ball, R3-3
3 Declare excess club out of play, R4-4
4 Lift to determine if ball is unfit for play, R5-3
5 Penalty incurred, R9
6 Lift ball, not covered by sand, to identify, R12-2
7 When unclear which Rule player invoking. D13-4/35.7, D18-2/27 et al
8 Lift to determine application of Rule. D20-1/0.7, R25-1, R25-2
9 Announce provisional ball, R27-2
Thank you for the clarification
Generally, Chris, the Rules will only specify things that a player “must” do or “should” do (as well as list options, like for taking a drop). If a player need not do something, there’s likely little to be gained by saying explicitly “a player doesn’t need to announce this.”
And that’s what I was failing to recognize in this situation. I was reading into the words too much looking for exactly that… something to tell me not to do it.
Hope you don’t mind the questions… sorry but I am grinding like a 4 footer to qualify for the tour with these rules… hoping you guys can pass enough knowledge over to me to drag my butt over the finish line in February with the rules testing.
A sincere thank you to each of you for sure.