Deflecting a moving ball into the hole

I played in a stroke play team qualifier yesterday and on the 11th hole a fellow one handed a one foot putt missed it and then deflected the ball into the hole while it was still rolling. From looking at the rules I believe that should be a two stroke penalty and he should have put the ball down where the one handed stroke would likely have ended up and putted it again?

Not quite right. If that deflection was not an intentional stroke at the moving ball (as seems to be the case on your OP): yes, general penalty for deliberate deflection (11.2b), but as the stroke was played from the putting green, the stroke does not count and the ball (or another ball) must be replaced on the original spot and played again (11.2c(2)). In this situation, failure to replace means the player has not completed the hole. So when he teed off the next hole without completing the previous hole, he is DQ (3.3c).

I think Antip's solution to the riddle is correct whether or not the deflection was an intentional stroke. Easier to rule on!

Hmm, not sure of that. If it was an intentional stroke (not simply a deflection) then I think we are in the Phil M/US Open world again. Both strokes count, general penalty under 10.1d and ball is holed.

You sir, are correct. After further contemplation I acknowledge that a "deliberate deflection" is different than making a deliberate stroke.

Deflection of a moving ball with a club can be done either by placing the club stationary on the path of a moving ball or moving the club towards the ball, which from my perspective fulfills the definition of a stroke. In both cases the deflection is deliberate but only in one of the cases the player makes a stroke.

From the OP description I can only envisage a stroke, so it seems to be the case type 'Phil in US Open'.

Then again, if the player was asked 'did you try to make a stroke at the moving ball' the situation could turn upside down and a movement of a club could in fact be a deflection instead of a stroke. Sounds like another complicated case...

'From the OP description I can only envisage a stroke, so it seems to be the case type 'Phil in US Open'.'

Small issue to raise here - I'm not a supporter of the 'only' word above. We're agreed a deflection of a moving ball with club in hand could be an intentional stroke or not (and that underpinned my original response), and without the correct answer we cannot rule correctly. But I don't start from the view that because the player had club in hand that I would automatically default to considering it a stroke. That kind of 'knee jerk' response to pull back the ball after a costly and embarrassing error is not a rational action by someone in control of things so there are grounds to explore intent. At general club level (at least around here), such unpredictable behaviours are not uncommon, probably also influenced by the fact that the vast majority of stroke play here is in the form of Stableford.

Thanks for the replies! I will mention the rest of the story which might be of some interest. On the eleventh green I was focused on my own game and did not really think about what happened until the next hole. I asked another competitor if that guy let's call him D had hit a moving ball. My fellow competitor said that he had and wondered if that was a penalty. I was pretty sure that it was 2 strokes. After we completed the hole I asked D if he had hit a moving ball on the 11th green and he said 'yes'. Then he asked if that was a penalty and we agreed that it was and we would check for sure when we completed the round. Then D said that maybe the ball was not moving. My fellow competitor said that it was D's call. Okay so apparently the moving ball was at rest! Golf is a game of honor after all.

The funny part is that D did the same thing on the 18th green though he did let the ball stop every time. He batted it around the hole after missing a 1 foot putt and I counted 7 strokes total with 5 putts. As we were walking off the green D's marker asked him what he had and I said 'seven' while D murmured 'five?'. The marker said that I said seven so that was what he put down.

It's not clear what the Terms of the Competition are for this "stroke play team qualifier" but this player (and his team?) should be dq'd from the competition or his score not be permitted to be used for "team" on the holes where he breached the Rules in this manner.

Ah good point! In this case it was an individual qualifier for a team that plays against teams from other courses and D was way out of the running so it did not matter in the end.

It's a bit ironic that if the player had intentionally hit the moving ball he'd be penalized but not be DQ, but if he had one of your possible knee jerk non-stroke spasms (perhaps an act of lesser evil) he'd be DQ for not finishing the hole.

I'm also reminded of the old (or is it still covered?) Decision which said that hitting a ball away from the edge of the cup in anger is not a stroke, and the ball must be replaced. That was a deliberate strike that was not a stroke -- not too far away in concept from a knee jerk I think . . .

Yes, that 'strike' is still not a 'stroke'. 18-2/23 "Ball knocked from lip of hole in disgust" is mapped as no change but eliminated, new reference is to 9.4b.

'Small issue to raise here - I'm not a supporter of the 'only' word above.'

Antip, please read the entire post and comment to that instead of picking up one single sentence the meaning of which I turned upside down in the next chapter...

The way I see the message of that Decision is that the player had no particular plan where their ball should end up after that act so it cannot be construed as a stroke. In the case at hand the intent of the player IMO has lot to do with the ruling, and from the texts of the OP I have got the impression that the player in question intended to change the direction of his ball to a desired direction.

I may be in the woods with this idea of mine but I feel that a somewhat straightforward (read: B&W) approach should be the answer here. If a player swings his club at a moving ball in order to get that ball to travel to a desired destination (or away from an undesired one) that swing, whether a small or bigger movement of a club, should be ruled to be a stroke.

I did and I was very comfortable with your post. No criticism was intended, I was interested and intrigued by the different (but both reasonable) ways we were reading the OP. My picking up on 'only' was to comment on why my experience of such issues steered me right away from that thinking.