Feedback on a couple questions

[TerpFangolfer]

These are from my State assoc year-end "review"...a couple questions I had from the test they gave. Hiding my comments on each one...will look for input from folks here.

 

#1.  In a Four-Ball match between Sides A-B and Sides C-D, A lies 2 on the fringe of the putting green, while the other three players' balls lie on the putting green. A chips and his ball strikes a squirrel running across the green and comes to rest in a red penalty area fronting the green. C, lying 3, putts and his ball strikes the same squirrel and comes to rest in the same penalty area. Both A and C retrieve their balls and replace them on the spots where their previous shots were played. A chips in and C holes out in 3 strokes. What is the status of the hole.

 

A. Side A-B wins the hole

B. Side C-D wins the hole

C. The hole is halved

D. Status is undetermined

 

Spoiler

I answered D - the test results came back and said B...hmmm. At first I was going to give A a serious wrong place breach - but then realized, even though A apparently thought he could free replay his shot...he actually took S&D relief, however he placed instead of dropped. Then A chipped in for 6, correct? C was allowed to re-play, so he scored 5. But I answered D, because they never said what B or D did!  There was no loss of hole for A-B. Guessing a badly worded question.

 

#2. In stroke play, a player's ball embeds at the edge of the lip of a bunker in the general area. He lifts his ball out of the ground and then realizes both his reference point for embedded ball relief and all of the associated relief area are in the bunker behind his ball. Because there is no general area where he is required to drop his ball, he decides to take unplayable ball relief (Rule 19). He chooses the stroke-and-distance option for an unplayable ball. He drops his ball in the correct relief area and hits his next shot on the green. How many penalty strokes has he incurred?

 

A. No penalty strokes

B. One penalty stroke

C. Two penalty strokes

D. Two 1-stroke penalties

 

Spoiler

For some reason the test result said A...how? The player correctly took S&D relief for the UnP ball. So the answer should be B, right? There was no spot available for free EB relief...so the player took UnP for +1 pen stroke.

 

[davep043]

Here are my evaluations.

In the first instance, A receives the General Penalty for placing instead of dropping, so he his disqualified from the hole.  14.6, which points us to 14.3 for Dropping in a Relief Area. I believe the GP applies only to the Player, not to the team, so B's score should count for the team.  We can't tell which team won the hole without knowing the other players' scores.  

For the second question, the player incurs 1 PS for Unplayable Ball Relief.

[Colin L]

In several contributions to this thread you'll find red bits.  That's where I've had to rewrite and delete stuff where I got into a stupid muddle between placing when you are required to drop and dropping when required to replace.  I am slowly losing the plot.

 

Dreadful questions.  

#1.  The answer has to be D as we are not told what B and D scored.  Teasing out what A and C did,

C had to cancel his stroke and play again from the same spot. which he did correctly  and so is playing his 3rd shot. Assuming "C holes out in 3 strokes" includes the replaying of the cancelled stroke, C scores 5.

A had to play his ball as it lay as his ball was not on the putting green.  HIs action in replacing his ball on the previous spot suggests that he thinks he can cancel his stroke in which case he has played from a wrong place and is out of the hole.  But because his ball was not on the putting green when he made the stroke that hit this unfortunate squirrel he had to continue from where it ended up.   As it was in a PA he could either play it as it lay or take relief under penalty. If he chose to take relief, his ball had to be dropped and as Dave has said he gets the general penalty for placing it and is out of the hole.

Too. many possibilities and too little information.  Sack the question setter - and me as well

 

#2. The player lifts his embedded ball to take free relief only to realise he could not take relief.  Interpretation 163b/C1  clarifies that you are not allowed free relief if there is no reference point or relief area available.  He has lifted his ball without the authority of a rule and should replace his ball with a one stroke penalty.  If he then decides to take unplayable relief, he gets one penalty stroke for that in addition to the one already incurred.  You are not allowed to avoid a penalty stroke by a subsequent decision to take stroke and distance.  See Interpretation 18.1/2.  The answer to my mind is D.  He incurred 2 one stroke penalties.  There's no way he gets off without a penalty.  Sack the question setter.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Colin L

[Mr. Bean]

Colin,

 

do you suggest that A lost the option to take S&D by replacing a ball? Pre-2019 Decisions suggested that S&D may be applied afterwards to reduce the nr of penalty strokes otherwise greater and I believe the same principle is still valid.

[Mr. Bean]

4 hours ago, TerpFangolfer said:

These are from my State assoc year-end "review"...a couple questions I had from the test they gave. Hiding my comments on each one...will look for input from folks here.

 

#1.  In a Four-Ball match between Sides A-B and Sides C-D, A lies 2 on the fringe of the putting green, while the other three players' balls lie on the putting green. A chips and his ball strikes a squirrel running across the green and comes to rest in a red penalty area fronting the green. C, lying 3, putts and his ball strikes the same squirrel and comes to rest in the same penalty area. Both A and C retrieve their balls and replace them on the spots where their previous shots were played. A chips in and C holes out in 3 strokes. What is the status of the hole.

 

A. Side A-B wins the hole

B. Side C-D wins the hole

C. The hole is halved

D. Status is undetermined

 

  Hide contents

I answered D - the test results came back and said B...hmmm. At first I was going to give A a serious wrong place breach - but then realized, even though A apparently thought he could free replay his shot...he actually took S&D relief, however he placed instead of dropped. Then A chipped in for 6, correct? C was allowed to re-play, so he scored 5. But I answered D, because they never said what B or D did!  There was no loss of hole for A-B. Guessing a badly worded question.

 

#2. In stroke play, a player's ball embeds at the edge of the lip of a bunker in the general area. He lifts his ball out of the ground and then realizes both his reference point for embedded ball relief and all of the associated relief area are in the bunker behind his ball. Because there is no general area where he is required to drop his ball, he decides to take unplayable ball relief (Rule 19). He chooses the stroke-and-distance option for an unplayable ball. He drops his ball in the correct relief area and hits his next shot on the green. How many penalty strokes has he incurred?

 

A. No penalty strokes

B. One penalty stroke

C. Two penalty strokes

D. Two 1-stroke penalties

 

  Hide contents

For some reason the test result said A...how? The player correctly took S&D relief for the UnP ball. So the answer should be B, right? There was no spot available for free EB relief...so the player took UnP for +1 pen stroke.

 

Those questions suck but the answers suck even more. Move to another State as quickly as you can!

[Halebopp]

2 hours ago, Colin L said:

 Alternatively,  if his intention was to take relief from the penalty area he should have dropped his ball not placed it in which case he gets one penalty stroke if by good chance his ball happens to end up on the correct spot, or gets the general penalty and is out of the hole.   Too. many possibilities and too little information.  Sack the question setter.

 

I agree about the questions being dreadful the question-setter needing to be sacked. But, when a player places a ball that is supposed to be dropped, the player is bound to get the General Penalty if the mistake is not corrected. Dropping in a wrong way, or when the ball was supposed to be placed/replaced, can get you away with a one-stroke penalty if the ball comes to rest in the correct place.

 

Otherwise I'm in an agreement with you. 🙂

[jholz]

Man, sounds like the crazy fox squirrels we used to have at the Grand National in Alabama. Big as a Shetland pony, I kid you not.

 

 

In all cases where squirrels are involved, I defer to the squirrels. As such, I'd have to contend that the answer is actually "E - none of the above." 

 

The squirrels clearly won the hole and are now 1up in the match. 

Edited January 4, 2022 by jholz

[TerpFangolfer]

Thanks for confirming what I thought...have emailed our director of rules. In a kind of roundabout way I asked where the questions came from and who set the answers (hopefully it wasn't her!)

 

Pointed out that both the answers appear to be incorrect...no response as of yet.

 

Oh yes, and thanks Dave and others for pointing out what I missed about A - for ex, if it was stroke play I had A with 6 (only 1 stroke for placing when needed to drop) should have been 2 strokes & a 7 due to Gen pen.

[Mr. Bean]

Deleted, found the answer.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Mr. Bean

[Colin L]

3 hours ago, Halebopp said:

 

I agree about the questions being dreadful the question-setter needing to be sacked. But, when a player places a ball that is supposed to be dropped, the player is bound to get the General Penalty if the mistake is not corrected. Dropping in a wrong way, or when the ball was supposed to be placed/replaced, can get you away with a one-stroke penalty if the ball comes to rest in the correct place.

 

Otherwise I'm in an agreement with you. 🙂

 

I'm changing my reply to this - with apologies.  I mixed up dropping when required to replace with placing when required to drop.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Colin L

[Mr. Bean]

1 hour ago, TerpFangolfer said:

Oh yes, and thanks Dave and others for pointing out what I missed about A - for ex, if it was stroke play I had A with 6 (only 1 stroke for placing when needed to drop) should have been 2 strokes & a 7 due to Gen pen.

 

What do you mean 'if it was stroke play' ? The question was about Match Play.

 

Furthermore, placing when should be dropping is General Penalty, that is 2 strokes in Stroke Play, not only 1. See rule 14.3b(3):

 

But if the ball was played from outside the relief area, or after it was placed when required to be dropped (no matter where it was played from), the player gets the general penalty..

Edited January 4, 2022 by Mr. Bean

[Colin L]

51 minutes ago, Mr. Bean said:

Deleted, found the answer.

Deleted 

I referred to an Interpretation concerning dropping a ball when required to replace - which is the opposite of what the player in the question did if he was taking stroke and distance relief.

My apologies all round for messing up the thread.

 

Cocoa and bedtime, methinks.☹️

Edited January 4, 2022 by Colin L

[Mr. Bean]

1 minute ago, Colin L said:

Just moments before I sent you off to 14.2b(1)/1.

 

But I'll quote it for the benefit of others

 

 

14.2b(2)/1

Player Drops Ball When Ball Is to Be Replaced

When a player drops a ball when the Rules require him or her to replace the ball, the ball has been replaced in a wrong way. If the player replaces the ball in a wrong way, but on the required spot (this also includes if the player drops the ball and it comes to rest on the required spot), he or she gets one penalty stroke if the ball is played without correcting the mistake under Rule 14.5 (Correcting Mistake Made in Substituting, Replacing, Dropping or Placing Ball). 

But if the player has dropped a ball and that ball comes to rest somewhere other than on the required spot, he or she gets the general penalty for playing from a wrong place if the ball is played without correcting the mistake.

 

Well, we both know that the probability of such occurrence is virtually zero, and certifying the event is close to impossible. I simply wonder why the RBs have drafted such an escape for a player as it is simply beyond any reasonable thinking.

[Colin L]

1 minute ago, Mr. Bean said:

 

Well, we both know that the probability of such occurrence is virtually zero, and certifying the event is close to impossible. I simply wonder why the RBs have drafted such an escape for a player as it is simply beyond any reasonable thinking.

I would't agree that it's beyond reasonable thinking.   It is possible and  no matter how remote that possibility is it makes sense for it to be covered in the Rules.

[NJBigFish22]

After reading those questions, all I could think of was great, now I need to carry a pellet gun to take care of the damn squirrels.

[Mr. Bean]

15 minutes ago, Colin L said:

I would't agree that it's beyond reasonable thinking.   It is possible and  no matter how remote that possibility is it makes sense for it to be covered in the Rules.

 

I agree it is possible but even though in the Rules the KVC has been limited to be 95% that accuracy does not apply to replacing a ball.

 

Make a simple test. Choose a spot on the fairway/green or whatever suits you and place a ball. Then try to drop a ball onto that exactly same spot (after removing the original ball...). Report back here how many drops you had to make it happen.

 

Oh, forgot to say: do make the test on dry terrain. It makes a difference...

 

 

Edited January 4, 2022 by Mr. Bean

[Colin L]

As I have sent this conversation off on a wrong track thanks to my stupidity, this is a total digression from the original topic.  Suffice to say that you agree it is possible and I don't disagree that the likelihood of its happening is remote and so  perhaps we leave it at that?

 

 

Edited January 4, 2022 by Colin L

[mark m]

Speaking of squirrels: there was a very recent story (last week) of a vicious squirrel that attacked 18 people in Wales. I guess the Welsh squirrels can be nasty? They had to put ‘Stripe’ down:

 

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/buckley-grey-squirrel-stripe-attack-biting-village-wales-residents-b974135.html

 

Stay safe! 😀

[nsxguy]

7 hours ago, davep043 said:

Here are my evaluations.

In the first instance, A receives the General Penalty for placing instead of dropping, so he his disqualified from the hole.  14.6, which points us to 14.3 for Dropping in a Relief Area. I believe the GP applies only to the Player, not to the team, so B's score should count for the team.  We can't tell which team won the hole without knowing the other players' scores.

 

I count 7 for "A" if it's the GP for his replacing instead of correctly dropping.

 

And 6 for "C", not 5 as others have said.

 

I also assume "C holes out in 3 strokes" means a 3 putt from where the ball was replaced.

 

I'm not sure I understand why "A" is disqualified from the hole.

 

"D" is the obvious answer as others have pointed out since there's no score revealed for players "B" or "D".

 

But I suspect the questioner is assuming players B&D were irrelevant to the final outcome. Why ? IDK. 🙃

[Colin L]

28 minutes ago, nsxguy said:

 

....I'm not sure I understand why "A" is disqualified from the hole.....

Because the General Penalty in match play is loss of hole.  In a four ball, that means the player concerned is out of the hole.

[antip]

Still recovering from the shocking trauma in Wales from that rampaging squirrel, Stripe.

 

Both questions have the content to be excellent questions, testing some really important current features of the rules, but........

 

Q1: writer has screwed up reference to four ball. Make it singles match play, A v C and it all comes together fine. The rules content here is very good - two players apparently taking precisely the same action in response to the same stimulus (Stripes US cousin repeatedly tormenting golfers on or near the green) gets very different outcomes when one was on the fringe and one was on the green. That is an excellent rules issue to be alert to.

And, by the way, A took 6, not 7. There are four talent strokes and one wrong place penalty. There is no PA penalty because the player was not taking PA relief (no intent). This PA quirk got a serious work out in the 2021 USGA Short Course.

And for NSX, A is DQ for the hole because that is the outcome of a general penalty in match play.

 

Q2: I agree it is two one stroke penalties, but you cannot say that answer C is wrong because the question just says how many penalty strokes incurred so an answer of two penalty strokes is equally correct. That writer is off with the fairies again, but the question is a very good one that also featured in the recent USGA Short Course processes.

 

For Mr B, we have bumped into your quirk on this issue previously. The only way it is only one penalty stroke is if you lift your ball in play to play again from the previous place - ie intent present before the ball is moved. If you lift your ball under an inapplicable rule and then decide to take S&D you have two separate issues to be accounted for.

Edited January 5, 2022 by antip
changed "same place" to "previous place"

[nsxguy]

1 minute ago, Colin L said:

Because the General Penalty in match play is loss of hole.  In a four ball, that means the player concerned is out of the hole.

 

I guess this is something that confuses me as well.

 

I've played this kind of match any number of times but we've never DQ'd somebody for the hole for a general penalty. He gets his penalty strokes added and finishes the hole.

 

Likely his partner would then have the low score for that team but we ARE amateurs so,,,,,,,,, not always.

 

I see the 4-ball as 2 players on the same team playing STROKE play BUT scoring as a better ball MATCH play.

 

 

[antip]

3 minutes ago, nsxguy said:

 

I guess this is something that confuses me as well.

 

I've played this kind of match any number of times but we've never DQ'd somebody for the hole for a general penalty. He gets his penalty strokes added and finishes the hole.

 

Likely his partner would then have the low score for that team but we ARE amateurs so,,,,,,,,, not always.

 

I see the 4-ball as 2 players on the same team playing STROKE play BUT scoring as a better ball MATCH play.

 

 

I understand doing it this way is fairly common in the US, particularly in some of the team play formats there,  but it virtually never happens here that way - general penalty = loss of hole in match play and that is how it is practised.

[rogolf]

1 hour ago, antip said:

I understand doing it this way is fairly common in the US, particularly in some of the team play formats there,  but it virtually never happens here that way - general penalty = loss of hole in match play and that is how it is practised.

Agree, same here, general penalty = loh.

As an official and instructor, I used to say that there were no two stroke penalties in match play, but that is no longer correct!

Edited January 5, 2022 by rogolf

[Mr. Bean]

11 hours ago, antip said:

And, by the way, A took 6, not 7. There are four talent strokes and one wrong place penalty. There is no PA penalty because the player was not taking PA relief (no intent). This PA quirk got a serious work out in the 2021 USGA Short Course.

 

 

I assume you are now referring to stroke play. In such a case we should also inspect the possibility of serious breach. Naturally we cannot say anything about it as we have no knowledge of the distances nor terrain at the PA.

  

11 hours ago, antip said:

For Mr B, we have bumped into your quirk on this issue previously. The only way it is only one penalty stroke is if you lift your ball in play to play again from the previous place - ie intent present before the ball is moved. If you lift your ball under an inapplicable rule and then decide to take S&D you have two separate issues to be accounted for.

 

But antip, Int 9.4b/6 describes a case where there is no intent before lifting the ball from GUR and still the player gets only one penalty by returning to the previous spot (last bullet point). The crucial difference between that and the case at hand is that in that case there is a place to take relief but in this case at hand there is none so the player has no permission to lift the ball for taking relief from the condition.

 

[Mr. Bean]

9 hours ago, rogolf said:

Agree, same here, general penalty = loh.

As an official and instructor, I used to say that there were no two stroke penalties in match play, but that is no longer correct!

 

Do refresh my and probably also some others' memory by pointing out in which case one gets 2 PS penalty in Match Play. I cannot remember.

[antip]

24 minutes ago, Mr. Bean said:

 

I assume you are now referring to stroke play. In such a case we should also inspect the possibility of serious breach. Naturally we cannot say anything about it as we have no knowledge of the distances nor terrain at the PA.

  

 

But antip, Int 9.4b/6 describes a case where there is no intent before lifting the ball from GUR and still the player gets only one penalty by returning to the previous spot (last bullet point). The crucial difference between that and the case at hand is that in that case there is a place to take relief but in this case at hand there is none so the player has no permission to lift the ball for taking relief from the condition.

 

Your highlighting of only part of my paragraph misrepresents and distorts the issue and it seems you also have not recognised a critical feature of 9.4b/6's scenario. In that case, the player was permitted to lift the ball so there is no separate penalty for moving the ball in play. My point is unchanged and unchallenged: if you lift your ball under an inapplicable rule and subsequently decide to do S&D there are two separate issues to be accounted for. 

 

On your first para above, of course, that accounting is only relevant to stroke play and playing from a wrong place always raises the possibility of serious breach.

[antip]

39 minutes ago, Mr. Bean said:

 

Do refresh my and probably also some others' memory by pointing out in which case one gets 2 PS penalty in Match Play. I cannot remember.

That 2019 innovation - 19.3b.

[sui generis]

21 minutes ago, antip said:

That 2019 innovation - 19.3b.

 

And, in some advanced societies, E-5. 😉

[davep043]

12 hours ago, nsxguy said:

I've played this kind of match any number of times but we've never DQ'd somebody for the hole for a general penalty. He gets his penalty strokes added and finishes the hole.

We've had different experiences in this, I've seen the General Penalty applied in this way (the correct way per the Rules) numerous times, both under the "old Rules" as well as under the current Rules.  The previous rules didn't use the term General Penalty, but for a number of breaches the penalty was "Loss of Hole in Match Play", and the fourball rules indicated that these penalties only DQed the individual player for that hole, not the entire team.