A few weeks ago on a Saturday morning, a group of members on the first tee (group of four) were preparing to hit off when it started to rain. A lot of activity followed as the players pulled out their wet weather gear to protect themselves and their equipment from the rain.
The first player then quickly walked on to the tee and hit off. He was quickly followed by the second player. It was only when the third player bent over to put his tee into the ground that he realised they had both hit off from the white markers and not the blue markers.
The third and fourth members of the foursome hit off from the blue markers and the first two players then went and teed off again, this time from the correct tees, with a 2 stroke penalty of course. What a way to start your round.
My question is, given they made a mistake by teeing off the wrong teeing area, did they do the right thing by then teeing off again from the correct teeing area?
The answer is YES. See Rule 11-4b on Page 61. Well done to those players on doing the right thing.
Let’s move onto the green, where a player is asked to move her marker as it is in the line of another player’s putt. She moves it a putter head away, but when she replaces the ball, forgets she had moved it and proceeds to putt out from the wrong place. After putting out, one of the other players realises that the ball was not replaced in the correct place.
My question is, does she have to replace the ball on the correct spot and putt out, and apply a penalty?
The answer is NO. The putts from the wrong place count and she must add a two shot penalty to her score for that hole. See Rule 20-3a (especially paragraph 4) on Page 84.
