Seven rules of golf almost everyone gets wrong

Five rules account for most of the confusion in amateur golf, and all five come up regularly. Knowing them saves strokes, arguments and time, and none of them requires reading the full rulebook.

The reason they matter is not pedantry. Every one of these rules exists because the alternative is worse, and in four of the five cases the rule is more generous than golfers assume. The amateur who does not know them is usually taking more penalty than the rules require, and taking longer to do it.

Penalty areas, and the two-club-length myth

When your ball is in a penalty area marked with red stakes, you have four options: play it as it lies, take stroke and distance, drop back on a line from the hole through the point where the ball last crossed the margin, or take lateral relief within two club-lengths of that crossing point, no nearer the hole. The last three cost one penalty stroke.

Yellow-staked penalty areas offer the same options except the lateral one. That is the whole difference between red and yellow, and it is the reason committees use red for most water and yellow only where a lateral drop would be absurd.

The common error is measuring from where the ball came to rest in the water, or from where you happen to be standing on the bank. It is the crossing point that matters, and it is often several yards from where the splash was.

A second error: you do not have to find the ball to take relief, provided it is known or virtually certain that it is in the penalty area. If it is merely probable, the ball is lost and stroke and distance applies.

Provisional balls

If your ball may be lost outside a penalty area or out of bounds, announce a provisional and play it.

Saying “I’ll hit another one” without the word provisional means you have abandoned the first ball and are playing the new one under stroke and distance, even if you then find the original sitting in the middle of the fairway. The word is the whole mechanism.

Announcing costs nothing and saves the walk back, which is three minutes for you and for every group behind you. And once you begin searching, you have three minutes, reduced from five in 2019; after that the ball is lost whether or not it is subsequently found.

Many courses have adopted the local rule allowing a two-stroke drop near where a ball was lost or went out of bounds, as an alternative to going back. It is not universal, it is never in effect in competitions run under the standard conditions, and it is on the notice board when it applies.

Unplayable, which is your choice anywhere except a penalty area

You may declare your ball unplayable anywhere on the course except in a penalty area, for one penalty stroke, and only you decide. The three options are stroke and distance, back on the line from the hole through the ball, or two club-lengths from the ball, no nearer the hole.

In a bunker, those three options apply within the bunker for one stroke. There is a fourth option, back on the line but outside the bunker, and it costs two strokes. It is frequently the cheapest shot available from a genuinely buried lie against a face.

Amateurs routinely hack at an unplayable lie three times before taking the relief they could have had for one stroke. Taking an unplayable early is one of the most reliable stroke-savers in the game and almost nobody does it.

Free relief: what counts and what does not

Cart paths, sprinkler heads, staked trees, drains, GUR and casual water are abnormal course conditions and give free relief. Find the nearest point of complete relief, no nearer the hole, and drop within one club-length of it.

Two details people get wrong. The nearest point is the nearest point, not the nicest one: it may put you behind a tree, and you must still take it from there or play the ball as it lay. And complete relief means for stance and swing as well as the ball, which is why relief from a cart path sometimes moves you further than expected.

Divots are not abnormal conditions. A ball in a divot in the fairway is played as it lies, however unfair it feels. Neither is a bad lie in the rough, and neither are aeration holes unless a local rule says otherwise.

The flagstick, and the modern rule

You may putt with the flagstick in the hole. There is no penalty for hitting it. This has been true since 2019 and it still causes arguments weekly on British golf courses.

Whether it helps is a separate question and the evidence is mixed, though leaving it in is faster, which is reason enough on a busy course. What matters is that nobody in your group is entitled to tell you it is not allowed.

Two more worth knowing

You may repair almost any damage on the putting green, including spike marks, shoe damage, old hole plugs and animal damage. You may not repair natural surface imperfections or the general wear of the hole.

You may lift, clean and replace your ball on the green at any time, provided you mark it first. Off the green you may not clean it except when taking relief, which is why a mud ball on a fairway is played as it is unless a preferred-lies local rule is in effect.

Distances, and the one number to know

Club-lengths are measured with the longest club in your bag other than the putter, which for nearly everybody is the driver. Two club-lengths is therefore roughly two and a half yards, which is more relief than most players realise they are entitled to.

Drops are from knee height, changed from shoulder height in 2019, and the ball must come to rest in the relief area or be re-dropped. If it will not stay after two attempts, place it where it first touched the ground on the second drop.

Where to check a ruling in Britain

The England Golf publishes the full Rules of Golf and the Player’s Edition free, and the England Golf app answers most on-course questions in under a minute and works without a signal in the parts of a course where you will need it. It is the single most useful free thing a golfer can put on a phone.

For learning them properly rather than looking them up, the England Golf and the PGA of Britain run rules workshops around the country each year, and most county and regional golf associations run their own shorter sessions, often free to members. Volunteering as a rules official at a county amateur is the fastest way of all, and associations are generally short of people.

Panxis Golf has no commercial relationship with any association mentioned here.

The one to internalize

When in doubt in a casual round, play a second ball, note both scores and settle it afterward. In stroke play in competition you may do the same formally, announcing which ball you want to count, and let the committee decide.

In competition, ask a rules official before you act, not after. Nearly every ruling that goes badly went badly because somebody guessed and moved the ball, and once the ball has moved the good options are gone.