Rules of Golf Review: My opponent just broke two rules before hitting his ball. How do you handle this?
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It's bad enough you got pitted against the one golfer at the club who is known for playing fast and loose with the Rules of Golf. Now you're watching him do all sorts of questionable things during your match.
Did he just put replace his ball on the green slightly closer to the hole?
There's no way he found his ball in the woods.
Pretty sure he just dropped about 10 yards farther down than he should have after dunking one in that pond.
About 12 holes in, and the match still in question, you've finally had enough when you see him commit not one, but two penalties back-to-back before hitting a shot. He just took relief from a cart path but dropped on the wrong side of the cement, and then he tapped down a partially detached divot on his line of play before hitting his shot.
What do you do when someone breaches a rule and then breaches another rule as part of their next stroke? It depends on the format, but this scenario is not as egregious as it might seem.
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In match play, the first violation described above results in a loss of hole simply for playing from the wrong place (Rule 14.7a). Taking relief from the path on the wrong side settled that hole in your favor. The tamping down of the divot also would have resulted in a loss-of-hole penalty for violating (Rule 8.1a) had he dropped on the correct side of the path. The point is, he loses the hole and you move on.
In stroke play, breaching two rules before hitting a shot also is not as bad as you might think. A clarification to Rule 1.3c says that even though two penalties were committed, because there was "no intervening event between" playing from the wrong place and tamping down the divot, the player only gets the general penalty of two strokes.
He's lucky, because you might think there should have been a four-shot penalty for that mess. Keep in mind that if a golfer commits two penalties between intervening events, and the penalties for each differ, he or she receives the more severe penalty. Also, multiple penalties would apply if the player breached a rule, completed a stroke and then breached the same rule or another rule.