Rules of Golf Review: My ball is on the edge of a pond with no penalty-area markings. Is it in or out?
Donald Miralle
Nobody's perfect. That includes the golf-course staffers who are charged with marking boundaries. There are times when you'll encounter a lake, pond, river, ditch or other open water on a course that has no red or yellow stakes or lines marking it. There are other times when you'll come to a pond and some of the stakes are missing, are poorly aligned, or a part of that body of water appears to be outside the penalty area.
Richard Heathcote
What do you do when you hit a ball on the bank of unmarked penalty area? What do you do when you hit a ball in the middle of an unmarked penalty area? What do you do when your ball is sitting in a dry creekbed or ditch? Let's answer all three with a review of what is and what isn't a penalty area.
First, the bad news: A penalty area is still a penalty area even if someone forgot to mark its boundaries. In other words, if you plunk one in a lake and don't see any stakes or lines, you still have to treat your ball as if it's in a penalty area. Boo. Just remember that when a penalty area isn't marked, you always treat it as a red penalty area. That means, among your options for playing on, you can take lateral relief (typically the best option) after accepting a penalty stroke. You might wonder how you determine where to measure your relief area from. Fortunately, the Rules of Golf has you covered in its definition of a penalty area.
"When the edge of a body of water is not defined by the Committee, the edge of that penalty area is defined by its natural boundaries [that is, where the ground slopes down to form the depression that can hold the water]."
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Translated, if your ball is on the edge of a pond—as is the case in the headline of this article—it's likely that it's in the penalty area. Why? Picture in your mind where the golf-course staff would insert stakes or paint lines on the ground. Also, remember that for your ball to be considered in the penalty area, all it takes is the smallest part of the ball to be touching the boundary. This might seem like a gray area up for interpretation, but it's really not. Now, if your ball were a full ball-length in the grass outside the edge of the body of water, then you could make a case that it's in the general area of the course. Taking this a step further, your ball is definitely in the penalty area if it's on the muddy bank of a body water that has lost some of its depth because of a drought, etc.
Getting back to how to proceed once you've accepted your fate, turn to Rule 1.3b(2), which says a player's "reasonable judgment" comes into play. If you want to take lateral relief under penalty of one stroke, you do that by identifying the spot where your ball last crossed the estimated margin of the penalty area. You then have two clublengths to take a drop, no closer to the hole, and play on.
Now here's where things can get a little interesting. Say you hit a shot in what seems like a penalty area but it has no water. Let's say there's some kind of open water on the course or a drainage ditch that is usually bone dry. If your ball lands in one, there might be a chance that it's simply a part of the general area of the course. Check with the course staff or tournament committee and see if they have deemed it part of general area. There might even be a note about it on the back of the scorecard. If this area is typically dry, and perhaps only seasonally carries water, courses are allowed to change this area's status from a penalty situation to a no-penalty situation.
Even if it were treated as a penalty area, keep in mind you can climb down into the ditch and try to hit out of it with no penalty.