Rules Review
Rules of Golf Review: I just played the wrong ball. What do I do now?

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We’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to competitive rust. At last week’s season-opening event on the PGA Tour, Will Zalatoris and Cam Davis found themselves guilty of a surprising—and expensive—rules blunder: playing the wrong ball.
Paired together during Sunday’s final round of The Sentry, Zalatoris mistakenly hit Davis’ ball on the par-5 15th hole at Kapalua’s Plantation Course, then Davis followed suit. Both had to add two strokes to their scores, which is better than what could have happened—getting DQ’d—if they didn’t figure out their mistake in time. But the two extra shots kept Davis from a top-five finish, costing him roughly $300,000.
Ironically, a similar thing happened at the start of the Sentry in 2024 when Justin Rose played Taylor Moore's ball just seven holes into the tournament and season. He also caught the mistake in time to avoid disqualification. And before you think this type of thing only happens to pros when they're drinking mai tais in Maui, in 2022, Mackenzie Hughes got a bad break at the Farmers Insurance Open when a volunteer set a flag down next to a ball in the rough that turned out to be another player's ball. Hughes played it, took a triple after the penalty and ended up missing the cut
There's a reason enlightened players carry a Sharpie in their golf bag. Identifying that the ball you're about to play is actually yours is like Golf 101, right? Yes, but it seems playing the wrong ball happens a lot more frequently than you might expect.
One more for the files: Arguably the worst wrong-ball disaster in recent memory happened to Mark Hensby when he was assessed a 10-stroke penalty—yep 10 strokes—for playing a wrong ball in the 2021 Palmetto Championship.
We could go on, but you get the idea. You're not alone if you've mistakenly played someone else's ball. (We'll get into incidents when a golfer intentionally plays someone else's ball a little later in this article. That happens, too).
So how do you proceed if you accidentally play a wrong ball? Under Rule 6.3c, in match play you lose the hole. In stroke play, it's a two-shot penalty and you must correct the mistake by going back and playing your ball to finish the hole. If your ball is gonzo, proceed under the stroke-and-distance penalty (yes, that means a third extra stroke to your score, sorry!)
This rule is pretty easy to understand, but let's take a slightly deeper look at a few wrong-ball scenarios that often happen. One is when opponents in match play happen to hit each other's golf balls. The way to handle this situation is to assess the loss-of-hole penalty to the player who hit the wrong ball first. If you and your opponent aren't sure who hit first, there is no penalty and you should play out the hole with each other's golf balls.
And to reiterate the stroke-play procedure, you're only hit with a two-stroke penalty for playing a wrong ball no matter how many strokes you take on a given hole with it. However, if you start the next hole with the wrong ball, that’s when you're DQ'd. (FYI: The reason Hensby wasn't DQ'd was because the tournament was using Model Local Rule G-4 allowing for a two-shot penalty on each hole where the player used a wrong ball.)
Oh, and if you're wondering what happens to a golfer who intentionally plays a wrong ball and is caught, well, Rule 1.2 covers it. That player should start walking toward the parking lot.