MLR E-5 Question - What to do if ball lost "in the fairway"?

[Augster]

31 minutes ago, Schulzmc said:

Kind of interesting to give an example of a ball being lost in the fairway and then saying it is silly to insist it happened. I would presume something equally as unique (small gopher hole? unseen irrigation access?) happened to the OP. 

ONE time in, what, along with watching others etc., 18,000+ rounds? It doesn’t happen is all I’m saying. 
 

If the OP was talking about leaf covered fairways, then yes, it’s possible. But it’s July. And that would be covered by MLR F-14 if they had that large a problem with scattered leaves in the fairway. If they chose to enact it, which they should, if they have so many leaves they are losing balls in the fairway. 

[rogolf]

48 minutes ago, betarhoalphadelta said:

 

You say it's silly after you spend a paragraph explaining how it literally happened to you? I recognize it's a very rare situation. But it happened to me, and so I thought it would be a good discussion here. In your case you reteed. How would you have proceeded if your group was playing under MLR E-5?

 

Ok, so let's say you're right. I can't estimate a point in the fairway for the BRP. And I must estimate a point in the rough (or the stream bed, because I don't know why I'd eliminate the right side considering we're in "crazy bounce" territory). And the estimate will be difficult, because the search area for the ball included both the rough and the stream bed and no ball was found.

 

So... How do I do this? How do I estimate a point that clearly has no relationship to the last known trajectory of the ball, and must have resulted in a crazy bounce? I certainly did not see a crazy bounce. I did not see anything in the area that it would have been likely to bounce off of. So I have to estimate a crazy bounce that I didn't see, that I don't know what direction it bounced, and I don't know how far it bounced. This "estimate" sounds a lot like "make something up since clearly it CAN'T be in the fairway."

You did say that you hit a "draw".  If you're right-handed that means heading left, and draws usually bounce left.

[betarhoalphadelta]

4 minutes ago, rogolf said:

You did say that you hit a "draw".  If you're right-handed that means heading left, and draws usually bounce left.

 

True. But I also said it started right of center and was returning to center. I would submit the odds are higher it's left than right, but if you were there, you'd know it would not have naturally curved far enough to be in the left rough. It would require it hitting something hard and making a big deviation in its path to bounce far enough to be in the left rough. 

 

Either way, I have sent the question to the USGA and I'll see what they say. 

[WilliePPQ]

Helpful discussion and good points made all around. However only seems to happen to me when I hit the "best drive of the round"! Unfortunately, in wet weather during spring and fall golf, a ball burying itself into the soft fairway turf is not that unusual at least in this part of the world. It's happened to myself and other players with the only possible explanation being that it's below ground level, can't be seen to be extracted. All part of why I keep hanging around this game that tests me so completely!

[betarhoalphadelta]

I will clarify since the embedded ball scenario has been brought up by multiple people... While I posted this in July, I don't remember exactly what month this round this was as it was a couple years ago. That said, I know that it absolutely was NOT soft/wet conditions. When conditions are soft and wet in the winter, that's when the riverbed actually has water in it, and it was dry as a bone.

 

The likelihood of the ball plugging would have been very, very low on that day. 

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

The USGA got back to me. I sent them this for full disclosure:

 

Quote

 

Hello!

 

This is a bit of an odd occurrence and rules question, but it came up for me a couple of years ago and I was wondering the correct way to apply MLR E-5. 

 

17th hole at a local course that I know. Blind landing area, but it's a wide, flat, fairway. To the left of the fairway is light rough, i.e. "can see your ball from 50 yards" rough, and then a steep upward slope that will keep any ball headed left from climbing. To the right of the fairway is a "river", which during most of the year, including this round, is just a dry stream bed with pea gravel. Again, you should EASILY be able to see a ball in the gravel, especially since I play a bright yellow ball. 

 

I hit a gorgeous baby draw off the tee starting just right of center and returning to center. Get out there after everyone has hit and... No ball. Not in the fairway. Not in the left rough. Not in the gravel. Can't see literally anything in the fairway it would have caromed off to go there anyway. We look and look, and it's a lost ball. I personally think that it was either moved by an outside influence or entered a dimensional rift into an alternate universe, but as you can imagine, I don't have KVC of either. So it's lost. 

 

But literally myself and my 3 playing partners can't imagine that it was lost anywhere BUT the fairway. 

 

So what is my ball reference point, my fairway reference point, and what is my MLR E-5 relief area? 

 

I would think that my ball reference point would be the location in the fairway that I would have expected the ball to come to rest. By definition the fairway reference point is the fairway point closest to the ball reference point. Since the ball reference point is in the fairway, I would think that the fairway reference point would be the exact same place (as opposed to the edge of the fairway, which is clearly a point in the fairway farther away from the ball reference point). And then my relief area would be a wedge described by drawing lines backward from the hole through the points two club lengths on either side of the point which happens to be both ball reference and fairway reference points. 

 

So my relief area is only four club lengths wide at the location of the ball reference point in the fairway, and getting slowly wider in a wedge moving away from the hole from there, as long as it is in the general area. 

 

Thank you for your time!

 

 

Their email response says that is for my personal use only and I cannot post it publicly, so I won't cut and paste. However they confirmed that my interpretation of the BRP/FRP is correct that they are coincident in the fairway, and that the relief area is as I described. 

[antip]

39 minutes ago, betarhoalphadelta said:

The USGA got back to me. I sent them this for full disclosure:

 

 

Their email response says that is for my personal use only and I cannot post it publicly, so I won't cut and paste. However they confirmed that my interpretation of the BRP/FRP is correct that they are coincident in the fairway, and that the relief area is as I described. 

Thank you for providing this feedback.

I think it is a better answer than that provided in 2020, for the reasons I touched on earlier - it was not consistent with the precise wording of E-5 even though it provided a pragmatic approach that provided a visual answer somewhat similar to the lost on the course off the fairway case. It also means the relief area does not take up so much real estate.

And as the previous answer was one agreed on both sides of the ditch, I would assume this new answer, likewise, reflects discussion and agreement. Rulings do evolve occasionally. 

[Colin L]

13 hours ago, iacas said:

I’ve seen lost balls in fairways that plug, too.

Indeed, and as a late additional thought,  a ball known or virtually certain to be lost in an abnormal course condition such as temporary water on the fairway.  A different relief procedure, of course,, but a ball lost on the fairway nonetheless.  

 

@Augster  It's seldom wise to suggest that something will never happen when talking about golf.  Better to work on the assumption that if it could conceivably happen, it will happen sometime, somewhere.

[Mr. Bean]

4 hours ago, Colin L said:

@Augster  It's seldom wise to suggest that something will never happen when talking about golf.  Better to work on the assumption that if it could conceivably happen, it will happen sometime, somewhere.

 

That is SO true!

 

In a competition I once witnessed a case where a player tried to chip her ball from the undervegetation but instead of succeeding in getting her ball onto the fairway she managed to push her ball into the ground and that ball ricocheted ANOTHER ball straight up from the ground!! The player did not first notice that but thought the "new" ball was her ball and chipped that onto the fairway. Later her ball was found embedded in the ground.

 

Now how likely is THAT?