Unplayable lies: remember to identify your ball before you make this claim

Golf Digest, Sept, 2003 by Pete McDaniel

Darren Clarke is a thick-skinned veteran of international golf, but the Irishman's good nature was tested during a rules controversy involving a thinned bunker shot. The situation was complicated by an incorrect ruling.

Clarke was on the leader board in the third round of the Deutsche Bank-SAP Open in May when he hit a tee shot into a greenside bunker at the par-3 16th hole. He bladed his next shot, and it sailed over the green into thick undergrowth.

After finding what he thought was his ball, Clarke declared it unplayable (Rule 28) and proceeded by using one of his three options for this situation. Taking a one-stroke penalty, he returned to the bunker to hit another shot from the spot where his original ball was last played. The other options were to drop within two club-lengths of where the ball came to rest in the brush, no nearer the hole, or to drop behind the point where the ball lay, keeping the point directly between the hole and that spot, with no limit to how far behind the point the ball could be dropped.

From the bunker, Clarke put his fourth shot on the green. But when he marked the ball, he discovered it wasn't his ball and notified rules official John Crawshaw, who ordered the search renewed. When Clarke couldn't find his original ball, Crawshaw told him to play from the bunker for a third time. Clarke did, blasting out to a foot and tapping in for double bogey.

It turns out that Crawshaw's ruling was wrong. The first ball Clarke dropped in the bunker should have been considered in play. It was not necessary to hit a third shot from the bunker. Two decisions (27/17 and 28/14) clarify this point, but it was too late by then. The official's ruling stood.

One note: Had the ball Clarke found and played not been the same type as the one he lost, he would have been assessed a two-shot penalty under the "one-ball rule," a local rule (Appendix I) used on the professional tours. A tour player cannot change the type of ball he uses during a round, but a handicap player can change brands during a typical round.

Clarke eventually finished tied for eighth in the tournament behind winner Padraig Harrington.