[Ty_Webb]

Scenario:

Guy playing in a strokeplay competition gets to a par four hole.

Hits his drive in the trees
Hits a provisional
Goes looking for his first ball in the trees
Finds it and plays it out past his provisional
Picks up his provisional
Gets to the first ball and finds out it's not his
Goes back to look again
Can't find it
Goes back to the tee and hits another

Question is how many shots has he played. I'm not entirely sure as to the answer, but I'm fairly certain it's A LOT.

[IMAGOLFER]

Ty_Webb, on Nov 18 2005, 03:46 PM, said:

Scenario:

Guy playing in a strokeplay competition gets to a par four hole.

Hits his drive in the trees
Hits a provisional
Goes looking for his first ball in the trees
Finds it and plays it out past his provisional
Picks up his provisional
Gets to the first ball and finds out it's not his
Goes back to look again
Can't find it
Goes back to the tee and hits another

Question is how many shots has he played. I'm not entirely sure as to the answer, but I'm fairly certain it's A LOT.

He would have abandoned the provisional ball by picking it up and would not come in to play (even though he hit a wrong ball in belief that it was his original drive). Thus he would have hit 1 off the tee, 2 his second shot, 3 a penalty stroke for hitting a wrong ball, and would be hitting 4 from the tee.

[Ty_Webb]

It's a lot more than that.

He hits his drive in the woods. 1 shot
He plays out (the wrong ball). 2 shot penalty
He loses his ball. 1 shot
He hits his provisional. 1 shot (this counts as a shot because when the ball becomes lost, the provisional becomes the ball in play)
He picks up his provisional (which he shouldn't have done). 1 shot

What he should do at this point is replace his provisional as close as possible to where it lay and play his seventh shot from there. Problem is that he didn't do that and went back to the tee to hit another.

Now I think that failure to replace the ball is another shot and then going back to the tee without declaring your ball unplayable would be in breach of the unplayable ball rule, which I think is another 2 shot penalty. Plus, he's got the stroke and distance thing, although we've already counted the stroke.

Basically, it's at least 8 that he's played and could be as many as 11, but I'm not sure which. I did ask an R&A rules official this question and his answer was perhaps he should go back to the bar and give up.