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My name is Nick Doran, and I am the former president of the UCSD Casual Golf Club.

I am going to post rules decisions as I encounter them on the golf course. I am pretty sure that I will be able to come up with at least one rule nugget for each round that I play.

Sunday, February 2, 2020

2/2/2020 - Sycuan Willow Glen

Anyone who has seen Caddyshack probably knows that free relief is allowed from a whole made by a burrowing animal.  But Caddyshack came out in 1980.  Are the new rules different?

From what I have read, yes, the 2019 rules are different, and the old rules are far more entertaining.

Under current rule #16, an animal hole is considered an abnormal course condition, and the player is entitled to free relief.  An animal hole is defined as any hole dug by an animal, along with any area damaged by the animal digging the hole.  You get one club-length from the nearest point of relief, no closer to the hole.

My ball had rolled up to the base of a tree, and was in what I was pretty sure was a hole made by a burrowing animal.  I had a vague recollection of old Decision 25-1b/20, which says that if the stroke was clearly impracticable for a different reason (the tree), then no relief is granted.  I think I could have played it (though not easily) if it wasn't in the animal hole.  But old Decision 25-1b/3 clearly indicates that if relied that you are entitled to improves your line of play, then that is the players' good fortune.

Since I wasn't certain, I just took the ball out of the hole and played it more or less with the tree still in my way.  My interpretation is that I could have taken a full club-length of relief and given myself a straight shot at the green.

Some of my favorites from the old Decisions on the Rules of Golf:
23/3 - A half-eaten pear is a loose impediment
23/4 - So is a banana peel
23/5 - An ant hill is a loose impediment (insects are different than burrowing animals)
23/6.5 - A live snake is an outside agency.  A dead snake is both an outside agency and a loose impediment.
23/10 - A ball is embedded in an orange lying under an orange tree.  What is the ruling?  The player must play the ball as it lies or deem it unplayable.  Since the orange was adhering to the ball, it was not a loose impediment.
25/6 - Saliva may be considered an abnormal ground condition, or a loose impediment.
25/19.5 - The player is not allowed relief from the footprint of a burrowing animal (again, these are the old rules).

And I could have sworn that I once read that a player is not entitled to relief from a hole dug by a dog because a dog is not a burrowing animal.

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