As I was hitting my putt on the second green, my ball moved. I was in the middle of my stroke, so I played it. Is this a penalty?
Rule #9.1b specifically covers "What to do when ball moves during backswing or stroke." This section says "if the player caused the ball to move, see Rule #9.4b to find out if there is a penalty." I don't think I cause it to move. Certainly not intentionally. But it looks like I get a two stroke penalty for playing the ball from the wrong place. That's pretty harsh.
There was a lot of Ground Under Repair (GUR) at St. Mark's this week. Are you allowed to clean your ball when taking relief from GUR? I wasn't sure, so I didn't.
GUR is considered an "abnormal course condition," and that is covered by Rule #16. Embedded ball is also covered by Rule #16. The "Embedded Ball" portion of the rule (16.2) explicitly says that you can clean the ball, but the "General Area" portion of the rule (16.1) does not. This implies that you can't clean the ball when taking relief from GUR. But carefully reading 16.1b says that "the player may take free relief by dropping the original ball or another ball..." If you can drop a different ball, then you could choose a clean one, so my interpretation is that you can clean your ball in this scenario.
I heard an interpretation that I had never heard today. We were discussing cleaning your ball, and one player indicated that cleaning your ball by wiping away the mud using the putting surface considered testing the surface, and thus is a violation of Rule #13.1e. I was stunned, and I had to look it up.
Turns out that wiping the mud off of your ball on the putting green is an explicit exception for Rule #13.1e, along with whacking another player's ball back to him in conceding a putt. You conceivably could learn something about the break when doing that, but that is (presumably) not the intention.
