Relief from a cart path

This weekend I was playing the 5th hole on the North course at Manderley, when the following rules question arose. A friend found his ball lying on the cart path that runs up the right side of the hole. Just to the right of the road is a line of trees and bushes that runs parallel to the road. My friend knew he could drop his ball, without penalty, at the nearest point of relief. Absent the line of trees and bushes, his nearest point of relief was to the right of the path. However, dropping on the right side would have caused him to drop the ball into the bushes. I told him that my recollection of the rules was that, unfair as it may seem, that is where he had to drop since the area was neither a hazard nor out of bounds. Others disagreed and said that, because of these circumstances, he could drop to the right of the roadway.

I just looked at Rule 24-2 and interpretation 24-2b/3. It seems to support my original view. Do I have this right?

I would have to agree with your interpretation as well. Just because you are entitled to a drop does not mean you should always take it.

You are totally correct mike. It's not your (NPR) nicest point of relief it's your nearest point of relief and if your in the crap so be it. I've hit a number of shots of a cart path because my NPR would have been unplayable.

Ditto what the others have said. Your interpretation is correct.

I had one on Saturday where as I was walking up to the ball I was trying to decide what club I was going to hit off the cart path because my NPR could very easily be in 2 foot high weeds. Turned out there was enough room to drop outside of the weeds but not by much.

Further to your event, where is the nearest point decided from? Ball position on cartpath or edge of path, 2 clublengths from there?

I always thought NPR was as long as it wasn't closer to the hole, you could drop within two club lengths.

Fally
aka Scott

The specific procedure is:

1. Determine nearest point of relief, not nearer the hole, and mark that point. Depending on which side of the cart path you are standing on or the ball is on this coudl be on either side of the path. In my case the ball was on the right edge of the path, so my nearest relief was on the right side.

2. Drop within 1 club length of point 1. Note that there is now a semi-circular area (best case) that you can drop in. The proviso of course is that if you take relief, you must take FULL relief which often reduces the legal areas you can drop.

In my case my first drop resulted in my feet still being on the cart path and I had to re-drop. Into a worse lie I might add.

This is covered in Rule 24-2.b

Inyerestingly, if the ball is in the middle of the path, your closest available relief on the right (for a right handed player) would measured by taking your stance with your heels off the path, thus the point should be a couple of feet further to the right where your clubhead hits the ground with that stance. However, the closest available relief on the left of the path does not include the distance taken up by the stance so it would be only inches from the path, and thus closer to the ball's original position than the closest available relief on the right. That would make the NPR the spot on the left. Of course, if the ball were not in the middle of the path, the answer could be different depending on the measurement.

Once the NPR is determined, mark that point, and drop within a clublength.

I'm glad I raised this issue. It has generated some very useful advice. Now if we could only teach people to replace their divots and fix a few ball marks on each green, then we really would have accomplished a lot. But [I know that you aren't supposed to begin a sentence with "but", "and", etc., but I don't care] that is a subject for another thread.

Thanks again.

is this a good diagram of how to take relief....?

http://www.nnwga.org/Services/nearest_point.htm

that diagram sums it up nicely ofr nearest poijnt, many people think nearest is simply the side of the path that the ball is closest too, the diagram makes it clear what is neearest

That's exactly what I was talking about. Thanks for posting that. :thumbsup

root around on that site. there are a couple of others that show how to take relief from a water and lateral hazard and unplayable. very easy to understand when the put it in graphical form like that....

http://www.nnwga.org/Services/basic_rules.htm

I think the USGA website has some animations for some of the rules too.