lost found ball

[nokids]

This is probably an easy ruling but it happened to me today and I ended up playing two balls until I got a ruling after the round.

Im on a slope and cant see the green and i hit my shot, my f.c. says great shot. i go to find the ball and do not see it after a quick scan (2minutes). So i tell my f.c. that i will go back to hit a provisional ball while he kept looking for my ball. I hit my provisional ball and when i walked up to find it i found both balls. I said i would play my first ball and he sais i could not. I disagreed because i dont think i passed the 5 minute search time.

What say you?

[Kilroy]

Once you move forward from the shot you cannot return to play a provisional. When you hit your second ball from the original place it became the ball in play and you were hitting 3.

[jvincent]

I'll take a stab. Gerry, if I get this right I should get a gold star because I'm doing this from memory.

1. You can't go back to hit a provisional after you go forward to look for the original.

2. Give #1, the second ball would now be the ball in play, hitting 4 from the spot and you should have recorded the score for that ball.

3. I don't think you get penalized for playing the original ball after the second ball since you have advised that you are playing a second under 3-3.

[gbower]

John you are right in that you can't go back and play a provisional. Once the 2nd ball is dropped it is now the ball in play.

[nokids]

Kilroy is right, John is right, gbower is right.

If I knew I couldn't hit a provisional after going forward, I would have spent more time looking for my first ball and might have found it. I was trying to save time by going back to hit a 2nd ball and resuming my search but it doesn't work that way. Triple bogey!!!

[stevek]

John you are right in that you can't go back and play a provisional. Once the 2nd ball is dropped it is now the ball in play.

Hey Gerry, I took a 12 on 11, the hole where my FC found my ball.

Thanks for the ruling!

Thank God the rain came to allow me a means of escaping the last 4 holes.

[gbower]

That was a bummer Steve. We did get the rest of the round in after the rain delay. I didn't even know that your ball was in there and I was helping him look and right away he said it was yours. GRRR. Too bad you hadn't hit your provisional before he found it.

[Wknd_Warrior]

Most of the rules seem to keep one from having a choice of two balls in plsy and picking the best. I can't see what difference it makes here. Maybe the extra time and a fresh look at the terrain by walking up is an advantage that you shouldn't get?

[stevek]

That was a bummer Steve. We did get the rest of the round in after the rain delay. I didn't even know that your ball was in there and I was helping him look and right away he said it was yours. GRRR. Too bad you hadn't hit your provisional before he found it.

I was just lining up when he found it. The ball was hit so deep I thought no way it was going to be found, there wasn't even a audible tree hit that would have given some hope of 'member' bounce.

It's funny, I live around the corner and there wasn't a drop of rain till 8PM when the next front went by. I could barely see the road through the rain until about 500 meters from my door. My wife and I could relax in the hot tub for an hour after leaving.

[orangeTANG]

We played there at 3:50 on Sunday and left my parents place on Dwyer Hill to go to our tee time because it had not rained. 1/2 way up the Corkery hill on March road there was a defined line between rain and no rain. When we got to the course the 10th green of Premiere was underwater. It had definitely been raining a while. When we returned to my parents place my father had said it hadn't rained at all at his place.

We ended up getting 17 holes in of the twilight round without a drop of rain, and decided not to finish 18 because of the thunder/lightning that was coming in.

I guess you just never know until you get there.