Rule 18: Ball is Moved
- If you or your partner touches or moves your ball on purpose or accidentally, add a penalty stroke to your score and replace the ball. If you don’t replace it, add two penalty strokes.
- If someone or something else moves your ball there is no penalty, but you must replace it.
- If the ball is moved by wind or water, you must play it as it lies.
- If the ball moves once you have addressed the ball, add a penalty stroke and replace the ball.
- If your ball hits you, your partner, your caddie, or your equipment you are penalized one stroke and you must play your ball as it lies.
- In match play, if your ball hits your opponent, his caddie, or his equipment, there is no penalty; you may play the ball as it lies or replay the shot.
- In stroke play, if your ball hits a fellow competitor, caddie, his equipment or anything else there is no penalty and the ball is played as it lies.
- If your ball hits another ball and moves it, you must play your ball as it lies. The owner of the other ball must replace it. If your ball is on the green when you play and the ball that your ball hits is also on the green, you are penalized two strokes in stroke play. Otherwise, there is no penalty.
- If you are going to lift your ball under a Rule and the Rule requires that the ball be replaced, you must put a ball-marker by the ball before you lift it.
- When you drop a ball, stand erect and hold your arm out straight when dropping it.
- If a dropped ball hits the ground and rolls into a hazard, out of a hazard, comes to rest more than two club-lengths from where it first struck a part of the course, nearer the hole or, if you are dropping away from an immovable obstruction or ground under repair, etc., back where the obstruction or ground under repair still interferes with your stance or swing, you must re-drop. If the same thing happens when you re-drop, you must place the ball where it struck the ground when it was re-dropped.
- If you play a ball from a wrong place, you lose the hole in match play, or two penalty strokes in stroke play.
- You may clean your ball when you lift it, with a few exceptions: when you are checking if it is unfit for play, identifying it, or if it interferes with another player’s play.
- If another ball interferes with your swing or is on your line of play, you may ask the owner of the ball to lift it.
- If your ball is near the hole and might assist another player, you may lift your ball.
