This is covered by Rule 19. The player is the one who decides whether the ball is unplayable. If your helpful playing partner says “you can play that“ you may tell them in no uncertain terms to go away!
General area or Putting green (=everywhere except penalty areas and bunkers) There are 3 relief options. Penalty of one stroke.
1. Stroke and distance relief you can do this even if you don’t find the ball. You play your next shot from where you played the last one.
● If you have pulled your shot into a massive bit of garbage and you absolutely don’t want to find it you may take this option
● If you are going to look just in case or because you don’t want to lose your brand new Pro V1 don’t do this – hit a provisional instead: but note if you do find the first one you have to go with the ball in the horrible position, you can’t just switch to the lovely provisional that you played with loud cries of “why didn’t I do that the first time?”
Imagine you have found the offending ball – you now have 2 options:
Bunkers
2. Back in line relief You go back in a straight line between where the ball landed and the pin. As far back as you like but not nearer the hole. You may not want to do this if the line is further into the wilderness or if the best dropping place is 300 yards away.
3. Lateral relief the ball can be dropped within 2 club lengths but not nearer the hole. If you don’t like the look of the area within 2 club lengths you can revert to one of the other 2 options. If the ball is in a horrible position you can go with all 3 of the options above, but Options 2 and 3 must be still in the bunker. If you are a particularly awful bunker player you may wish to go with:
4: Back of line relief outside the bunker = 2 penalty strokes.
TOP TIP: stay on the fairway!! https://www.randa.org/players-rule-finder
