Doh! Picked Up Your Ball By Accident? Here's What You Need To Do

The first thing to stress here is that a number of golfers do perhaps believe that there is a difference between accidental or deliberate movement of your own ball, which will determine whether or not a penalty applies. But generally, the Rules of Golf make no such differentiation.

Yes, there are a number of Exceptions now that do make that differentiation. Perhaps the main ones to remember are that there is now no penalty if you accidentally move your ball (or ball-marker) on the putting green, perhaps on a practice stroke or by dropping your ball-marker on your ball (or vice versa).

And there is now, thankfully, no penalty if you accidentally move your own ball while searching for it. In both scenarios, you must remember to replace the ball in its original location before playing on, estimating the spot to the best of your ability if you can’t be 100% sure.

But the underlying default position in the Rules of Golf is that if you cause your ball at rest to move via any means, there is a penalty stroke under Rule 9.4b and, again, you must replace the ball in its original spot before playing on. Accidentally – or perhaps absent-mindedly – picking your ball up would not make you exempt from the penalty.

Indeed, even on the putting green, absent-mindedly picking your ball up without first marking its position wouldn’t constitute ‘accidental’ movement and there would be a penalty stroke under Rule 14.1a for lifting your ball from the putting green without first marking its spot. Jon Rahm made this very mistake in the 2020 BMW Championship and was penalised.

If someone else picks up your ball (or plays it), whether accidentally or not, it is, of course, a different story as the Rules would not want to penalise you in such scenarios over which you have no control.

It must be ‘known or virtually certain’ that someone has picked up your ball or played it (virtually certain means 95% certainty that it happened) and, if that is the case, you simply replace either your original ball or another one (if some scallywag has made off with it!) at the spot where it was originally lying and play on penalty-free, estimating the spot to the best of your ability if you can’t be 100% certain where it was (quite likely if the action has perhaps unfolded a couple of hundred yards away).