I Declared My Ball Lost But My Partner Found It. What Happens?

Here’s the scenario: You’ve been playing nicely in a stroke play tournament and your score is ticking along promisingly.

Then, on a testing par-4, you blast one into the gorse bushes lining the right-hand side of the hole. It’s gone in there deep.

No panic – you have plenty of shots left to play with against your handicap, so you reach into your bag, dig out another ball and state that you are playing a provisional.

The “second serve” is a beauty – straight down the middle and leaving a straightforward shot to the green. You could still save a bogey from there.

As you and the other players in your group are walking off the tee. You say, “that first one is lost. A goner.” You’re happy enough about that as there’s no way you’d be able to take a two-club length lateral drop out of the bushes and the back-in-the-line option is non-existent.

You walk on towards your provisional, readying yourself for your fourth shot. But, looking behind you, one of your partners is rooting about in the gorse bushes.

“Don’t bother,” you shout, “That one’s lost.” ... No reply – they continue looking.

Then after a minute or so, they call to you – “Found it. … You’re not going to like it!”

What happens now? You thought you had declared your first ball lost...

Well, under The Rules of Golf, you cannot actually “declare” a ball to be lost.

A ball is lost if, under Rule 18.2a(1), it is not found in three minutes after a player or their caddie begins to search for it.

If a ball is found before or within that time, it is not lost.

In this instance, as the ball has been found (even though you have chosen not to look for it), and it is within the bounds of the course, it remains the ball in play.

As it’s your original ball, you have four options. Firstly, you could attempt to play it from where it is lying.

Then, the following three options would be under penalty of one shot under the unplayable ball Rule (that's Rule 19).

You could take lateral relief – two club lengths from the spot of the original ball (no closer to the hole).

You could take back-on-the-line relief. – Keeping the spot of the original ball in line with the hole and going back as far as you want.

Or, you could take stroke-and-distance relief and return to the spot from where you played the original ball.

In the imagined scenario you are facing above, it seems you’re not going to like any of those options. No chance to play it or to get out of the bushes with lateral or back-on-the-line relief, so the only one available is to go back to the tee and play again.

You’ve already played a provisional straight down the middle so you’d like to take that… You can’t. Your original ball is the one in play and you must proceed from where it was found.

Your playing partner clearly doesn’t like you very much but they were well within their rights to search for your ball.

You are entitled not to search for your ball and you can ask your playing partners not to bother, but if they choose to do so and find it then you’re going to have to play on from where they locate it.

It happened to Shane Lowry on the 11th hole at Royal Troon on day two of the 2024 Open Championship. Lowry’s second shot headed left out of the thick grass into the gorse bushes lining the left side of the hole, so he played a provisional ball which was struck onto the green.

Following the fine approach with his provisional, Lowry wished to proceed with the provisional ball and attempt a putt for a would-be bogey, however a spectator had already found a ball in the bushes in the area where his original ball may lie. It was his.

He was forced to take a back-on-the-line drop from the original spot, faced a difficult shot and ended with a double bogey.

You do not need to exhaust a three-minute search if you do not wish to find the original ball and to continue play of the hole with your provisional ball. But the provisional ball only becomes the ball in play when you play your next stroke, not when you publicly claim the original is lost or you do not wish to find it.

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