New Rule: Under the new Rules, “water hazards” have been superseded by the expanded concept of “penalty areas”, and Rule 17 provides the same basic options for relief that existed under the previous Rules:
- A penalty area includes both (1) all areas previously defined in the Rules as a water hazard or lateral water hazard and (2) any other areas the Committee chooses to define as penalty areas (with recommended guidelines provided in the Official Guide).
- Penalty areas may therefore include areas such as deserts, jungles, lava rock fields, etc.
- The term “hazard” is no longer used in the Rules.
Reasons for Change:
It has been recognized that requiring areas to contain water seems to be a somewhat arbitrary reason for permitting such relief options.
For reasons such as safety and pace of play, many Committees had previously sought to expand the use of lateral water hazards by marking areas that did not contain water and by marking water hazards as red where that was not specifically contemplated by the Rules.
The broader use of “penalty areas” allows Committees to respond to the wide range of settings in which golf is played by giving relief from areas that present similar obstacles to "water hazards" such as difficulties with finding and playing a ball and similar practical needs about pace of play.
Rule 17.1 Click here - Penalty Areas How to take relief
New Rule: Players continue to drop a ball when taking relief, but the dropping procedure is changed in several ways as detailed in Rule 14.3:
- The focus of the dropping procedure is on a specific “relief area” set by the Rule under which relief is being taken and is either one or two club-lengths from a reference point (and may have certain other limitations).
- The ball needs only to be dropped in and come to rest in the relief area; and there is no re-drop requirement if the dropped ball accidentally hits a person or object after hitting the ground but before coming to rest in the relief area.
- If the dropped ball comes to rest outside the relief area, it is dropped a second time; if it comes to rest outside the relief area after being dropped a second time it is placed where it first touched the ground.
- If the placed ball does not come to rest on that spot after two attempts, the player will then place the ball on the nearest spot (not nearer the hole) where it will come to rest.
Reasons for Change:
The new procedure means there is greater consistency across all relief procedures, making it simpler for players to know where and how to drop a ball:
- The new procedure when dropping with reference to a spot is to drop a ball anywhere in a relief area measured one or two club-lengths from (but not nearer the hole than) that spot.
And finally:
