Rules Guy: Can you take free relief from a ball resting on broken glass?

The Rules of Golf are tricky! Thankfully, we’ve got the guru. Our Rules Guy knows the book front to back. Got a question? He’s got all the answers.

I hit my drive in the rough, where my ball was resting in the broken glass of a beer bottle. I couldn’t move the glass because the ball would move, but I was afraid that if I played the shot shards would fly up in my face. Ruling? —Steven Pinheiro, Loudonville, N.Y.

It’s a one shot of Dewar’s penalty.

Sorry — couldn’t resist. Wow, there’s rough, and there’s broken-beer-bottle-shards rough. Rule 15.2 provides free relief from movable obstructions, since they’re not meant to be part of the game’s challenge.

Rules

If your ball was touching shards, you move them, and if the ball moves, too, there is no penalty and you just put the ball back where it was. If the ball is at rest on or in the broken bottle, it’s a drop situation and you take one club length’s relief from the spot beneath the bottle. Not knowing this rule once cost a player the British Open. In 1949 at Royal St. George’s, Harry Bradshaw decided to play his ball as it lay — and where it lay was inside a broken beer bottle. He was uninjured when his wedge shot shattered the glass, but his scorecard didn’t get off so lightly, with a double-bogey 6.

Bradshaw wound up tied in regulation with Bobby Locke and lost a 36-hole playoff, after which he surely drowned his sorrows with a glass of beer at the nearest pub.

Need help unriddling the greens at your home course? Pick up a custom Green Book from 8AM Golf affiliate Golf Logix.

Got a question about the Rules? Ask the Rules Guy! Send your queries, confusions and comments to rulesguy@golf.com. We promise he won’t throw the book at you.