Rules Guy: Can you take free relief from newly planted but unstaked trees?
If you find your ball near a freshly planted, unstaked young tree, can you still take free relief? Rules Guy has the answer.
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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.
A course I play planted several young trees recently but didn’t stake around them. Can I move my ball so as not to potentially damage a tree if it’s in my path to the hole? —Peter Bemis, La Crosse, Wis.
Model Local Rule E-10 treats young trees as no-play zones to protect them from damage, but it is the responsibility of the Committee to enact said rule and decide which trees are protected.
If the Committee hasn’t done so, nothing in the rules allows you to go rogue. That said, if you are unwilling to risk potential tree damage, you could always declare the ball unplayable and take penalty relief — and maybe win an award from the Sierra Club!
For more tree-related guidance from our guru, read on …
I was playing in our member-member tournament and hit a wayward shot. My ball came to rest behind a memorial tree, which was directly between my ball and the green. I asked for free relief, reasoning that, as a memorial, the tree wasn’t part of the course design. I was denied and told I could only have gotten free relief from the adjacent memorial stone. Was that right? —Tim Muldoon, Buffalo, N.Y.
It sounds right to Rules Guy.
Specific trees can be protected by Local Rule by making them no-play zones, but such treatment is typically reserved for young, growing trees. If the committee didn’t make the memorial tree a no-play zone, then under the Definition of Obstruction the memorial plaque itself is the only immovable obstruction and abnormal course condition that free relief would allow for.
Rules Guy also needn’t tell you never to, er, take relief on a memorial tree.
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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.
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