Late Thursday afternoon, with twilight approaching and turnpike traffic whizzing behind him, Jordan Spieth drove into a ditch. It happened on the par-4 9th hole (his last hole of the day), where Spieth’s tee shot strayed into one of Oakmont’s distinctive hazards.
More than a mile of drainage ditches (or just “ditches,” in blunt local parlance) run along the grounds of this year’s U.S. Open site, coming into play on six holes—the 2nd, 9th, 10th, 12th, 15th and 18th. Although they’re mostly dry, they’re marked as water hazards, delineated with red lines and red stakes.
They are, in other words, unusual features where common guidelines of the game apply. And because other players are bound to find those ditches as the national championship heads into the weekend, we might as well offer a rules refresher.
Under Rule 17.1, when a ball ends up in a red penalty area, the player who hit it has multiple options.
The first is to play it as it lies without penalty. Sounds appealing. But at Oakmont, it’s often not a great way to go as the ditches have been planted with tangled fescue (if a player tries to chop it out but fails and the ball stays in the hazard, all of the options remain available on the next shot). A second option is to take stroke-and-distance relief, playing again from where the previous stroke was made, with a one-stroke penalty. A third possibility is back-on-the-relief. In this case, the player can drop as far back as they want with a one-stroke penalty, keeping the estimated point where the ball crossed into the hazard between the hole and the spot of the drop. The fourth option is to take lateral relief, with a one-stroke penalty, dropping within two-club lengths from the estimated point of entrance, no nearer to the hole.
That’s what Spieth chose to do.
After dropping laterally, he played a nifty 6-iron below the hole, leaving himself a chance to salvage par. But that’s when he faced another distinctive Oakmont feature: a slick, sloping green. Spieth’s putt lipped out.
“That’s not cool,” he said with wry smile.
No. But it was fun to watch.
If you’d like to dig deeper into the Rules of Golf, try the USGA’s online course. Completing it will arm you with the information you need to navigate most situations that might come up during a round, and it’s a great way to prep for the season ahead.
