Torrential rainfall put in the days of competition full week prior to the 2025 PGA Champion.
Soft ailments are actually normally right stuff of desires for the planet’s greatest gamers, yet wet territory may likewise carry problems when what is actually below is actually subjected.
Mud balls, we’re talking about. The dreaded mud balls.
“We’re pro golfers, we’re not professional mud readers,” Xander Schauffele said at the 2024 PGA Championship.
“I was praying that the mud on my ball wasn’t going to do something, and I felt like I made a really nice pass at it, just the same pass I’ve been making on the last six holes, leading all the way back to the 4-iron I hit on 14 there or 13, and I look up and my ball’s just duck-hooking across the property.
“It was just a mud ball in the middle of the fairway. So that pisses me off, for sure.”
Evidently, this isn’t the first time this issue has arisen at the PGA Championship. The last time preferred lies were implemented at a major was at this event in 2016, and as round one of the 2025 edition at Quail Hollow Golf Club got underway, it became clear why whispers suggested preferred lies could be used again.
Golf rules: Dirt on ball issue rears its head at the PGA again
On the eve of the Quail Hollow tournament, PGA officials said: “We do not plan to play preferred lies. The playing surfaces are outstanding and are drying by the hour.”
This is in contrast to the standard protocols of regular PGA Tour events, where ‘lift, clean and place’ can often be in operation and – had the PGA of America allowed it – the Rules of Golf actually give them a couple of options.
They wouldn’t have necessarily had to implement preferred lies, for a start. They could have chosen the aforementioned Model Local Rule E-2 instead, which allows players to mark, lift, clean and replace the ball on the same spot.
That rule, designed for when ground conditions might cause dirt to stick to the ball, can be used throughout the general area. That also means the rough.
Players have to mark the spot of the ball before picking it up and if they don’t do that – or replace it on its original spot – they get a penalty. It’s one shot for certainly not marking and that can grow to two if they play from a wrong place.
Preferred lies, which you will all be familiar with if you’ve played any kind of winter golf, allows players to lift their ball and replace it in a specified area – usually about six inches. It can apply when a ball is in a part of general area cut to fairway height or less.
Mud on ball golf rule: When can you clean your golf ball?
But if these Local Rules aren’t in play, it does beg the wider question – “when can you clean your ball, and when shouldn’t you?”
Most of you will already know that, under Rule 14.1c – Cleaning Lifted Ball, you can always clean a ball lifted from the putting green.
You can also always clean a ball lifted from anywhere else except in four situations:
- To see if it’s cut or cracked (Don’t clean it)
- To identify it (You are allowed to clean it only as needed to identify it)
- When the ball interferes with play (Don’t clean it)
- To see if it lies in a condition where relief is allowed (Don’t clean it, unless you then take relief under a Rule)
If you clean a ball when you’re not allowed to do so, you’re going to pick up a penalty shot.
There’s another potential sting in the tail.
Think about this for a minute. You’ve lifted your ball and it’s one of those exceptions where cleaning is not allowed. So what constitutes cleaning? Could you inadvertently do it, even if it was unintentional?
A clarification to Rule 14.1c spells it out quite nicely: Player Must Be Careful When Lifted Ball May Not Be Cleaned.
Two examples given reveal the potential problems and may give some of you a bit of a wake up call.
The first describes how a player lifts a ball that has grass or debris attached to it and throws it to a caddie, who catches the ball in a towel. Because it’s likely that, in that action, some of the grass or debris has been removed, the ball is classed as being cleaned.
But the second example is the one that might really have caught some of you out. “If the player places that ball in their pocket or drops it onto the ground, these acts could result in some of the grass or other debris being removed from that ball, meaning that it has been cleaned.”
It’s why, on tour, you’ll see players sometimes holding a ball as if it’s diseased.
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