If you find your ball next to a new planted, unclear tree, can you still get free relief? Guy rules have the answer.
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A course I played planted some new trees recently, but I was not part of them. Can I move my ball so that I do not potentially harm a tree if it is on my way to the hole? —PETER BEMIS, LA CROSSE, WIS.
The Local Rule E-10 model treats new trees as a playless area to protect them from damage, but it is the responsibility of the Committee to approve the rule of saying and deciding which trees are protected.
If the Committee has not done so, nothing in the rules allows you to go fraudulent. That is to say, if you are not willing to risk the potential damage to the trees, you can always declare the ball unbearable and get a penalty relief – and maybe win a prize from the Sierra club!
For more trees related to trees from our guru, read in…
I was playing on our member member tour and hit a strange blow. My ball came to rest after a memorial tree, which was directly between my ball and green. I asked for free relief, reasoning that, as a memorial, the tree was not part of the course model. I was denied and told me that I could have received free relief from the memorial stone. Was it right? —Time Muldoon, Buffalo, NY
That sounds right to fix the boy.
Specific trees can be protected by the local rule by making those areas without play, but such treatment is usually reserved for new, growing trees. If the Committee did not make the memorial tree an area without play, then under the definition of obstacles, the memorial plaque itself is the only immovable obstacle and the abnormal course condition that free relief would allow.
Boy rules also should never tell you, er, get relief IN a memorial tree.
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