Rules Guy: When playing lift, clean and place, can you use your club to roll the ball around?

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.

During a tournament with lift, clean and place in effect, a competitor kept placing his ball using the “hockey method” — i.e., rolling the ball around with his club until it was sitting ideally. I told him this was wrong but couldn’t cite specifics, and he’s still doing it months later. What’s the rule, and what’s the penalty? —Gary, via email

Gary, did you consider just pulling the guy’s golf shirt over his head and pummeling him? (Hockey humor!)

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Your competitor is living in the past. Prior to 2019, his method wouldn’t have been an issue, but since then when the Rules require you to place a ball they require you to use the procedures for replacing. That means you need to set the ball down by hand (emphasis ours) and let it go — see Definition of Replace and Rule 14.2.

It would cost one penalty stroke each time for getting the ball on the right spot but in the wrong way. The Model Local Rule for “Lift, Clean and Place,” a.k.a. “Preferred Lies,” is E-3, and it specifies when placing you use the procedures for replacing just as we see in the rest of the Rule book. There is no mention of two minutes in the penalty box.

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For more placement guidance from our guru, read on …

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When you can take relief from near the putting surface, do you place the ball or drop from knee height? More generally, on what occasions do you place rather than drop? —Jesse Trapp, via email

Jesse, remember the old advice you learned in school in case of fire, “stop, drop and roll”? This really has nothing to do with that — it just popped into our head.

Anyway, other than Preferred Lies (Model Local Rule E-3), you would place a ball when taking free relief for interference by an abnormal course condition when the ball was originally on the putting green — even if the nearest point of complete relief is off the putting green (see Rule 16.1d).

You would also end up placing, per Rule 14.3d, if two drops in the correct relief area in the general area roll outside that relief area. Drop, drop and place!

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