Tournament leader receives bizarre relief after toddler steps in lie

Play it as it lies, they say.

Unless, of course, a small child brought into question whether you could, in fact, play it as it lies.

That was the bizarre question facing Wyndham Championship 54-hole leader Beau Hossler on Saturday afternoon, shortly after the horn blew in the 18th fairway forcing a stoppage in play for a band of inbound storms.

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As Hossler went through the typical pro golfer’s checklist after the horn blew — mark the ball with a white flag in its position, retrieve it, put your things away, go into the clubhouse — he was greeted with an unexpected visitor. A young girl, no older than two, had stepped over the ropeline and into the field of play, prancing through the grass in the direction of Hossler.

The girl was not a threat to Hossler … or anyone, really. But she was a threat to his golf ball, which nestled safely next to its white flag. As the girl drew nearer to Hossler, she tripped, as young children tend to do, regaining her footing with one large step smack-dab in the middle of his lie.

Hossler knew something rules-adjacent had happened immediately, and when the horn blew again to signify the restart, he acted accordingly. Hossler called over a rules official to alert him of the situation with the girl and see if he might be entitled to move his golf ball on account of it.

“She didn’t step on the ball, I had already picked it up, but she stepped on it,” Hossler told the official in an exchange that CBS’s microphones picked up. “That’s why this tee that I just picked up was all the way in there, because she’d stepped on it.”

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“It looked like she was on this side of the flag from the video we saw,” the rules official countered.

“Look, I’m not saying it’s better or worse, I was just letting you know that that area, after picking up the ball, she was standing on it,” Hossler said. “It was sitting like every other lie, just halfway down.”

After a short back and forth, the official agreed with Hossler’s interpretation, and granted Hossler the chance to move his ball just inches away to a lie that represented what it had been before the toddler stomping.

Hossler took advantage of the relief and hit a tidy approach from 190 yards to about 50 feet, setting up a tidy two-putt for a par and a share of the 54-hole lead.

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Hossler enters Sunday at the Wyndham Championship with more than babysitting duties on the mind. He’s still in pursuit of his first career PGA Tour victory — a feat he’ll get a grade-A chance at accomplishing on Sunday afternoon in North Carolina.

The 31-year-old pro will face a charging field of FedEx Cup playoff hopefuls on Sunday at the Wyndham. If he’s lucky, that group won’t include any more children.