Rule 7: Finding Your Ball: Searching, Seeing and Identifying
What this is about
Rule 7 covers searching for your ball and identifying it. You may take reasonable actions to find it, but no more than that.
What you need to do
- You have three minutes of search time, from the moment you start looking.
- You may carefully move aside grass, branches, and sand to find or see your ball.
- Does your ball move while searching? No penalty. Replace it on its original spot.
- Not sure it's your ball? Mark the spot first, lift it, and look. Cleaning is only allowed as much as needed to identify it.
- Lift it without marking, or clean it more than allowed, and that costs one penalty stroke.
- Go beyond what's reasonable and improve your lie or swing space as a result, and the general penalty of two penalty strokes applies (Rule 8.1a).
Common mistake
Searching so enthusiastically that you push aside branches that were in your swing. That goes beyond searching and costs you a penalty.
Example
Your ball lies in the bushes. You bend branches aside to look and find a ball. You place a tee down as a marker, lift it, and recognize your identifying mark. Then you put it back exactly where it was.
Practise this rule with real exam questions in the free app.
7.1 How to correctly search for your ball
7.1a You may take reasonable actions to find and identify your ball
You may search reasonably: pushing or bending aside grass, bushes, and branches, and moving sand and water. If something breaks as a result of a normal search, there's no penalty, even if your lie improves because of it. Go beyond what's reasonable and you get the general penalty (Rule 8.1a). You have three minutes of search time (Rule 18.2).
7.1b What to do when sand affecting the lie of your ball is moved
If you move sand while searching that affects the lie of your ball, you must restore that lie as best you can. If your ball was covered by sand, you may leave a small part of it visible. Playing without restoring the lie is the general penalty.
7.2 How to identify a ball
You may identify your ball in any way that gives certainty: you see it come to rest, you recognize your own marking, or you find a ball with the same brand, model, number and appearance in the expected spot. If an identical ball is also lying there and you don't know which one is yours, that doesn't count. If you can't identify your ball, it's lost.
7.3 Lifting a ball for identification
If you can't identify a ball just by looking at it, you may lift it. First mark the spot, and don't clean the ball beyond what's needed to identify it (on the putting green, you may always clean it). Then replace it on its original spot. Getting this wrong costs one penalty stroke.
7.4 Ball accidentally moved while searching for or trying to identify it
If your ball accidentally moves while you, your opponent, or someone else is searching for it or trying to identify it, there's no penalty. Replace it on its original spot; if you don't know exactly where that was, estimate it. If you moved the ball before the search began, that's one penalty stroke (Rule 9.4b).