Sending up a flag

Knowing the rules of the flagstick can save your score

Dear North Shore Golf:
The rules of golf drive me crazy! I try to follow them as closely as I can, but sometimes they just don’t make sense.
Last week my buddy and I were playing a stroke-play match. I was one stroke ahead and we were on the green of the 16th hole, which is a par-3. My friend walked up to the flagstick, pulled it out and placed it on the green, directly behind the hole. He then went behind his ball to putt.
As he was getting ready to make his stroke, it occurred to me that he placed the pin too close to the hole and that if he hit his ball too hard it might hit the stick. I didn’t want to say anything because he was literally in his backswing. Sure enough, he crushed his putt. As the ball began to sail past the hole and towards the stick, I alertly, or so I thought, leaned over and picked up the pin. His ball kept going down the green and off onto the fringe. We both agreed that this was the proper thing to do since if I hadn’t picked it up, the ball would have hit the pin and stopped about three feet from the hole.
My friend went on to double-bogey and I parred the hole, giving me a commanding lead with two holes to play. When we got to the next tee, however, the group in front of us was just finishing teeing off. One of them said that they saw what happened to us on the green and that he didn’t want to butt in, but that I should have been penalized two strokes for, as he put it, “influencing the movement of a player’s ball while it was in motion.”
He seemed pretty certain that this was the rule and to prove it, he pulled out a rule book and showed me the rule.
Even though I saw it in black and white, I still don’t believe it. Can you explain this ludicrous rule to me?
- G.P. Peabody, Mass.

North Shore Golf asked Jim Hilton, the head pro at Ould Newbury Golf Club, for clarification

Dear G. P.

The game of golf is played under the USGA rules of golf. The rules are there to make the game fair and equitable for all competitors. While a lot of rules will help you if you know them, there are many that can penalize you if you don’t.

While I commend you on your attempt at fairness and friendship, Rule 1-2, Exerting Influence on Ball, states that “a player or caddie must not take any action to influence the position or the movement of a ball.” Therefore, when you picked up the flag stick, you were in breach of Rule 1-2. In match play the penalty is loss of the hole. In stroke play, which is what you were playing, the penalty is two strokes, so instead of being up three strokes on your friend going into the 17th, you would have been just one stroke ahead.

If you had known the rules and let your partner’s ball hit the flagstick, the two-stroke penalty would have been on him and he would have been able to play his ball from where it landed.

I suggest all golfers carry a USGA rules book and, from time to time, actually read it. Knowing the rules can save you strokes. Not knowing them, as in this case, can cost you, even though they sometimes seem unfair. Good golfing to you in the future!