A question on wording.

[bkuehn1952]

Do we all agree that one does not always have to see the outside agency move or take the ball as long as there is no reasonable alternative explanation?

A ball at rest on a flat portion of the 17th green at TPC Sawgrass is missing after one uses the port-a-john.  Lost ball or moved by an outside agency?

[Golfingdad]

Do we all agree that one does not always have to see the outside agency move or take the ball as long as there is no reasonable alternative explanation?

A ball at rest on a flat portion of the 17th green at TPC Sawgrass is missing after one uses the port-a-john.  Lost ball or moved by an outside agency?

Oh, I know the answer to that one! ...

[wadesworld]

Do we all agree that one does not always have to see the outside agency move or take the ball as long as there is no reasonable alternative explanation?

A ball at rest on a flat portion of the 17th green at TPC Sawgrass is missing after one uses the port-a-john.  Lost ball or moved by an outside agency?

Different scenario.  There is a reasonable possible explanation in that case.  The ball, through gravity or wind may have rolled off the green and into the water.  You do mention flat part, so I'd have to see just how flat to determine if rolling off was impossible and outside agency was the only possible explanation.

In the OP scenario, a ball in view at rest in the fairway with no extraordinary factors (super-high wind, leaves everywhere, etc), then the only possible explanation for the ball being gone is outside agency.  This is assuming there's also not a factor like "the ball was perched on top of a steep hill at the top of a VERY closely mown fairway and had the ball rolled down the hill, there was long grass at the bottom that could have hidden a ball."

We're taking at face value the OP's statement that he saw the ball, the lie was ordinary and there were no extraordinary factors.

But yeah, I've seen that bird one. :)

[bkuehn1952]

So we all agree that actually seeing the outside agency take the ball is not required.  We can achieve "virtual certainty" by looking at all the relevant factors that might make a ball disappear.  In the absence of some other explanation (rolled down a slope, wind blew it, a loose impediment or obstruction is hiding it, conditions are present for a plugged ball, etc...) we achieve "virtual certainty" by applying the one remaining reasonable explanation, an outside agency took the ball.

Frankly, I would require a very high standard in a tournament setting to allow someone to use this approach.  A person other than the player would have to see the ball land in the fairway, come to rest there, be near an identifiable landmark and be visible to a casual observer.  Then, if while we were going forward we were out of sight of the ball for a reasonable amount of time, and upon arrival the ball was gone and there was no other reasonable explanation, he gets a free drop in my book.

Start adding other elements (slope, debris, wet fairway, might have sunk into the rough, etc...) it doesn't pass my test and he better play two balls until he can get a ruling.

[Rulesman]

Referees will certainly apply a tough standard.

[drifterdon]

So today I played the same course and explained this same scenario to the club pro.

He agreed with @Rulesman and stated even though it may not seem fair, this should be treated as a lost ball.

So there I have it.

[drifterdon]

Now to add some humor to this thread, while golfing today, I met another older gent on the 10th and we decided to play together. Just after I hit my drive another guy drove up and asked if he could join us since he was under a time constraint because he had to go to work. We agreed  and off we all went. This young guy could hit the ball a mile but not one went where he wanted it to go. You could actually hear the wind go out of him when he swung his driver. Anyways up on the 11th green I noticed he also had an e-6 yellow Bridgestone sitting on the shelf in the cart. We all three had carts because of a GolfNow hot deal.

Anyway, I asked him how he like the e-6 balls and he said he just plays balls he has found, He was proud that he never bought any as of yet. I told him this is the ball I play and he said here have it, I found it anyways. This ball had my black lines on it. Since I lost 2 balls last week I didn't think much about it, I should have asked him exactly where he found it but didn't think of it. So now I am wondering Is this my mysterious missing ball?  What a twist. Anyway today's a great day for golf.

[wadesworld]

So today I played the same course and explained this same scenario to the club pro.

He agreed with @Rulesman and stated even though it may not seem fair, this should be treated as a lost ball.

So there I have it.

Club pros are not the end-all-be-all when it comes to the Rules.  In fact, some of them have embarrassingly bad knowledge.  Not saying that's the case with that guy, but just a warning to not always accept their answer just because they're the "head pro."

With that said, I think a valid argument can be made for either side.  In a tournament, it would likely come down to the decision of the official (or head official if they called for help).

[ColinL]

Just to throw in a comment about how reliable believing you saw your ball at rest after your shot is as evidence that an OA must have moved it while you were out of sight.  How often have you seen a "ball" from a distance (and not necessarily that great a distance) only to find  when you get closer that it wasn't  a ball after all?

[Rulesman]

A snobbish teacher of English was sitting in an Atlanta airport coffee shop waiting for her flight back to Connecticut, when a friendly Southern belle sat down next to her.

‘Where y’all goin’ to?’ asked the Southern belle.

Turning her nose in the air, the snob replied ‘I don’t answer people who end their sentences with prepositions’.

The Southern belle thought a moment, and tried again. ‘Where y’all goin’ to, bitch?’

The word ‘preposition’ ultimately derives from Latin prae ‘before’ and ponere ’to place’. In Latin grammar, the rule is that a preposition should always precede the prepositional object that it is linked with: it is never placed after it. According to a number of authorities, it was the dramatist John Dryden in 1672 who was the first person to criticize a piece of English writing (by Ben Jonson ) for placing a preposition at the end of a clause instead of before the noun or pronoun to which it was linked.

This prohibition was taken up by grammarians and teachers in the next two centuries and became very tenacious. English is not Latin, however, and contemporary authorities do not try to shoehorn it into the Latin model.  Nevertheless, many people are still taught that ending a sentence or clause with a preposition should be avoided.

There are times when it would be rather awkward to organize a sentence in a way that would avoid doing this, for example:

The dress had not even been paid for .

X Paid for the dress had not even been.

√ They must be convinced o f the commitment they are taking on .

X Of the commitment they are taking on they must be convinced.

[ColinL]

How odd.  My earlier would-be  posting on the same subject hasn't  appeared.  It was on the same lines as Rulesman's piece above.   The insistence that it is wrong to end a sentence with a preposition has been artificially imposed on English  when the reality of  language use over centuries has not supported the notion.  In many instances, to avoid doing so would result in an awkward and needlessly convoluted construction.

@ Joe,

if you don't like sentences ending in a preposition, it's just something you are going to have to put up with.

Or would it have been  correct and more stylish if I'd written,  "it's just something up with which you are going to have to put."?

[Rulesman]

Colin

I did see your original post. I also posted at about the same time but it disappeared almost immediately.

I suspect it may be the 'off topic gremlin'

[ColinL]

Colin

I did see your original post. I also posted at about the same time but it disappeared almost immediately.

I suspect it may be the 'off topic gremlin'

Fair enough.  I just put the disappearance down to my own incompetence.

[Rulesman]

Who can argue with that

[bkuehn1952]

Just to throw in a comment about how reliable believing you saw your ball at rest after your shot is as evidence that an OA must have moved it while you were out of sight.  How often have you seen a "ball" from a distance (and not necessarily that great a distance) only to find  when you get closer that it wasn't  a ball after all?

Exactly!  For me it would not be enough to see the ball at a distance.  I would want to see the ball land, bounce, roll and come to a stop.  That way I would be virtually certain the object seen from a distance is a ball and not a flower, leaf, scrap of paper, etc...

[ColinL]

Well, Mr Rulesman it turns out that it was not my incompetence that made my posting disappear since it didn't disappear at all.  It's there. Plain to see in the thread about the one ball rule and as a response to the remark about not ending a sentence with a preposition that was made in that thread.

I think your grammatical treatise was not so much off-topic as off-thread.

Joe.  Not only do you have some misconceptions about the Rules of Golf, but your taking Turtleback to task  about ending a sentence with a preposition is both unnecessary (arguably rude) and misleading.    There are many instances where avoiding a sentence with a preposition would result in a cumbersome and overly complicated construction.  If you don't like that, it's just an acceptable  feature of the language you'll have to put up with.

Do you really think I should have written,  "If you don't like that, it's just an acceptable  feature of the language up with which you'll have to put"?

[boogielicious]

Gentlemen,

Although arguing grammar can be loads of fun, please keep on topic.

[ghalfaire]

So tell me - you play your drive down the middle of the fairway.  You watch it roll to a stop.  Your 3 companions play their shots.  You can still see your ball in the fairway.  You stop at the rest room as you leave the tee.  When you come out your ball is no longer there.  Do you take a stroke and distance penalty when there is literally no possible way that your ball was taken by anything other than the unwitnessed act of an outside agency?  This is how I read the OP's scenario.  If there was more doubt than this, I would rule that 27-1 applies, but from the way it was presented, I can't see it.  That makes the rule more penal that  it is intended to be.

The rules are not intended to punish a player, they are merely supposed to ensure that a player does not gain an advantage from breaching or sidestepping a rule.  A ball at rest disappears, and there is no wind, no slope, no water that could have moved it, then what else is left?  Outside Agency.  I can't  see any other possible ruling that makes any sense.

I had this almost situation last year in a tournament at one of the local courses.  But I admit I could not, in my case, see the ball all the way to its final resting place.  The tenth hole is a par five and if you hit the drive a couple of hundred yards plus and the ball will run down a hill to the second level of the fairway.  But you cannot see its final resting place from the tee box. So I split the fairway with my drive and the other three players agreed and I made the slope so it bounced once, witnessed by me and the other three, and disappeared apparently heading down the slope to the lower level.  But when we arrived at the bottom of the hill, admittedly after a quick relief stop as we are older fellows, my yellow ball was nowhere to be found.  Because it was a tournament I called the club house for a ruling and it was "lost ball".  The rules guy explained that because no one saw an outside agency interfere with or move the ball it had to be played as a lost ball and he was not swayed by the fact that four of us saw the ball bounce down the hill in the middle of the fairway.  So I took the walk of shame muttering to myself that Jack was correct and no one ever said it was a fair game.  I guess there is equity in that we all play to the same rules, but some are just not fair in all cases.