Wind Blows Ball Into Hole After Player Addresses It

[Fourputt]

45 minutes ago, saevel25 said:

Your the one saying it did. The burden on proof is with you to prove it.

 

You are wrong in this statement.  Doubt is resolved against the player.  The evidence must be absolute that no action she took could have caused the ball to move. 

You are taking this much too personally.  All I'm doing is asking for a clarification, and that doesn't require a lesson in aerodynamics, which I already understand as much of as is necessary for this conversation.   You have no clue when you say that positioning her putter can't cause what happened.  I've seen it myself on the course so I KNOW that it can happen.  I've played here in winter Chinook winds that will blow a ball all the way off a green, even after it has been lifted and replaced.  I've watched the ball solidly at rest start to wobble as soon as the putter gets near it. Saying that it can't happen is simply ignoring reality.  

All I want to know is the extent of what constitutes the meaning of "directly attributable".  At what point in causation does the action of the player take over from the action of the wind?  Is the wind still considered the cause, even though the ball was steady until the putter was moved into proximity?  I don't have a problem with that, because otherwise it could make the game unplayable in certain conditions, if the player risks a penalty for simply addressing the ball.  However, maybe that's the point where the round should be suspended, but the cause still rests on the player.

[Avalanche]

39 minutes ago, Asheville said:

While it's true that the Rules cannot think of everything, they have it covered in your case. Assuming stroke play, Rule 3-3, Doubt as to Procedure, enables the player to play a second ball and then let the Committee sort it out later. (For match play, Rule 2-5 spells out a different remedy.)

Thanks!  I believe 3-3 *should* come into play.

But part of my question concerns whether or not can she mark where she thought the ball was after it had already moved and gone into the hole?  What if she had backed off several feet away?  (She actually did back up a couple of feet.)  It seems like, since she didn't really have an opportunity to mark it they'd let her do that.  But that's just a guess on my part, of what seems to make sense.  

 

[DeadMan]

20 hours ago, Fourputt said:

You are wrong in this statement.  Doubt is resolved against the player.  The evidence must be absolute that no action she took could have caused the ball to move. 

You are taking this much too personally.  All I'm doing is asking for a clarification, and that doesn't require a lesson in aerodynamics, which I already understand as much of as is necessary for this conversation.   You have no clue when you say that positioning her putter can't cause what happened.  I've seen it myself on the course so I KNOW that it can happen.  I've played here in winter Chinook winds that will blow a ball all the way off a green, even after it has been lifted and replaced.  I've watched the ball solidly at rest start to wobble as soon as the putter gets near it. Saying that it can't happen is simply ignoring reality.  

All I want to know is the extent of what constitutes the meaning of "directly attributable".  At what point in causation does the action of the player take over from the action of the wind?  Is the wind still considered the cause, even though the ball was steady until the putter was moved into proximity?  I don't have a problem with that, because otherwise it could make the game unplayable in certain conditions, if the player risks a penalty for simply addressing the ball.  However, maybe that's the point where the round should be suspended, but the cause still rests on the player.

I'm not sure you're right about this at all. This is from Decision 18/2-0.5:

Quote

If the weight of evidence indicates that it is more likely than not that the player caused the ball to move, even though that conclusion is not free from doubt, the player incurs a one-stroke penalty under Rule 18-2 and the ball must be replaced.

That doesn't sounds to me like doubt is resolved against the player. If anything, it seems to be weighed in favor of the player. The decision also has some other things that are applicable to this situation:

Quote

With reference to the considerations above, examples of situations where the weight of the evidence would indicate that the player caused the ball to move are:

• A player's ball lies on a flat portion of the putting green on a day with light winds. The player addresses the ball and the ball immediately moves. Under these circumstances, it is more likely than not that the act of addressing the ball caused the ball to move. . . .

With reference to the considerations above, examples of situations where the weight of the evidence would indicate that the player did not cause the movement are:

• On a very windy day, a player addresses the ball on the putting green. A short time later the ball moves slightly in the direction the wind is blowing. The strength and direction of the wind and the delay in the movement of the ball after the club was grounded indicate that factors other than the player are more likely than not to have caused the movement.

I'm not sure either of those really help in this situation. But basically the question that applies here is: what is more likely - that the player addressing the ball caused the ball to move, or the wind caused the ball to move? To me, it's more likely there was a sudden wind gust that started the ball moving. The way I know I'm right is because the player here wasn't assessed a penalty.

All of the back and forth on wind flow is pretty entertaining, but unless you're an aerospace engineer or something like that, you're just talking out of your ass.

[iacas]

Bingo. 18-2/0.5 is exactly right. @Fourputt got this one wrong.

We had this discussion in my Rules Workshop and the presenters said that it's quite literally a 51/49 call: if you believe that the wind made the ball move, then there you go.

Now, if the player makes a funnel with his hands to force more wind into moving the ball, then that's still the player doing something directly attributable. But setting your putter behind the ball is not enough to "shape the wind" (especially as it would tend to block the wind and result in less force from the wind) and result in a penalty.