Question About Free Relief

[JOHN L]

Guys,

I would like clarification on the new rule governing free relief, & hopefully the experts on here can advise.

Please have a look at the attached sketch showing the scenarios in question. I believe A & B are subject to free relief, but what about C, when your feet are on the path but the ball is behind a tree. My understanding is that there is no free relief allowed here.

Can you please advise the correct way to proceed from position C

 

I thought in the new rules ,as per my attached pic,it states that there's no relief if its unreasonable to play your ball.

This is why I was asking for clarification because I don't think its completely clear what they mean by this

[DaveP043]

The way I'm seeing the drawing, C would be aiming directly at the tree, from just a few inches away, if his feet were on the path.  That's the only shot that puts his feet on the path.  If the path were not there, hitting directly at the tree would not be a reasonable choice for direction of play, therefore there would be no relief allowed.

[JOHN L]

Guys

The way I read it was that in 2018 it would be free relief but in 2019 its not. You can see my dilemma though, there are two interpretations that people have of this ruling. Its quite a regular occurrence at our club, so I need to be clear on it 

thanks for taking the time to answer

 

John

[klineka]

17 minutes ago, JOHN L said:

I thought in the new rules ,as per my attached pic,it states that there's no relief if its unreasonable to play your ball.

Depending on how close the ball is to the tree and how big the tree is, it might not be reasonable for someone to chip out sideways, your only reasonable play might be to hit the ball into the tree and play the ricochet and hope for the best, similar to how players occasionally hit the ball into a stone wall on purpose.

If that is the case then it's my understanding you would be entitled free relief from the path

A visual for this scenario might be the DJ situation from the WGC Mexico tournament, but pretend it was a left handed golfer faced with the same situation (just on the opposite side of the fairway from @JOHN L drawing, red arrow is the direction to the hole)

I can see the argument for it not being a reasonable play for a left handed golfer, but based on how I understand the rules, I think more often than not, the lefty would also get relief in that situation and if I was playing against someone, I wouldn't have an issue with the lefty taking relief from there.

[iacas]

This isn’t different in 2019 versus 2018. The shot has to be reasonable to play.