Easytotilt

He got DQ'ed... Just felt unreasonable. It was on the 7th hole, he had picked up the provisional and played the ball before the rules official came over. But those are the rules!

The new rules when searching for a golf ball is that you have 3 minutes to search for your ball. We had a situation today where a playing parter hit his ball in the rough and we spent longer than the allocated 3 minutes finding the ball. It wasn't to much longer literally 5 mins and we found it... It was a par 4 and in a competition. The group behind us were not on the tee box yet, and the group in front were still putting out so we weren't going anywhere. We got pulled up about it by a rules official, but our argument was that we were not affecting the pace of play as if we stopped searching at the 3 minute mark we would we just be stood there catching fly's waiting for the green to clear... So my question in this situation what happens? Up to 3 minutes or when you are able to hit your next shot seems sensible to me thoughts?