Cart Path Relief in Golf: Free Drop and How to Take It

What gets free relief

The rules call these abnormal course conditions:

• Immovable obstructions: cart paths with an artificial surface, sprinkler heads, drains, and other fixed man-made things.
• Ground under repair: usually marked with white lines or blue stakes, plus holes made by the greenkeepers.
• Temporary water: puddles and standing water that isn’t part of a penalty area.
• Animal holes: holes dug by animals (not worms or insects).

When you get it

You get relief when the condition:

• touches your ball, or the ball is in it or on it, or
• gets in the way of your stance or your swing.

On the putting green, it also counts if the condition is on your line of putt. Off the green, being on your line doesn’t count.

No relief when your shot would be clearly unreasonable anyway (the ball is also stuck behind a tree, say), or when you only have interference because you picked an odd club, stance or direction to create it.

How to take it

1. Find the nearest point of complete relief: the nearest spot, no nearer the hole, where the condition no longer touches the ball or affects your stance or swing for the shot you’d have played, with your ball in the same kind of area (general area for a ball in the fairway or rough).
2. Measure one club-length from that point, no nearer the hole, still in the general area.
3. Drop from knee height into that area. It must stay there. See taking a drop.

Complete relief means complete: both feet off the path, not just the ball. And the nearest point isn’t always on the side you’d like. If the nearest spot is in the bushes on the far side of the path, that’s where it is. You can choose to play the ball as it lies instead.

In a bunker or on the green

• Bunker: take free relief in the bunker, at the nearest point of complete relief there (or the point of most relief if there’s none). Or, for one penalty stroke, drop back on a line from the hole outside the bunker.
• Putting green: place the ball at the nearest point of complete relief, which can be on the green or just off it.

When you can’t find the ball

If it’s known or virtually certain the ball is in the ground under repair or the puddle, you can take the free relief from where it went in, instead of treating it as lost.

Not in a penalty area

A ball in a penalty area gets none of this; use the penalty area options.