If your ball heads straight for the flag and becomes wedged against it, have you holed it? Or do you need to play it as it lies? It’s not a straightforward as you might think.
In the old days, before the 2019 Rules changes, you could have found yourself feeling very hard done by if you thought you’d holed out, even scored an ace perhaps. If you had reached your ball and found that the ball was wedged against the flagstick and not completely below the surface of the putting green, it would not have been treated as holed. That must have been a real buzz kill for a lot of premature celebrations.
But since 2019, things have changed. The answer now to the question, “Is a ball holed if it’s wedged against a flagstick?” is… wait for it… Maybe. What? Yes, the Rules of Golf can be complicated.
This scenario is covered by Rule 13.2c. For the ball to be classed as holed, some part of the ball must be below the surface of the putting green. It reads,
“If a player’s ball comes to rest against the flagstick left in the hole:
If any part of the ball is in the hole below the surface of the putting green, the ball is treated as holed even if the entire ball is not below the surface.”
So, if your ball is even partially below the surface of the putting green then it’s holed.
But, if no part of the ball is below the surface and it’s wedged totally above ground then it’s not holed. 13.2c continues to say:
