Known or virtually certain
This month, we’re delving into the Definitions section of the Rules and looking at a very important defined term that can have a considerable impact on which relief options are available to a player and what they are entitled to do under the Rules – ‘known or virtually certain’. So, what does it mean and when might it have a bearing on how you should proceed?
Essentially, ‘known or virtually certain’ is the standard for deciding whether a particular event or scenario has happened to your ball, so you then know how to continue your round. Questions you might be looking for answers to could include the following:
u Has my ball come to rest in a penalty area?
u Has my ball at rest moved or not?
u If my ball has moved, what has caused it to move?
The Rules define ‘known or virtually certain’ as more than just possible or probable. But while ‘known’ is fairly straightforward there is conclusive evidence that your ball did go into a penalty area because you saw it go in, or another player tells you it went in - what about ‘virtually certain’?
Here, the Rules of Golf adopt a policy of 95 per cent likelihood that the event in question did happen based on ‘all reasonably available information’. Obviously, this can be quite tricky to quantify, but if your ball is heading at speed towards a penalty area and when you get down there, there is no rough, just fairway-height grass running right up to the edge, all reasonably available information suggests your ball is in the penalty area. You should then proceed under one of the options available to you as listed in Rule 17.
However, if there is thickish rough between fairway and penalty area and there is no conclusive proof that the ball went in (no splash and no one saw it), 95 per cent certainty is unlikely. Why? There is more than a chance that it could be lost in the rough, especially if the pace of the ball meant it was borderline that it would reach the penalty area.
‘All reasonably available information’ includes all information the player knows and all other information he or she can get with reasonable effort and without unreasonable delay. This may potentially involve asking a player in the group ahead or on an adjacent hole if they saw what happened to your ball.
Similarly, if your ball is perched precariously on a tuft and it moves after you set your club down behind it, the likelihood is that you will be deemed to have caused it to move, because the cause-andeffect relationship exceeds 95 per cent for that situation.
“HERE, THE RULES OF GOLF ADOPT A POLICY OF 95 PER CENT LIKELIHOOD”