This is the rule change that visibly altered how golf looks. Leaving the flagstick in while you putt was a two-stroke penalty for most of the game's history, and now it is simply an option. Some tour players do it, most club golfers have adopted it, and the pace-of-play benefit is real.
Your call, and you make it before the stroke
You may play with the flagstick left in the hole, removed, or attended and removed after the stroke.
If you leave it in and your ball hits it, there is no penalty.
The decision belongs to you and you make it before you play. What you cannot do is change your mind about physics halfway through — you may not move or remove the flagstick while your ball is in motion in order to influence where it ends up.
You also cannot have someone attend the flagstick without your authority. If a playing partner grabs the pin as you are over the putt and you had not asked, and your ball then hits the pin or that person, there is a penalty in play. Say what you want out loud.
The ball resting against the pin
You leave it in, roll a putt up, and the ball comes to rest wedged between the flagstick and the edge of the hole. Is it in?
If any part of the ball is below the surface of the putting green, the ball is holed — even though it is not resting on the bottom of the hole.
So look at it from the side. If the ball has dropped even slightly below the lip, take it. If the whole ball is sitting on top of the surface, leaning on the stick, it is not holed and you still have a putt.
When it is holed, carefully remove the flagstick. If the ball then moves or falls in, it does not matter — it was already holed at the moment it came to rest below the surface. When it is not holed, remove the flagstick just as carefully; if the ball moves as a result, put it back on the lip, no penalty, and finish it.
The unattended flagstick from off the green
Chipping from just off the green with the pin in and holing out against it is now perfectly legal and slightly satisfying. It was always legal from off the green under the old rules too — the two-stroke penalty only applied to strokes played from the putting green. The change was on the green itself.
Worth remembering when someone in your group insists you have to pull it for a chip. You never did.
The flagstick lying on the green
Someone pulls the pin and drops it on the green — a removed flagstick is a movable obstruction. If your ball hits it, no penalty in stroke play or match play; you play the ball as it lies. And you may move it out of the way at any time.
Same for the person attending: if your ball hits an attended flagstick or the person holding it, that is a penalty situation, which is precisely why fewer people attend the pin than used to.
Pace of play, quietly
The real argument for leaving it in is not the physics. It is that a group of four all putting with the pin in never has anyone walking to the hole, pulling the stick, walking back, and replacing it. Over eighteen holes that is a meaningful chunk of time, and nobody has to be the person who holds up the group to do a job that is no longer required.
The short version
Rule 13.2 at a glance
- Your options
- Leave it in, take it out, or have it attended
- Hitting it, left in
- No penalty, from anywhere
- Timing
- Decide before the stroke
- Not allowed
- Moving or removing it while the ball is in motion to influence the result
- Attending
- Only with your authority
- Ball leaning on it
- Holed if any part of the ball is below the surface
- Removed flagstick on the green
- Movable obstruction — no penalty if your ball hits it
Written against the 2023 edition of the Rules of Golf, which remains the edition in force. The R&A has said the next full edition arrives 1 January 2028. Local Rules at your course can change any of this — the card and the notice board win.