How to Drop a Ball

Every relief situation in golf ends the same way: you drop a ball. Get the procedure wrong and the relief you were entitled to turns into a penalty, which is a genuinely annoying way to lose strokes.

The good news is that the procedure is short, and it changed in 2019 in a way that made it easier.

Knee height

Shoulder height was the old standard and it produced far more roll-outs and re-drops. Knee height barely bounces, which is the point.

You can be standing anywhere you like when you drop — inside or outside the relief area, on one leg, whatever. The Rule cares about the height and the release, not your posture.

It has to land in the relief area and stay there

Two separate requirements:

• The ball must first strike the ground inside the relief area
• It must come to rest inside the relief area

Fail either one and the drop does not count. If it lands outside, it does not matter where it ends up. If it lands inside and rolls out, same answer.

So mark your relief area before you drop. Tee at the reference point, club-length measured out, and know where the edges are. Dropping first and working out the boundary afterwards is how arguments start.

Twice, then place

This is the part most golfers do not know, and it is the part that comes up on sloped lies.

Read step three again, because the natural guess is wrong. You do not place it at the reference point, and you do not place it wherever you like in the relief area. You place it exactly where the second drop first hit the ground.

And if it will not stay there? Try once more. If it still will not stay, place it at the nearest spot where it will stay at rest — not nearer the hole, and not in a bunker or penalty area if the original spot was not.

Common ways people blow it

• Dropping from shoulder height out of habit. Ten years of muscle memory. Catch it before you let go.
• Letting the ball hit a foot on the way down. Stand so the ball has a clear path.
• Handing it to a caddie or partner to drop. Only you may drop your ball.
• Measuring the relief area with a wedge. A club-length is your longest club other than the putter. Use the driver and you get a bigger area, every time.
• Re-dropping when you did not need to. A ball that rolls a bit but stays inside the relief area is a good drop. Play it.

If you get it wrong

A wrong dropping procedure is fixable. If you notice before you play the ball, just drop again correctly — no penalty. That is a genuinely forgiving provision and it is worth knowing, because the instinct when someone says "wait, that was shoulder height" is to panic.

What is not fixable after the fact is playing from a wrong place. Once you have hit it, you are into the general penalty. So the moment there is any doubt, sort it out before you swing.

The short version

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.