Can someone explain what a provisional ball is for?
One of my golf buddies sometimes plays provisionals, and I don’t understand how they’re legal. If you hit your drive 150 yards into the woods and lose it, shouldn’t you play a new ball near the edge of the fairway where it went into the woods, hitting 3? If you hit your provisional 225 yards down the center of the fairway, isn’t that an advantage, even if you’re still hitting 3? Also, if I mishit my drive and it goes 20 yards straight to the right, and I tee up and hit a new drive, I’m hitting 3, right? So with a provisional, shouldn’t you be hitting 3?
A provisional ball is just a backup if you think your first shot might be lost or out of bounds. It saves time by letting you keep playing instead of going back to the tee. If your provisional ends up being in play, you just continue from there, but if your original ball is found, you go back to that. It’s not an advantage; it’s just about saving time and keeping the game moving. For your scenario, if you hit a provisional and it’s in play, you’d still be hitting 3, same as if you’d found your original ball.
In golf, a provisional ball is a ball that is hit by a player in case they think their original ball is lost outside of a penalty area or out of bounds. Playing a provisional ball is meant to be time-efficient.