Inside the Rules
Every two weeks MGA Senior Director of Rules and Competitions Gene Westmoreland will answer one question posed by the readers of the MGA e-Revision Newsletter (click here to sign up). A reader from Long Island asked Gene the following Rules question:
“A player is taking a practice swing before an approach shot and accidentally hits the ball and it moves forward? Is there a penalty for doing this? ”
Gene responds:
Once the ball is “in play” there would be a penalty if the player accidentally moved it - as in with a practice swing. The penalty is one stroke and the ball must be replaced.
Year:
News Type:
Month:
Image:
![](https://www.mgagolf.org/sites/default/files/default_images/defaultblog_2.jpg)