A drop under the current Rules of Golf is simpler than most golfers think. Work out your relief area, hold the ball at knee height, and let it fall straight down so it lands and comes to rest inside that area. If it rolls out, drop once more. If it rolls out again, place it where the second drop first touched the ground. Everything else is knowing which relief area applies.
What goes wrong is rarely the drop itself but the thinking before it. Our overview of the rules of golf and on-course etiquette covers each situation in one line; this is the procedure underneath.
Three decisions before the ball leaves your hand
Every drop, free or penalty, comes down to three questions.
- Which Rule applies? Penalty area, out of bounds, lost ball, cart path, plugged lie, or a lie you cannot play.
- Where is the reference point, and how big is the relief area? One club-length or two, measured from what exactly.
- What does it cost? Nothing, one stroke, or two.
The mechanics of a legal drop
The procedure lives in Rule 14.3 of the R&A and USGA Rules of Golf. Six requirements:
- You drop it yourself — not your caddie, not anyone else.
- Use the original ball or a different one. Rule 14.3a allows either, and Rule 14.1c lets you clean it.
- Hold it at knee height — the height of your knee when standing. You need not be standing to drop, but the release must be at that height off the ground.
- Let it fall straight down. No throwing, spinning or rolling it out of your fingers.
- Do not let it touch you or your gear on the way down. A ball that clips your leg, glove or bag before landing is a wrong drop.
- Drop it in the relief area — or, for back-on-the-line relief, on the line. You may stand inside or outside it.
Golfers who learned before 2019 dropped from shoulder height, and plenty still do. Knee height means less bounce and less roll. On a steep slope the ball may fall only a few inches — still legal, provided you released it at knee height.
What a relief area actually is
A relief area is a defined patch of ground where your ball must land and come to rest. It has three parts.
- A reference point, set by the Rule you are using: the nearest point of complete relief, the spot your ball was lying, or the estimated point where it last crossed into a penalty area.
- A size — one club-length or two, measured from that point.
- Limits. It must not be nearer the hole than the reference point, must lie in the area of the course the Rule specifies, and for free relief must give complete relief.
That last limit is the one people quietly ignore. Two club-lengths sideways plus half a step forward is not two club-lengths.
Which club you measure with
A club-length is the length of the longest club you have during the round, other than a putter, measured toe to butt end of the grip. It is a fixed unit, not a choice.
So if you carry a driver, you measure with the driver, whatever club you plan to hit next. Measuring with the sand wedge short-changes you by a couple of feet. Lay the club down from the reference point, mark the far end with a tee, and drop inside. The glossary of golf terms helps if phrases like “general area” are still new.
When the ball will not stay put
Two different failures, two different fixes.
If you dropped it in a wrong way — shoulder height, with a spin, or into the wrong spot — drop again correctly. There is no limit to how many times, and no penalty provided you fix it before playing the ball.
If you dropped it correctly and it rolled out of the relief area, follow this exactly:
- Drop a second time, the same correct way, into the same relief area.
- If it comes to rest outside the area again, stop dropping and place the ball where the second dropped ball first touched the ground.
- If the placed ball will not stay at rest, place it on that spot a second time.
- If it still will not stay, place it on the nearest spot where it will stay at rest, not nearer the hole and in the same area of the course.
Two drops, then place — not three drops, and not a place because the first one trickled away.
If a correctly dropped ball hits you or your bag after it has hit the ground, there is no penalty, and it is in play if it settles in the relief area. Deliberately deflecting or stopping it is the general penalty under Rule 14.3d — unless it had no reasonable chance of staying in the relief area.
The situations, with their options and their cost
Penalty strokes are added to your score for the hole; our guide to keeping score in golf covers the card.
| Situation | Your options | Penalty |
|---|---|---|
| Yellow penalty area (Rule 17.1b–d) | Play as it lies; stroke-and-distance; back-on-the-line | 0 as it lies, else 1 |
| Red penalty area (Rule 17.1b–d) | Those three, plus lateral relief two club-lengths from the crossing point | 0 as it lies, else 1 |
| Unplayable, general area (Rule 19.2) | Stroke-and-distance; back-on-the-line; lateral relief two club-lengths from the ball’s spot | 1 |
| Unplayable in a bunker (Rule 19.3a) | Same three, but back-on-the-line and lateral relief stay in the bunker | 1 |
| Unplayable in a bunker, extra option (Rule 19.3b) | Back-on-the-line relief outside the bunker | 2 in total |
| Lost or out of bounds (Rule 18.2) | Stroke-and-distance only | 1 |
| Lost or OB, local rule in force (Model Local Rule E-5) | Fairway-edge drop instead of walking back | 2 |
| Abnormal course condition, general area (Rule 16.1b) | One club-length from the nearest point of complete relief | 0 |
| Abnormal course condition in a bunker (Rule 16.1c) | Free relief inside the bunker, or back-on-the-line outside it | 0 inside, 1 outside |
| Abnormal course condition on the green (Rule 16.1d) | Place at the nearest point of complete relief | 0 |
| Embedded in its own pitch-mark, general area (Rule 16.3) | One club-length from the spot right behind the ball | 0 |
| Ball on a wrong green (Rule 13.1f) | Compulsory: one club-length from the nearest point of complete relief | 0 |
Penalty areas: what the colour of the stake buys you
A penalty area is any body of water on the course plus anything else the Committee defines as one, and it need not hold water — a dry ditch or open watercourse still counts. Rule 17 sets out the relief.
Yellow gives two options, each for one penalty stroke: replay from where you last played, or take back-on-the-line relief. Red gives those two plus lateral relief. An area whose colour the Committee has not marked is treated as red.
The reference point for both is the estimated point where your ball last crossed the edge of the penalty area — not where it splashed, and not where it lies in the reeds. On a hazard that snakes across a hole those are far apart.
Back-on-the-line relief works differently from every other drop, and the 2023 revision changed it. Picture a line from the hole through the crossing point, extending back as far as you like. You choose how far back, but the ball must be dropped on the line. Where it first touches the ground becomes your reference point, and the relief area is one club-length in any direction from there. It can never finish nearer the hole than the crossing point, but trickling slightly forward of where it landed is legal.
Lateral relief, red areas only, is two club-lengths from the crossing point, no nearer the hole. It may be anywhere on the course except that same penalty area, so a legal lateral drop can leave you in a bunker.
You can play from inside a penalty area with no penalty, unless it is a marked no play zone. But while your ball is in one there is no free relief for anything — not an immovable obstruction, not an embedded ball — and you cannot declare it unplayable.
Unplayable: you are the only judge
Only the player may decide a ball is unplayable, and you can do it anywhere except in a penalty area. Rule 19 gives three options for one penalty stroke: stroke-and-distance, back-on-the-line, or lateral relief within two club-lengths of the ball’s spot. If the ball is up a tree, the reference point for lateral relief is the spot on the ground directly below it.
Back-on-the-line is the underused option. Twenty yards back often buys a clean lie and a full swing, worth more than two club-lengths sideways into the same rough.
Bunkers get a fourth door: for a total of two penalty strokes you may take back-on-the-line relief outside the bunker entirely. When the ball is plugged under a steep lip, that is a bargain. Our guide to bunker shot techniques helps you judge which lies are playable.
Lost ball and out of bounds: there is no drop
Rule 18 gives one option for a ball that is lost or out of bounds: stroke-and-distance. One penalty stroke, and you play again from where you played the previous shot. There is no drop near where you think the ball went.
Search time is three minutes, from when you or your caddie start looking. And a ball is out of bounds only when all of it lies outside the boundary edge — but where a painted line marks that edge, the line itself is out of bounds.
The fix for the long walk back is a provisional ball, with one requirement: announce it before you play it, using the word “provisional” or otherwise making the status clear. “I’ll hit another one” does not count, and neither does silence. If nobody is in earshot, tell someone afterwards.
It becomes your ball in play if the original proves lost outside a penalty area or out of bounds, or as soon as you play the provisional from nearer the hole than the original’s estimated spot. Abandon it if the original turns up inside three minutes. Announcing properly also spares you the walk back, which helps the length of a round.
You may also see a two-stroke drop offered instead of the walk back. That is Model Local Rule E-5 in the R&A and USGA Committee Procedures, and the key point is that it is not a default Rule — a Committee has to adopt it. The governing bodies call it appropriate for casual play and not for elite competition. Where it applies you take two penalty strokes and drop between where the ball was lost or crossed out of bounds and the nearest fairway point no closer to the hole, plus two club-lengths of margin. It cannot be used for an unplayable ball or a ball known or virtually certain to be in a penalty area.
Free relief: abnormal course conditions
Four things count as an abnormal course condition: animal holes, ground under repair, immovable obstructions and temporary water. Cart paths, sprinkler heads, drainage grates and rain puddles all qualify, and relief is free. A tree is not an obstruction, though its supporting stake is.
Interference means your ball touches or lies in or on the condition, or it physically interferes with your stance or the area of your intended swing. On the putting green it also counts on your line of play.
The reference point is the nearest point of complete relief: the estimated point nearest your ball’s spot, not nearer the hole, in the same area of the course, where the condition no longer interferes with the stroke you would have played. Your relief area is one club-length from there, and it must give complete relief. Check both sides of the ball; the nearest side is often the awkward one.
It is the nearest point, not the nicest point. If the nearest side of the cart path puts you behind a tree, that is your reference point.
Temporary water needs visible water on the surface of the ground, seen before or after you take your stance, outside a penalty area. Soft, wet or muddy ground alone does not qualify, and dew and frost never do — a distinction that gets plenty of use in a downpour, alongside our advice on playing golf in the rain.
Two variations: in a bunker you get free relief inside the bunker, or you can escape it with back-on-the-line relief for one penalty stroke; on the putting green you place the ball at the nearest point of complete relief instead of dropping.
Embedded balls and the putting green
An embedded ball earns free relief only in the general area, and it must sit in its own pitch-mark from your previous stroke with part of the ball below ground level. There is no relief if it is embedded in sand not cut to fairway height or less, or if playing it as it lies would be clearly unreasonable. The reference point is the spot right behind the ball; the relief area is one club-length, no nearer the hole.
A divot hole is not ground under repair unless the Committee has marked it, so there is no free relief.
On the putting green you rarely need to drop at all. You may mark, lift, clean and replace your ball whenever you like, and repair ball-marks, shoe damage and embedded objects — but not aeration holes, natural wear or disease. Relief from a wrong green is compulsory: nearest point of complete relief in the general area, one club-length, no nearer the hole.
What people get wrong
- Dropping from shoulder height. Muscle memory from the old Rules.
- Measuring with the wrong club. A club-length is your longest club other than the putter, so reaching for the wedge you are about to hit costs you real ground.
- Taking lateral relief from a yellow penalty area. Two club-lengths sideways is a red-stake option only.
- Drifting nearer the hole. Free drop or penalty drop, the relief area cannot be nearer the hole than the reference point.
- Forgetting to announce a provisional. Unannounced, that second ball is not a provisional — it is stroke-and-distance, and the original is out of play the moment you hit it.
- Using where the ball ended up in the water instead of where it last crossed the edge.
What your Saturday group will actually accept
There is a gap between the rulebook and a friendly fourball. In social golf, groups routinely wave a player forward to drop near where a ball was lost. That is a social agreement about pace, and fine as long as everyone knows what it is.
Two situations where it stops being a matter of taste. In competition a wrong drop is a penalty even when your opponent is relaxed about it. And scores you post for a handicap are meant to come from rounds played under the Rules of Golf — our explainer on how a golf handicap works covers what makes a score acceptable.
Most good groups settle in the middle: take the drops properly, because the procedure is usually faster than the argument about it. Choosing between back-on-the-line and lateral relief is a risk-versus-reward judgement like any other, and it sits alongside the fundamentals in our golf for beginners guide.
One caveat: this is a plain-English walkthrough, not the official text. The Rules are published jointly by the R&A and the USGA, the 2023 edition runs until the next one arrives on 1 January 2028, and local rules can change what applies.
Questions golfers actually ask
Do you still drop from shoulder height?
No. Since 2019 the ball must be dropped from knee height — the height of your knee when standing. Drop from shoulder height and play the ball from inside the relief area and it is one penalty stroke; from outside it, the general penalty.
How many times do you drop before you place the ball?
Twice. If a correctly dropped ball comes to rest outside the relief area, you drop a second time. If that one rolls out too, you place the ball on the spot where the second drop first touched the ground.
Can you clean your ball or change it when you take a drop?
Yes to both. Rule 14.3a lets you drop the original ball or another ball, and a ball lifted to take relief may be cleaned.
Can you take relief from a bad lie in the fairway?
Not for free. A divot hole or a bare patch is the course as you find it, unless the Committee has marked the area as ground under repair or your ball is embedded in its own pitch-mark. Otherwise you play it or declare it unplayable for a stroke.