Will Zalatoris and Cameron Davis made a costly mistake in the final round of The Sentry on the PGA Tour: On hole 15 of the Plantation Course in Hawaii, the two pros accidentally swapped their balls. Both had reached the par 5 in two shots and were positioned just short of the green: Zalatoris still had 34 meters to play, Davis was 44 meters from the hole. However, they mistakenly played the other’s ball. Realizing their mistake before completing the hole, they corrected it by going back to the correct spot and playing their ball from there.
Rules: Playing the Wrong Ball Leads to General Penalty
According to Rule 6.3(c), playing the wrong ball is an offense punishable by two penalty strokes: “In stroke play, the player gets the general penalty (two penalty strokes) and must correct the mistake by continuing play with the original ball by playing it as it lies or taking relief under the Rules” (R&A).
The rule also states that the error must be corrected immediately: If they had teed off on the next hole without correcting the error, disqualification would have been the result: “If the player does not correct the mistake before making a stroke to begin another hole or, for the final hole of the round, before returning their scorecard, the player is disqualified” (R&A).
Penalty Strokes Cost Placings and Prize Money
As they followed the rules correctly and realized their mistake early enough, Davis and Zalatoris finished the tournament in regulation, Will Zalatoris on T26 and Cameron Davis on T13. However, the two penalty strokes had a significant impact on their final positions and therefore also on the prize money. Especially in a tournament with such high prize money, even a few strokes can mean differences of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. In exact figures, this means that Davis would have received 306,625 dollars more with two strokes less, while Zalatoris missed out on 119,866.67 dollars.