Identifying your golf ball You may take reasonable actions to find and identify your ball. You may fairly search for the ball by taking reasonable actions to find and identify it, such as: - Moving sand and water, and moving or bending grass, bushes, tree branches and other growing or attached natural objects, and also breaking such objects, but only if such breaking is a result of other reasonable actions taken to find or identify the ball.
- If taking such reasonable actions as part of a fair search improves the conditions affecting the stroke there is no penalty. But if the improvement results from actions that exceeded what was reasonable for a fair search, you get the general penalty.
What to do if sand is affecting lie of your ball and is moved while trying to find or identify it? You must re-create the original lie in the sand but may leave a small part of the ball visible if the ball had been covered by sand. If you play the ball without having re-created the original lie, you get the general penalty.
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