You’ve played a nice shot into a pin cut close to the left-hand side of the green. You’ve been aggressive and fired straight at it. The bold move has paid off and you’re just 15 feet from the cup. But, the ball has landed on the surface and just rolled off onto the fringe.
When you reach your ball it is sitting nicely and is highly puttable. Unfortunately, your pitch mark on the putting surface is a whopper and is directly on the line between your ball and the hole.
What can you do given your ball is not sitting on the green? Can you repair it or do you just have to put up with it until after your stroke? Do you have to go through the pitch mark or attempt to avoid it?
There’s good news on this one. You can repair the pitch mark on the green. It’s covered by Rule 13 – Putting Greens.
Rule 13.1c deals with improvements allowed on the putting green. It starts by saying – that players can take certain actions on the putting green no matter whether their ball is on or off the putting surface.
One of those actions is “repairing damage” and within the bullet points for what counts as damage, you will find ball marks.
You can then repair a pitch mark on the green when your ball is not on the green.
But you do have to be a little careful. If your ball is on the fringe of the green and a pitch mark is in your way on the fringe (not on the putting surface) you cannot repair it.
If you repaired a pitch mark on the fringe when you were making a stroke from the fringe, you would have broken Rule 8.1 – Improving conditions affecting the stroke.
In that instance, you would receive the general penalty of two shots in stroke play or loss of hole in match play.
If your ball came to rest on the fringe and then another player played a shot that created a pitch mark on the fringe (after your ball had come to rest), you would be entitled to repair it. Rule 8.1d allows a player to restore conditions that have been worsened after a ball has come to rest.
But if the pitch mark was there in the fringe before your ball came to rest, you can’t repair it.
The simple answer though to the main question in the title of this piece is, yes, it is allowed. You can always repair pitch marks on the green.
