Rule 17.1 · Video, 57 seconds
Ball in a yellow penalty area: where can you drop?
Your approach is too long and too far right, bounces behind the green and kicks into the stream. North of the bridge the stream is marked with yellow stakes, south of it with red ones. Which options you have depends on where the ball last crossed the edge of the penalty area, not on where it lies in the water. Here that was in the yellow section, so the rules for a yellow penalty area apply.
The three options
- Play it as it lies. If the ball is playable, you may play it out of the stream without penalty.
- Back to where you played from. With one penalty stroke you play again from the spot of your last stroke, see stroke and distance.
- Back on the line. With one penalty stroke you draw a line from the hole through the crossing point and go back on it as far as you like, see back-on-the-line relief. In the video that puts you on the far side of the stream, and you play back across it to the green.
No lateral relief with yellow
Dropping within two club-lengths of the crossing point is lateral relief, and that is only allowed when the ball last crossed the edge of a red penalty area. With yellow, you always go back.
You do not need to find your ball: if it is virtually certain that it is in the penalty area, you take relief from the estimated crossing point. If that is not the case, the ball is lost.