Sometimes your ball comes to rest in a position that it just doesn’t look right. Maybe it’s sitting down a little more than normal, or it’s a soft area and you hit a high shot with the ball looking pretty deep in the grass. Perhaps there are a number of animal holes in the area and it looks like your ball might be sitting in one. The only way you could know if you are allowed to take relief would be to lift the ball.

In this case the Rules let you to lift the ball to figure out whether or not relief is allowed, but there are some steps and restrictions you need to follow:

• You must reasonably believe that the ball might lie in a condition where free relief is allowed.
• You must mark the ball before lifting it.
• You are not allowed to clean the ball while it is lifted.
• If free relief is not allowed, you must replace the ball.

If you don’t mark the ball, clean the ball or lift the ball without that reasonable belief, you get one penalty stroke. If you don’t replace the ball, then you will have played from a wrong place and get the general penalty.

But, if free relief is actually allowed and you take that free relief, then you would not be penalized for doing any of those because the free relief would allow you to lift the ball without penalty.