10-Pound Bass Swallows Charl Schwartzel's Golf Ball at LIV New York

Q: Why did a bizarre animal encounter at a major golf tournament cost a former champion a crucial penalty stroke?

Charl Schwartzel was penalized because his ball had already entered a penalty area before the fish swallowed it. At LIV Golf New York at Trump National Bedminster, Schwartzel’s tee shot on the par-3 seventh landed on the green, spun backward, and rolled into the pond beside the hole. Almost immediately, a largemouth bass leapt up and took the ball. The moment was bizarre, but under the Rules of Golf, the key issue was not the fish itself — it was where the ball was when that happened. Golf rules generally treat an animal as an “outside influence.” If an animal moves a ball that is at rest, the player can usually replace it without penalty. But that protection did not help Schwartzel because the ball had already come to rest in the water hazard, now called a penalty area. Once there, he had to proceed under penalty-area relief rules unless he chose to try to play it as it lay. Because the ball was effectively lost in the penalty area after the fish took it, Schwartzel took relief and incurred the standard one-stroke penalty. He went on to make bogey on the hole. So the strange animal encounter did not create the penalty by itself; the penalty was triggered because the shot had already finished in the pond.

3 articles · Updated · Fox News · Aug 11

Charl Schwartzel lost a tee shot to a fish at LIV Golf New York when his ball spun off the 134-yard par-3 seventh green and into a pond at Trump National Bedminster.
A seemingly largemouth bass burst from the water the instant the ball landed and swallowed it, matching the species' reputation for striking almost anything that fits in its mouth.
Golf's rules did not spare Schwartzel because the ball had already entered a penalty area, so he took relief, added 1 stroke and made bogey.
The episode added an unusually dramatic wildlife moment to a sport already used to animal interruptions, from birds and snakes to bears and moose.