The game of golf is full of all kinds of silly written and unwritten rules.
You aren’t supposed to walk in someone else’s line on the green, you can’t ground your club in sand traps, and up until a couple of years ago, you couldn’t putt with the flagstick in.
The rulebook of golf is thick and jam-packed with a lot of dumb, minuscule guidelines. However, this viral video is bringing something up that I’m not sure is covered in the expansive book of golf’s proprieties.
In the footage, a couple of golfers are left in awe as a beetle begins to push a golf ball that is on the fringe area of the green.
The guys can be heard in the video cheering on the bug to push the call closer to the hole:
“Oh, oh, oh, he’s going back after it.
You can tell he (the bug) knows.
Oh, he loves it. Oh, come on!”
The cheers from the golfers seemed to work, because after a few seconds of pushing with all of its might, the beetle manages to push the ball onto the green. The momentum from the push puts the ball within 6 feet of the hole, almost half the distance that the ball rested at originally.
As the ball rolls down towards to the hole, the guys again yell:
“Go, go, go!
Oh my gosh, keep going, that’s unbelievable.
No way!”
The golfers laugh hysterically at the assist from the bug, who looks to turn back around and move away from the green after it successfully pushes the ball. I guess the bug is heading back to the cart and taking the 6 foot putt as a “gimme.”
The video is captioned:
“This bug just made these guys’ day.”
The Golf Channel is right to ask what the ruling is on this one.
However, while I think the ball should be able to played from where it rested after the bug pushed it, the golf rulebook would require you to move it back to where it was originally resting.
The whole incident reminded me of the infamous seagull that stole a ball from PGA pro golfer Brad Fabel on the island green at number 17 at TPC Sawgrass.
I’d say the rule of replacing the golf ball with no penalty favors the golfer in this situation:
