Veteran pro Mike Lynch has taken over the top spot of the North Florida Junior Golf Foundation that has been so successful in providing tournaments here for our kids.

Lynch runs his own marketing business and you'll remember his days as head pro at Windsor Parke and his work as president of the local PGA chapter.

Lynch takes over from Marla Anderson-Smith, who has been the foundation's president since 2008.

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Two rules tests from the Hayt Invitational at Sawgrass:

1. A Florida player's ball ended up high in a palm tree. No way to climb up and he needs to positively identify the ball, or else he'll have to declare a lost ball and go back and hit again. If he can identify it, he can take an unplayable lie, leave the original ball in the tree, drop another and proceed from there with a one-shot penalty.

The wind is blowing hard and the palm fronds sway back and forth, giving him a view of the ball. He has a range finder and uses it to spot the Florida Gator logo and a mark that he says is his. He states that he has positively identified it and is declaring it unplayable, and that he'll drop another ball.

Suddenly, a gust of wind comes and blows the ball out of the tree. It is, indeed, his ball.

But ...

a. Is using a range finder/binocular within the rules to identify your ball?

b. After he declared it unplayable and then the ball came down, can he proceed without penalty?

Answer to both: yes. The rules official onsite, Timuquana's Tom Dudley, could find nothing in the rules to say otherwise.



2. The second came on the 18th hole, a reachable par 5. A player hit his second shot 240 yards and it trickled over the green. When the group arrived, they couldn't find the ball. There is water to the left but all agreed that it couldn't have been near that. After the 5-minute limit, the player returned to the fairway, hit again and found disaster: in the water, drop, chip, two putts and an 8, instead of chipping for a 3.

Dudley still didn't believe that the ball was lost and returned to look around the green, and a spectator approached. He had found a ball, he said, that must have fallen out of the bag in the group ahead of the one with the disaster. Would Dudley return it to him?

Obviously, it was the "lost ball" and the spectator didn't believe that anyone could reach the green, so he picked it up.

So ...

Can the player return to the 18th green, drop the ball where it had come to rest, and replay the hole?

Answer: It's called "rub of the green." Too late, too bad.

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Big hitter in town is UNF's Joey Marino, who bombed the 550-yard par-5 8th hole with a driver-wedge.

His dad, former Miami Dolphins QB Dan Marino, visited on Sunday and walked a few holes with our mark McCumber, whose son Tyler was playing.



- Fred Seely is editor of Golf News.