Who is right

Recently I read a story about the golf, there also including one question about the rule of golf games. Read the story followed and then we can have the question. Test yourself to see if you are familiar with those rules or not.

Brigid, Christie and Pat are playing the final hole of their club championship. Brigid pulls her shot from the fairway, and it strikes the cart of the head professional and ricochets 100 yards behind her into thick brush. She deems her ball unplayable, elects to proceed under Rule 28a and plays a ball from where she had played her previous stroke. Her next golf shot comes to rest a foot from the hole, and she holes out.

Pat’s shot from the rough is a towering 9-iron that comes to rest in the branches of a tree overhanging the green. She identifies her ball in the tree and deems it unplayable. She proceeds under Rule 28c and drops a ball on the green within two club-lengths of the spot on the green immediately below the spot where the ball lies in the tree. She has her golf putter.
Christie’s shot from the fairway comes to rest 5 feet below the hole.

She needs to hole out in three putts to win, but she hits her putt too hard and is left with a difficult downhill 2-foot putt. Concerned that her next putt may run several feet by the hole, she deems her ball unplayable, proceeds under Rule 28a and places her ball on the spot 5 feet below the hole and holes the putt for the win.

Which players have proceeded correctly?
a) All of them
b) Brigid and Christie
c) Brigid and Pat
d) Christie and Pat

The correct answer is a. Brigid was entitled to proceed under Rule 28a even though she was playing her next golf stroke from a spot nearer the hole than where her ball came to rest. Whereas normally a player places a ball on the green when proceeding under a rule, Pat’s situation illustrates one of the few times when a player drops a ball on the green. As a player may deem her ball unplayable anywhere except in a water hazard, Christie was permitted to deem her ball unplayable rather than attempt the downhill putt.
 

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