How to Drop a Golf Ball Correctly: Knee Height, Relief Areas and Re-Drops (Rule 14.3)
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How we wrote this: A plain-English summary of Rule 14 of the official Rules of Golf as published by the R&A, checked October 29, 2026.
Almost every relief option in golf ends the same way: you drop a ball in a relief area. Rule 14.3 says exactly how.
Any ball will do
Rule 14.3a lets you use the original ball or another ball each time you drop or place.
The three requirements of a correct drop
Rule 14.3b says a ball is dropped "in the right way" only when all three are met:
- You drop it yourself. Not your caddie or anyone else. (The Rules include modifications for players with certain disabilities.)
- Straight down from knee height, without throwing, spinning or rolling it, and without it touching your body or equipment before it hits the ground. "Knee height" means the height of your knee when standing, though you don't have to be standing when you drop.
- In the relief area. You may stand inside or outside it. For back-on-the-line relief, you drop on the line, and the spot where the ball lands creates the relief area.
If you drop the wrong way
Under Rule 14.3b(4), drop again correctly. There's no limit on how many times. A wrong-way drop doesn't count toward the two drops below.
If you play a ball dropped the wrong way instead, you get one penalty stroke if you played it from the relief area. If you played it from outside the relief area, you get the general penalty (two strokes in stroke play, loss of hole in match play).
The ball must stay in the relief area
Rule 14.3c:
- If a correctly dropped ball comes to rest in the relief area, relief is complete, and you play it as it lies. It doesn't matter if it touched a person or equipment after hitting the ground.
- If it rolls out, drop a second time.
- If it rolls out again, place a ball on the spot where the second drop first touched the ground.
- If the placed ball won't stay, place it there once more. Then place it on the nearest spot where it will stay, within the Rule 14.2e limits.
Marking and lifting
Rule 14.1 says that before lifting a ball that must be replaced, you must mark its spot. You may lift it yourself or let someone you authorize lift it. Cleaning is allowed in most cases, but the R&A lists exceptions, such as lifting just to identify the ball.
Related: free relief (Rule 16), penalty areas, unplayable ball and the putting green, where you place rather than drop.