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Lost ball - Taking reasonable actions to find and identify ball
You may fairly search for the ball by taking reasonable actions to find and identify it, such as:
  • Moving sand and water, and
  • Moving or bending grass, bushes, tree branches and other growing or attached natural objects, and also breaking such objects, but only if such breaking is a result of other reasonable actions taken to find or identify the ball.
If taking such reasonable actions as part of a fair search improves the conditions affecting the stroke there is no penalty. But if the improvement results from actions that exceeded what was reasonable for a fair search, you get the general penalty.
Related Rule - 7.1a