Rules Guy: Can you take free relief from an animal hole in a tree?

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My golf buddies were playing a money game. One friend hits his second shot into hole in the trunk of a large, living tree. His ball came to rest in a burrowing animal hole — likely mole or gopher — inside the trunk. He took a free drop correctly…but was it proper? Without the burrow, the ball was definitely not playable. 
—Scott Bie, Sacramento, Calif.

Alas, your pal is going to want to crawl into a hole after reading this.

An animal hole that qualifies as an abnormal course condition — from which you get free relief — is defined as “any hole dug in the ground by an animal, except for holes dug by animals that are also defined as loose impediments (such as worms or insects).”

Those three little words, in the ground, did him in. He gets the general penalty (two strokes in stroke play or loss of hole in match play) under Rule 14.7 for playing from a wrong place since he wasn’t allowed to lift the ball in the first place and did not replace it as required by Rule 9.4b.

Had he called it unplayable to begin with, he could have escaped with just one penalty stroke. It’s all enough to make you want to smash your tree-iron…. Sorry, couldn’t resist. What? You expected a “gopher is a varmint” reference? Puh-lease.

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