Rules Situation - ball hit OB returned to course

Recently a couple of rules issues raised their heads so for everybody’s education here is how they should have been resolved.  Apologies to those actually involved in the situations if the exact details are a little vague.  

Situation 1 A player play a match, more precisely a 4BBB match, hits their tee shot out right on the 16^th hole.  Suspecting it was out of bounds he played a provisional, again out to the right.  As the player arrives approximately where he hoped his 1^st tee shot was, a passerby, on Snakes Lane, throws a ball back onto the course saying “is this yours?”  Of course the ball is the players 1^st ball.

A ball coming to rest out of bounds is by definition no longer “in play” and the player’s provisional ball becomes their ball in play and they are 3 off the tee!  In this situation the player knows his ball has been thrown back in bounds by an Outside Agency (the passerby) so if he were to attempt to continue playing the ball using his 1^st ball then he would have played a wrong ball and been penalised accordingly – loss of hole in this case.  For those who are interested decision 15/9 covers this.

However, if the ball had been thrown back in bounds but nobody was witness to it being thrown back then, even though strictly the player’s provisional ball is their ball in play, the player is not penalised for paying a wrong ball if he continues playing with his 1^st ball because there is no evidence that the ball had come to rest out of bounds.  This is covered by Decision 15/10 which also deals with the various cases where the true status of the 1^st ball becomes known.