Be the Referee: Golf Cart Path Roll
By
Paige Winne
MHSAA Director of Brand Management
May 13, 2025
Be The Referee is a series of short messages designed to help educate people on the rules of different sports, to help them better understand the art of officiating, and to recruit officials.
Below is this week's segment – Golf Cart Path Roll - Listen
We’re back on the course today for a golf rules question.
You hit your drive up the left side of the fairway on a hole that slopes up towards the green. Your ball bounces a couple of times and then rolls to the left. Unfortunately, the last bounce it takes is onto the cart path and it proceeds to roll down the path, back towards you, about 50 yards.
Are you allowed to place your ball where it last touched before rolling down the cart path?
No.
You are allowed to take relief from the cart path where the ball stopped rolling, but you can’t move your ball up to where it was before rolling down the path. And the relief you take can’t put the ball closer to the hole than where it stopped rolling. An unlucky break on an uphill hole.
Previous 2024-25 Editions
May 6: Damaged Softball Bats - Listen
April 30: Golf Relief - Listen
April 22: Soccer Scoring Area Penalty - Listen
April 15: Fair or Foul? - Listen
April 8: Girls Lacrosse New Stoppage Rule - Listen
April 1: Base Runner Interference - Listen
March 25: Pine Tar Usage - Listen
March 11: Basketball Replay - Listen
March 4: Gymnastics Deduction - Listen
Feb. 25: Competitive Cheer Inversion - Listen
Feb. 18: Ice Hockey Delay of Game - Listen
Feb. 11: Ski Helmets - Listen
Feb. 4: Wrestling In Bounds or Out? - Listen
Jan. 21: Block or Charge? - Listen
Jan. 14: Out of Bounds, In Play - Listen
Jan. 7: Wrestling Scoring - Listen
Dec. 17: Bowling Ball Rules - Listen
Dec. 10: Neck Laceration Protector - Listen
Dec. 3: Basketball Goaltending - Listen
Nov. 26: 11-Player Finals Replay - Listen
Nov. 19: 8-Player vs. 11-Player Football - Listen
Nov. 12: Back Row Setter - Listen
Nov. 5: Football OT - Listen
Oct. 29: Officials Registration - Listen
Oct. 22: Volleyball Serve - Listen
Oct. 15: "You Make the Call" - Soccer Offside - Listen
Oct. 8: Roughing the Passer - Listen
Oct. 1: Abnormal Course Condition - Listen
Sept. 25: Tennis Nets - Listen
Sept. 18: Libero - Listen
Sept. 10: Cross Country Uniforms - Listen
Sept. 3: Soccer Handling - Listen
Aug. 24: Football Holding - Listen
Bath Finishes Unforgettable Fall with Historic Championship Sweep
October 17, 2026
ALLENDALE – The Bath High School sports community will never forget this fall’s girls golf team, which capped the program’s sixth season Saturday by winning its first MHSAA Finals championship.
And coach Chad Vietzke will remember the pivotal details.
“That they go play golf all the time together, they love being together as a group, and just how close they are,” he said. “Last February, six of these girls met up in stocking caps, and there was snow, and they were hitting range balls at a heated area. And I knew then that we had something special.”
And this weekend, unstoppable.
The Bees carded a two-round 739 at The Meadows at Grand Valley State University, holding off runner-up Kalamazoo Christian as a 19-stroke first-day lead faded to only 14 by the end of the second round. Bath also celebrated sophomore Addilyn Duflo’s 14-stroke individual victory as she carded 152 strokes over 36 holes.
Sophomore Hattie Lalonde tied for 10th individually at 183, while senior Sophia Perales tied for 25th and juniors Mya Vietzke and Brooke Kares rounded out the scoring, contributing one round apiece over the two days.
Bath’s girls golf team has reached the Finals all six seasons of its existence, with the Bees’ previous high finish fifth in 2023. They officially began making their move on this championship Oct. 7 when they claimed a Regional title for the first time. But they’d been building toward this weekend for much longer.
“We’ve grown so much. We were out there working in the winter, out there working in the summer. Every day it’s always drive, drive, drive,” Perales said. “We started (this season) great, and we just got better throughout the year. It just kept getting better and better.”
Duflo is doing the same after a magnificent high school debut. She finished second at the LPD4 Final last season as a freshman, and continued to surge this season. She was medalist at the Regional two weeks ago and entered Saturday’s final round with a nine-stroke lead.
She was the only golfer to break 80 on the weekend – doing so both rounds – and her first-round 73 and two-round score fell just outside the top 10 all-time in LPD4 Finals history.
“I didn’t really think about it, like I could do this sophomore year,” Duflo said. “Knowing last year what happened, it was like yeah, maybe I could do it. But I didn’t think it would be this year.”
Elk Rapids sophomore Piper Smith, Fowler senior Noelle Krepps and Byron junior Adalen Brown all tied for second in the individual standings, carding matching scores of 166.
Elk Rapids as a team finished third, followed by Millington among those that broke 800.
(Photos by High School Sports Scene.)