Home › Golf Guides

Pitch Mark Repairer: How to Fix a Ball Mark Properly, What the Rules Let You Repair, and Which Tool to Carry

A pitch mark repairer is the one piece of kit every golfer should carry and most use badly. A ball landing on a soft green leaves a dent with a torn back edge, and repaired the right way it closes up and heals quickly. Repaired the wrong way, by levering the middle up, it tears the roots and leaves a brown scar that lasts for weeks. The Rules of Golf also let you repair far more on the putting green than many golfers realise, including spike marks. Here is the technique, what Rule 13.1c allows, and the tool to buy.

How to repair a pitch mark properly

1. Find it. Walk to where your ball landed, not where it finished. On a soft green the mark can be a couple of metres short of the ball.
2. Insert at the edge. Push the prongs into the turf just outside the rim of the dent, at an angle, not into the hollow itself.
3. Push the edges in. Ease the tool towards the centre so the surrounding turf moves inwards over the hole. Work your way round the mark from three or four points. The aim is to close the gap with living turf.
4. Do not lift. Levering the centre upwards, which is how most golfers were taught, tears the roots underneath. The grass in the middle then dies, and you are left with a raised brown blemish.
5. Tap it flat. Press the repair level with the sole of your putter or your foot, so a ball will roll across it smoothly.

Do it straight away. A fresh mark closes cleanly; one that has dried out in the sun is far harder to fix. And repair your own mark plus one more: a green that takes hundreds of approach shots a day relies on golfers sharing the work.

What Rule 13.1c lets you repair

Under Rule 13.1c of the Rules of Golf, you may repair damage on the putting green without penalty, whether your ball is on the green or off it. You may also remove sand and loose soil from the green. The repair must reasonably restore the green to its original condition, and it must be done with your hand or foot, a normal ball-mark repair tool, a tee, a club or similar normal equipment, without unreasonably delaying play.

The Rules define damage widely. It includes:

• ball marks;
• spike and shoe marks, including scrapes from equipment or the flagstick;
• old hole plugs, turf plugs and the seams of cut turf;
• animal tracks and hoof prints;
• embedded objects such as stones, acorns or tees, and the indentations they leave.

It does not include aeration holes or grooves from vertical mowing, damage from irrigation, rain or other natural forces, natural imperfections such as weeds or bare patches, or the natural wear of the hole. You cannot "repair" those. If you go further than restoring the green, for example by pressing down a path to the hole, or use an object that is not allowed, you get the general penalty under Rule 8.1a: two strokes in stroke play, loss of the hole in match play.

Spike marks were added to the list in the 2019 rewrite of the Rules. Before then you could not tap them down on your line, which is why older golfers sometimes hesitate.

Which pitch mark repairer to buy

Many repairers carry a magnetic ball marker in the handle, which saves carrying two things; see our ball marker guide. A tee works in an emergency and is explicitly allowed, but its single point makes it hard to close a mark properly. Whatever you buy, keep it in the same pocket every round so you reach for it out of habit. Thin prongs work better than thick ones, which tear the surface.

At Lullingstone Park

From autumn into spring the greens at Lullingstone Park are softer, so approach shots plug deeper and leave bigger marks, and each one matters more because the grass grows slowly in the cold. Our winter golf rules and winter course conditions pages explain what changes on the course. If you are new to the game, golf etiquette and pace of play covers the other habits that keep a course in shape, and how to read a green covers what to do once the mark is fixed.

Sources: R&A Rules of Golf, Rule 13: putting greens.