Severe storms rolling through New Orleans have already delayed the third round of the 2026 Zurich Classic by 15 minutes, and the weather is not getting better. With a 55% chance of afternoon rain and wind gusts up to 28 km/h expected at TPC Louisiana, the PGA Tour had a decision to make heading into the weekend.

Preferred lies will be in effect for the third round of the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. This rule lets players pick up, clean, and move their ball to closely mown areas instead of playing it from where it lands. That makes a big difference, especially for a $9.5 million event where every stroke matters.

There is a reason for the rule. When it heavily rains, mud sticks to the ball on fairways and changes its flight in ways that have nothing to do with how well a player hit it. It’s really unfair to hit a perfect drive down the middle of the fairway and still get a bogey because of a mud ball. This has happened many times in recent Tour history.

At the 2025 PGA Championship at Quail Hollow, the PGA of America chose not to enforce preferred lies, even though the course was very wet. Xander Schauffele and Scottie Scheffler both made that point very clear.

Schauffele called it “kind of stupid,” saying he was “50/50 once you hit the fairway.” Scheffler called it “frustrating,” noting that a mudball cost him a double bogey on the 16th hole. Both felt a rules decision had turned a skills competition into a lottery.

Not everyone, though, welcomes the rule. A section of golf purists views preferred lies as the Tour softening the game, and that reaction surfaced again when the rule was applied at the 2025 Tour Championship. Fans took to social media, calling the tour a “joke” and an “unserious organization” for sanitizing the conditions.

Meanwhile, at the top of the leaderboard, Alex Smalley and Hayden Springer sit at 16 under par after Round 2 at the Zurich Classic, with 11 teams tied for 26th just six strokes back. The weather may decide as much as the golf from here.

Notably, it’s not the first time the preferred lie rule has been used by the PGA Tour this season.

PGA Tour’s Preferred Lies rule: A pattern that keeps repeating itself

After heavy rain hit TPC San Antonio during Round 3 of the 2026 Valero Texas Open, the PGA Tour once again used preferred lies. Officials let players lift, clean, and place to lessen the effects of mud and wet fairways since more rain was expected on Sunday.

The move is part of a pattern that has happened before, not just this time. Players had to deal with inconsistent lies even when they found fairways, which made the outcomes unpredictable. The Tour wanted to make sure that scoring was based on how well players did instead of how the weather changed during the final round.

The same thing happened at the 2025 Tour Championship at East Lake. At first, officials wanted to make the course harder by making the greens faster and the rough thicker, but the rain kept coming, so they had to change their minds. The preferred lies were added to keep shots that were affected by mud from deciding the outcome.

The same thing happened at other events, like the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, where the weather forced changes again.

The rule helps keep things fair when things get tough, but it gets a lot of criticism from people who think it takes away from the sport’s traditional challenge.