Ball Missing in Fairway but Obviously Not Lost

When a player cannot find a ball that he has clearly and unmistakably hit into the fairway, he may declare his ball to be "missing but obviously not lost" and drop another ball in the approximate place where his original ball must have come to rest, and play that second ball, without penalty of stroke or distance, provided that he is absolutely and positively convinced beyond all reasonable doubt that his original ball did in fact come to rest in the fairway and that his failure to find it is the result of the unobserved action of an outside agency, the effects of an unexplained phenomenon, the intervention of a sinister force, or the occurrence of a supernatural event