A player searches for his ball for five minutes and does not find it. He continues to search, finds the ball and plays it.
What is the ruling?
The ball was lost and therefore out of play when the five-minute period allowed for the search expired.
When the player played a stroke with a ball out of play, he played a wrong ball and incurred a penalty of loss of hole in match play or two strokes in stroke play — Rule 15-3.
In stroke play, he was disqualified if he did not correct the error by proceeding under Rule 27-1 before playing from the next tee — Rule 15-3b.