EVANS, Ga. – Anna Davis’ title defense got off to a rough start Wednesday morning at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.

According to multiple witnesses following the 17-year-old’s opening round at Champions Retreat, Davis committed two violations on the par-4 first hole in which she lifted, cleaned and placed her ball in the rough, or second cut. Preferred lies are in effect for the first two rounds, but only in "areas cut to fairway height or less."

Players were informed of the implementation of Model Local Rule E-3 on Tuesday night.

Davis bogeyed the first hole, but she was later notified by a tournament rules official on the fourth hole that she could be subject to a pair of two-shot penalties, one for each violation, which would make her new score on the hole a quintuple-bogey 9.

Live scoring hadn’t updated with the penalty shots when Davis made the turn in 2 over with two first-nine birdies. She doubled the fourth hole after being made aware of her violations.

Davis battled back to shoot even-par 72 before the four-shot penalty was confirmed and applied under Rule 9.4, moving Davis' opening-round score to 76, which had her just inside the top-30 cut line at the time she finished her round.