Can you ground your club in a bunker after your shot?
Not allowed to ground your club in the bunker
In a bunker, the club can touch the ground. Please level sand after hitting the ball. Some golf courses have bunkers (sandy covered bare ground, sandbox) as obstacles to make park golf more interesting. A little attention is required to hit the ball which is in a bunker.
You may then drop your ball within 1 club length from that point, no nearer to the hole at no penalty. 10. Grounding Your Club in a Hazard Practice swings may be taken inside a hazard as long as you don't touch the ground, sand or water with your club.
Q. When may I rake the bunker? A. When your ball is in a bunker, you may rake the bunker at any time to care for the course as long as you do not improve the conditions affecting your upcoming stroke (this means to improve your lie, area of intended stance, area of intended swing or line of play) (see Rule 12.2b(2)).
Regardless, under Rule 12.2b, it's the general penalty of two strokes in stroke play and loss of hole in match play for touching the sand in a bunker with a practice swing.
Conversely, here's what you still aren't allowed: Grounding your club at address in the sand prior to the stroke. Touching the sand during a practice swing or with your backswing.
A. Touching the sand with your club immediately in front of or behind your ball, during a practice swing or during your backswing is a penalty (see Rule 12.2b(1)). If you do this, you get a loss of hole penalty in match play or two penalty strokes in stroke play.
Additionally, players are now allowed to repair almost any damage to the course, such as spike marks on the green. The changes also include simplifying the rules for bunkers, allowing players to touch or move loose impediments in a bunker and ground their club in the sand before making a stroke.
The shoulder-height drop is a thing of the past. Now when you have to take a drop, be it for free relief or after hitting into a hazard, the procedure is to drop from knee height. Grounding the club in a hazard. Gone, too, is the penalty for grounding your club or removing loose impediments in a hazard.
A player is allowed to touch or move loose impediments and touch the ground with hand or club (such as grounding the club right behind the ball) for any reason, subject only to the prohibition on improving conditions for the stroke (see Rule 8.1a).
Can you take an unplayable from a sand trap?
If you don't want to or decide you can't play your ball as it lies when your ball is in a bunker, you may decide it is unplayable. If you do this, you have four total options, and two will always require that you take relief inside the bunker. You have three one penalty stroke relief options.
Deliberately testing the condition of the sand with a hand or club continues to be prohibited because part of the player's challenge is to assess and predict how the sand may affect the stroke, and also because it is time consuming and inappropriate for players to dig in the sand with a hand or club for that purpose ...
- Deliberately touch sand in the bunker with a hand, club, rake or other object to test the condition of the sand to learn information for the next stroke, or.
- Touch sand in the bunker with a club:
You can practice in the sand: Rule 12.2b applies only to the bunker your ball actually lies in. If your ball doesn't lie in a bunker, you're limited only by Rule 8.1, which prohibits improving your line, not testing/practicing/touching sand.
What You Need to Know. There is no relief under this rule for a ball that is embedded in a penalty area or bunker. EXCEPTIONS - There are a few instances when relief is not allowed for a ball that is embedded in the general area. When the ball is embedded in sand that is not cut to fairway height.
Rule 27-1: If a ball is lost as a result of not being found or identified as his by the player within five minutes after the player's side or his or their caddies have begun to search for it, the player must play a ball, under penalty of one stroke, as nearly as possible at the spot from which the original ball was ...
To possibly save time, play a provisional ball if you believe that your original may be lost or out of bounds. If you find your original ball in play, then your provisional is obsolete and you've got to proceed with your original.
When playing a shot from a penalty area, you can remove any detached natural or artificial object (known as loose impediments and movable obstructions), ground your club behind the ball, or take practice swings that touch the ground.
So, in answer to the question in the headline, yes you can, and you can also now remove loose impediments and take practice swings that touch the ground in a penalty area… as long as you don't cause your ball to move in the process or improve the conditions affecting your stroke.
You can't touch the sand with a club either in the area right in front or right behind the ball (unless you're looking for a ball or removing a loose impediment or movable obstruction).
Can you ground your club in a grass bunker?
The definition of bunker tells us that soil, or any growing or attached natural object inside the edge of the bunker, is not, repeat not, part of the bunker. Thus, you could indeed ground your club on the grass itself.
No hand, no club, no tee, no rake, no garden shovel. The penalty also remains the same — the general penalty of two strokes in stroke play and loss of hole in match play.
For a yellow penalty area, you may take relief by dropping into a relief area using (1) the spot at which your last stroke was made under stroke and distance (see Rule 17.1d(1)) or (2) the back-on-the-line relief procedure (see Rule 17.1d(2)).
were a golfer permitted to ground the club within a bunker, the ball would become more exposed, defeating the spirit of playing as it lies. Grounding the club also applies to water hazards.
The loose impediment rule is covered under Rule 15.1 which states, “you may remove a loose impediment without penalty anywhere on or off the course and may do so in any way.”
