Can you ground your club in a waste bunker?
Waste areas are unmaintained areas of the course, and if you are in one you are allowed to ground your club. You can also take practice swings in the waste area. However, the action of grounding your club and taking practice swings must not improve conditions affecting your stroke (Rule 8.1).
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.
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).
The definition of bunker is "a specially prepared area of sand, which is often a hollow from which turf or soil was removed." Waste areas are not "specially prepared" (they go unraked, they often have vegetation growing inside them or are also strews with rocks/pebbles, for example) and they are not "hollow(s) from ...
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.
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.
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. The top of the grass may be touched during a practice swing. The penalty for grounding your club is loss of the hole in Match Play or a 2 shot penalty in Stroke Play.
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.
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.
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.
Is a waste bunker a hazard?
Waste bunkers are natural sandy areas, usually very large and often found on links courses; they are not considered hazards according to the rules of golf, and so, unlike in fairway or greenside bunkers, golfers are permitted to ground a club lightly in, or remove loose impediments from, the area around the ball.
A waste bunker or waste area is a natural sandy area on the golf course and unlike in a fairway or greenside bunker, golfers are permitted to ground their clubs lightly and remove loose impediments (which are natural objects such as sticks, leaves or stones).
However, this term has been "borrowed" across the globe to refer to elongated, rectangular traps, oriented parallel to the fairway and sunk quite deep to provide an ominous challenge to any ball that would dare come to rest within this geometric crater.
In a bunker, the club can touch the ground. Please level sand after hitting the ball.
When a player's ball is in a bunker: The player may take unplayable ball relief for one penalty stroke under any of the options in Rule 19.2, except that: The ball must be dropped in and come to rest in the bunker if the player takes either back-on-the-line relief (see Rule 19.2b) or lateral relief (see Rule 19.2c).
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.
Touching the sand with the club right in front of or behind the ball or in the backswing for the stroke continues to be prohibited to make sure the player does nothing to reduce the challenge of playing from the sand; these prohibitions are already well known and followed by almost all players.
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)).
If the player lifts the ball without marking its spot, marks its spot in a wrong way or makes a stroke with a ball-marker left in place, the player gets one penalty stroke. When a ball is lifted to take relief under a Rule, the player is not required to mark the spot before lifting the ball.
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 ...
What happens if you take a drop and then find your ball?
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.
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.
If there's a leaf up against your ball, go ahead and remove it — so long as your ball doesn't move. Similarly, it's OK to clear out pebbles, twigs, leaves, etc., from the area around your ball before setting up for a shot. Just be careful not to touch the sand or move your ball at all.
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)).
A fairly common phrase heard on the course after a poor shot “I'll declare that ball lost”. The problem is that this has no meaning within the rules – under Rule 18.2a the only time a ball is lost is when it is “not found in three minutes after the player or his or her caddie begins to search for it”.
