In this video, Neil Tappin is joined by resident rules expert Fergus Bisset to run through the 5 rules mistakes that will cost you a one-shot penalty. These would be classed as relatively minor breaches where it wouldn't seem like you're gaining a massive advantage over the field, yet they do still unfortunately incur a penalty under the rules so be sure to watch them all to make sure you don't have to add any unwanted shots to your scorecard.
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00:00Hello and welcome to the London Club and this video which we're going to take a
00:03look at the five golf rules mistakes that everyone should know but that will
00:07only cost you one stroke if you make them. They'll only cost you one stroke
00:12because for the most part they are deemed to be a minor infraction in the
00:16rules but they are well worth knowing because these are mistakes that we can
00:20all make. I'm joined in this video by golf rules expert Fergus Bissett and
00:24finally this video is being sponsored by our very good friends at HalloFresh. We
00:29have an amazing offer for anyone watching this video and more on that
00:32later. Let's get out there onto the golf balls and get started.
00:35Right Fergus, so I have just hit my approach shot into this green and I've
00:40hit it terribly thin, really quite thin. Okay. And before I go about the delicate
00:45process of trying to get this one up and down I quite want to see whether I've
00:48caused any sort of terminal damage to my golf ball. Okay. And now I know I'm now in
00:53danger of incurring a one-shot penalty if I'm not careful. Come to the rescue
00:58tell me what I can and can't do. Okay. Rule 4.2c part 1. It trips off the tongue. It does.
01:06Now if you were not reasonably sure that there had been damage to your ball you
01:12would not be able to lift it. You could incur a one-stroke penalty for lifting
01:15it if you didn't really believe that there was some damage to it. Oh really? Oh right. So the fact that I have hit this terribly thin is okay.
01:20That's okay. So you're okay. Now you have to mark your ball before you lift it. If you
01:26didn't mark it like that and you lifted it you would incur one-shot penalty. Okay.
01:32So I'm okay so far. So you're okay. Now you can have a look at it. Now it looks
01:37pretty clean but if your ball had some dirt on it you would not at this point
01:41be able to clean it. If you cleaned it, even to have a look if it was cut or
01:46cracked, you would get a one-shot penalty. Is that right? Okay. So you can't clean the ball,
01:50don't need to clean the ball, there's no mud or dirt and actually the golf ball is
01:55looking perfectly okay. Perfectly okay. In which case you would replace it
02:00carefully and play on. There would be no penalty. My ball, the original position of my
02:05ball was right next to the marker like so. Yep. You have to put it back exactly
02:11as it was. So I have to put it back like that. So anything else than that is wrong.
02:15Any other spot, you have to put it back on the exact spot. Correct. So clearly if I put
02:19it back there, that's incorrect. That's incorrect. That would be in
02:24contravention of 14.2b2. Okay. You would be incorrectly replacing a ball. Now in
02:30this scenario, what if I go okay well I put it back in the wrong spot so I'm
02:33just gonna pop it into the right spot. That's now in the right spot isn't it? It
02:36is in the right spot. However, it's still an incorrect replacement of the
02:41ball. You have to replace the ball by hand on the exact spot. Do you? So in that
02:45case, you again would be one-stroke penalty territory. Right so before picking
02:50up the tee, I need to pick it up, pop it back down again.
02:54Yeah. Okay we're all good. Yeah that's on the exact spot. No penalty. You have now no
02:59one-stroke penalties. Okay fine. This is looking, the grass underneath this ball is
03:04looking very tight. Yeah. Oh not bad. It's a slightly fat but it's
03:14trundling down there quite well actually. I'll take that. Okay so there
03:16you have it. If you're unsure whether you might have damaged your golf ball, you
03:19are allowed to check but just make sure you mark it, you place it back exactly as
03:23it was and that you don't clean it. You'll avoid a one-stroke penalty. Right
03:28so I've got two words for you Fergus. Slow play. And actually slow play can
03:32cost you penalty shots or in this specific scenario, penalty shot. Explain
03:38to me Fergus what we're talking about specifically. Okay so I've just missed a
03:42putt. I'm a bit frustrated about that and I want to have another go. I'm
03:46allowed to do that. Yeah you're allowed to do that. Rule 5.5b, you're allowed to have
03:49another go. But rule 5.6a, you are not allowed to unreasonably delay play. Okay.
03:56If there was a group behind waiting to play their shot and I spent five minutes
04:01desperately trying to hold this putt, I would be unreasonably delaying play. I'd
04:04be in contravention of that rule and it'd be a one-shot penalty. Yeah so this
04:08specifically relates to practicing on the golf course doesn't it? So why do you
04:11think it's only a one-shot penalty then? Well I think it's just a minor blip that
04:15first time. You've just made a mistake. You maybe haven't noticed the people
04:17behind you. You weren't intentionally unreasonably delaying play. So it's a
04:21one-shot penalty. But if you keep doing it, if you're sort of so oblivious to the
04:25group behind you, you just keep doing it through the round, what happens in that
04:28scenario? Well it can escalate. If you break that rule for a second time,
04:32say you did the same thing on the next green, it's general penalty. So two shots.
04:36If you did it another time, the following green, you'd actually be disqualified. Okay
04:40so I think in all of these rules we are talking about what happens when you are
04:44playing in competition, not when you're playing friendlies with your friends.
04:46However, I think with this particular scenario, I think we both agree that
04:50anytime you're unduly delaying play is not a good thing. You try and keep up
04:55with play. If you can do that in competition, then you'll avoid
04:58any of these penalty related scenarios. Okay so I've just taken a free drop away
05:04from an immovable obstruction. Now Fergus, you told me that I've incurred in the
05:08process of doing that a one-shot penalty. Enlighten me, what exactly did I
05:13get wrong here? Because it felt like I did a lot of stuff correctly. You did do
05:16a lot of stuff correctly but I'm afraid you were in contravention 14.3b
05:22taking an incorrect drop. You ascertained your nearest point of relief. You did
05:28that correctly. Well done. Thank you. You marked that. Very good. You used the
05:33driver correctly. No club cover on it. Perfect. Measured it. Marked the spot.
05:39One club length. One club length. Thereby establishing your relief area. You dropped
05:44the ball in that relief area. Correct. Unfortunately, you dropped the ball at
05:50shoulder height. And not at knee height. So knowing how particular the
05:56rules are about these things, again it does lead me to think why is that only a
06:01one-shot penalty and not two-shot? Why is that not the general penalty? Good
06:04question. I think a one-shot penalty is given when the breach of the rules is
06:09deemed to gain only minor advantage. Now in this instance, the advantage you have
06:14gained is possibly not. But you have actually not gone by the rules.
06:18So it would be unfair to give you a two-shot penalty for doing something
06:22that didn't give you a huge advantage. Now, you know, you could have redropped
06:28and incurred no penalty. If you had remembered. If I hadn't have played the shot.
06:33The problem was that you played the shot. Okay. And then that is when the one-shot
06:37penalty comes into play. So it's a minor raffle and knuckles for that
06:42particular incursion of the rules. It's not the worst offence anyone's ever
06:45committed but it's enough to get you a penalty shot. Right, we're going to take a
06:49quick break from talking about the rules of golf for a word from our sponsors at
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08:15that you won't have to worry too much about what's going on in the kitchen and
08:19you can focus much more on your golf. Okay so for this one we are talking about
08:24accidentally moving a ball that is at rest. There's probably two scenarios that
08:29I can think where that would be most likely probably which would be mindlessly
08:33wandering around and you accidentally kick your ball or a scenario like this
08:37where you're about to hit your shot, you put the club behind the ball and you
08:39accidentally, as I've just done there, you nudge the ball, it's gone, it's rolled off
08:44its axis, it's off, it's close to the hole it was before. Yeah. Tell me Fergus, I
08:48can just replace that without penalty. No, I'm afraid not. But I can on the tee. You could, if you had done it on the tee, you haven't
08:55started the hole yet, you would just put the ball back on the tee. If you knock it
08:58off, there's no penalty there but unfortunately you have started the hole.
09:02Rule 9.4b, ball has been moved at rest, it's a one-shot penalty and you must
09:09replace the ball where it was. If you played it from there, that would be ball
09:13played from the wrong place which would incur a further general two-stroke penalty.
09:17Two-stroke penalty. So we're back to our position, back to our thing about moving
09:21the ball back. I don't need to mark the position, I'm putting it back to where it was. No, you just replace it by hand.
09:25Which is here. Yeah. So probably there. Does the same thing apply that we talked
09:29about earlier in the video? If I use my club just to nudge it back? Again, yes, so
09:34you'd be in danger of having one-shot penalty for moving a ball at rest and
09:39then incorrectly replacing the ball if you rolled it back. So yeah, be careful
09:43when you're doing that. Do you know, this is a rule that I play a lot of golf with my
09:47ten-year-old son. He often puts his club behind the ball a bit too close and
09:51then just nudge it and he just, he looks at me and I say to him, I think you might
09:55have incurred a penalty shot there. He looks to me as if to say, what are you
09:58talking about dad? How is there any advantage from that? I think, and that again is
10:02what we're talking about, the advantage is minor. It's not, you know, that's why
10:07it's only a one-shot penalty. So as long as you put it back, it's a one-shot
10:09penalty but it is still a penalty. Yeah, another one that's really well worth
10:13keeping an eye out for. So for our last one-shot penalty rule Fergus, we've gone
10:19for one of the most common rules, scenarios people might face on the golf
10:23course and that's hitting a ball out of bounds. Now you are gonna have to use
10:26your imagination slightly. Imagine that down the right-hand side of this hole
10:29over my left shoulder is a row of white stakes and I've just sprayed one way
10:35right Fergus. Yeah. And explain to me why we're talking about that in this video?
10:39Well I think people would think that going out of bounds is, it is a
10:45monumentally awful thing to do isn't it? You really feel like you've
10:48thrown shots away and it feels like two penalty shots doesn't it? Yeah because
10:53you're teeing another one up. But in fact the penalty is only one shot, rule 18, a
10:58ball out of bounds. One penalty shot applies and of course how to proceed if
11:03you do hit one out of bounds is that you have to re-tee from the position
11:07that you've hit before. So it's stroke and distance. The one penalty shot is all
11:12that there is though and then you're playing a third shot from here. So it
11:16seems extremely harsh but in fact it's one of the few scenarios where you only
11:21incur one penalty shot for your misdemeanor. But as you say it feels like
11:24a two-shot penalty and also worth pointing out as we often say the old
11:28provisional ball rule is worth mentioning in this scenario because if you're not
11:32100% sure it's out. Yes then you've got to hit a provisional ball, you've got to
11:35announce it's a provisional ball. You might well find your one down there, you
11:39might not. But if you've hit your provisional you'll at least have
11:41something in play. Yeah so next time you spray a ball out of bounds think to
11:44yourself oh it's not so bad, it's only a one-shot penalty. So there you have it.
11:49Those are the five golf rules mistakes that will only cost you one shot. Now one
11:53shot is still a lot. They're well worth avoiding. If you do have any questions at
11:58all about any of the content in this video post them below. We'd love to hear
12:01your thoughts and of course hit the like and subscribe button as well. But
12:05that's it for now from the London Club. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time.