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We exist to help golfers get more out of the game they love. Our team of passionate golfers and experts produce authoritative in-depth reviews of the latest golf equipment to help you buy better, tips and advice to improve your game, ideas for golf courses to play and places to stay and coverage of the game at every level from grassroots up to Tour.
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SportsTranscript
00:00 In this video we are talking about air shots and what happens under the rules of golf if you attempt to hit the ball and you fail to make contact.
00:08 And I guess Jez there's two scenarios. There's one where the ball's sitting perfectly well and you attempt to hit it and you miss it.
00:15 Which is probably something that higher handicap golfers might do from time to time.
00:19 There's also another scenario where your ball's sitting up in the rough like in this scenario.
00:24 Fluffy stuff.
00:25 If you're trying to make good contact with the ball, often it will be a chip shot around the greens and the club just goes straight underneath it and you don't make contact with the ball.
00:33 Now, what happens in that scenario? Are you penalised?
00:37 Well, you're not penalised as such but the important thing here is whether you were intending to hit the ball.
00:44 And a stroke is defined as the forward movement of the club made to strike the ball.
00:49 So if that was your intention, it makes no difference whether you make contact with the ball or not. It is a stroke.
00:55 Therefore, the penalty, which isn't really a penalty, is just another stroke on your score.
00:59 It counts. It counts as one.
01:01 It basically counts. If you tried to hit the ball and missed it, it counts.
01:04 Now, there are a couple of other things to talk about here. One of the scenarios that we thought about was if your ball's in a tree.
01:10 Well, this came up in a recent piece we did in the magazine.
01:14 If the ball's in a tree, you can't reach it, so you decide to hit another branch to make the ball move.
01:20 Does that count as a shot?
01:22 It doesn't count as a shot but what it does mean is that you get penalised for moving your ball at rest under Rule 9.4.
01:30 So the net result is the same. It's another shot on your scorecard.
01:34 So you can't hit something else to make your ball move and expect to get away with it.
01:38 And then what's the last scenario we're going to talk about?
01:41 The last extremely niche scenario that I doubt many people have ever come across in their timing golf is...
01:46 If you have, let us know.
01:48 If the club head separates from the shaft on the backswing, truthfully on the backswing,
01:54 and you then miss the ball on the way down with the remains of the shaft, that would not count as a stroke.
02:00 However, if the club had separated on the downswing, by that point you've made a forward movement of the club with the intention of striking the ball, it would count as a stroke.
02:10 Very niche.
02:12 But hopefully in this scenario, now air shots do happen, hopefully Jez's advice there will explain exactly what to do.
02:18 [Music]