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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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00:00In 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.
00:08And 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.
00:15Yeah.
00:16Which is probably something that higher handicap golfers might do from time to time.
00:19There's also another scenario where the ball's sitting up in the rough like in this scenario.
00:24Fluffy stuff.
00:25If you're trying to make good contact with the ball, often it'll be a chip shot around the greens and the club just goes straight underneath it and you don't make contact with the ball.
00:33Now, what happens in that scenario? Are you penalised?
00:37Well, you're not penalised as such, but the important thing here is whether you were intending to hit the ball.
00:44And a stroke is defined as the forward movement of the club made to strike the ball.
00:49So if that was your intention, it makes no difference whether you make contact with the ball or not.
00:54It is a stroke, therefore the penalty, which isn't really a penalty, is just another stroke on your score.
00:59It counts. It counts as one.
01:00It basically counts.
01:01Yes.
01:02If you tried to hit the ball and missed it, it counts.
01:04Now, there are a couple of other things to talk about here.
01:07One of the scenarios that we thought about was if your ball's in a tree.
01:10Yeah.
01:11Go on, talk me through this one.
01:12Well, this came up in a recent piece we did in the magazine.
01:15If the ball's in a tree, you can't reach it, so you decide to hit another branch to make the ball move.
01:20Yes.
01:21Does that count as a shot?
01:23It 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.
01:30Right, OK.
01:31So the net result is the same. It's another shot on your scorecard.
01:34So you can't hit something else to make your ball move and expect to get away with it.
01:38OK. And then what's the last scenario we're going to talk about?
01:41The last extremely niche scenario that I doubt many people have ever come across in their timing golf is...
01:46If you have, let us know.
01:47If the club head separates from the shaft on the backswing, crucially on the backswing,
01:53and you then miss the ball on the way down with the remains of the shaft, that would not count as a stroke.
02:00However, if the club had separated on the downswing, by that point you've made a forward movement of the club
02:06with the intention of striking the ball, it would count as a stroke.
02:10Niche. Very niche.
02:11Niche indeed.
02:12But hopefully, in this scenario, now air shots do happen,
02:15hopefully Jez's advice there will explain exactly what to do.