• 9 months ago
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Transcript
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]