{"id":418910,"date":"2026-01-19T07:52:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T07:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/418910\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T07:52:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T07:52:10","slug":"my-club-just-touched-the-ground-in-a-penalty-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/418910\/","title":{"rendered":"My Club Just Touched The Ground In A Penalty Area"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your ball has rolled into the edge of a red penalty area<\/a>, past the red stakes, but it has stopped just before tumbling into the water. You can play it.<\/p>\n

You take your stance and rehearse the shot you are going to attempt. But, in so doing you brush the ground with your club as you make your practice swing.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Are you in trouble? Have you broken a Rule<\/a> and will you be facing a penalty?<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Up until the Rule changes of 2019, you would indeed have been facing a penalty.<\/p>\n

Before then, you couldn\u2019t touch the ground in a penalty area (then known as a water hazard), neither could you remove loose impediments, nor could you take a practice swing that touched the ground.<\/p>\n

But in 2019, the Rules were relaxed. Now there is no penalty for touching the ground either with your hand or with a club in a penalty area.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no penalty for removing loose impediments and there\u2019s no penalty if you touch the ground in a penalty area when you make a practice swing.<\/p>\n

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What you can\u2019t do though, is cause the ball to move.<\/p>\n

If you made a practice swing that touched the ground and in so doing caused the ball to move off its original spot, you would have broken Rule 9.4b and would incur a penalty stroke.<\/p>\n

Then, if that happened, you would have to return the ball to its original spot before making a stroke at it.<\/p>\n

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If you didn\u2019t return it to its original spot, you would be in breach of Rule 14.7 \u2013 Playing from a wrong place. That would cost you the general penalty of two strokes in stroke play or loss of hole in match play.<\/p>\n

Although you can touch the ground in a penalty area with your practice swing, it\u2019s worth remembering that you can\u2019t touch the ground with your club in a practice swing if your ball lies in a bunker<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If that happens, you receive the general penalty.<\/p>\n

So, the answer to the question \u2013 My club just touched the ground in a penalty area during my practice swing. What is the ruling? Is \u2013 there is no penalty so long as you didn\u2019t cause the ball to move.<\/p>\n

Rules Quiz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your ball has rolled into the edge of a red penalty area, past the red stakes, but it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-418910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}