Transcript - Episode 17: Bunker Rules Explained - Relief, Penalties, and What Amateurs Get Wrong

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Now, here’s your host, Corey, with another episode of the Birdie Board Podcast.

This is episode 17 of the Birdie Board Podcast.

Been doing it for a long time now, feels like at least three months. Really been enjoying it. And as you guys know, been jumping back and forth between going over rules and trying to figure out what we can do during this winter golf.

I’m pretty excited about at least being halfway through winter. I do golf sim matches every once in a while in the winter. I haven’t done any yet, but I have my first golf sim match on Thursday. So I’m pretty excited about that.

I have barely swung the club in the last two months. Being in the Northeast, the weather is not that great. I used to be in an apartment that had a golf sim, and back in December, I moved out of that apartment and into a house.

So good news is my house actually has tall enough basements for me to fully swing a club. And I’ve done that a little bit. I’ve taken the club and just practiced swung it in my basement. I have one of those hitting bags too. So I feel like I’ve at least gotten a little bit of practice in.

If you remember from one of the episodes with Jeff Jones, the PGA instructor, he recommended just swinging the club for five minutes every day. And he talked about how it’s even beneficial if you’re not hitting a ball.

So I’ve tried to take that advice up a little bit and practice swinging the club, even though I’m not making contact with a ball. I do feel good doing it. I feel like I have a little bit of a technique down. I feel smooth with my swing.

So we’ll see what happens on Thursday with my first golf sim match. It’s just with some buddies of mine. We pair up in teams of two and basically play like a match play type of format. And we each play our own balls, kind of like a best ball type of thing. It’s a lot of fun. I enjoy it a lot, but that’s going to be Thursday. So we’re going to see how that goes.

I’m really looking forward to just actually hitting the ball again after so many months off.

So continuing on with a lot of the series, one of the things I’ve really tackled on this podcast and this off season is just the rules of golf. And I was reviewing what I wanted to do for this podcast, and I’m going over the bunker rules.

And honestly, some of the rules even surprised me. I was shocked by how little I even understood at times with these rules. And I have the rule book in front of me. Like, I’m going over these and studying these. And there are some rules in here that I’m excited to share that could really be advantageous toward bunker play.

And I think for a lot of amateurs, myself included, the bunker can be kind of intimidating. It’s a hard shot for an amateur. Sometimes you are just on it and you have all the confidence in the world and you feel like no bunker can conquer you. Other times you’re going to a bunker and you just know you’re going to add a couple strokes to your score because of it.

So knowing these rules can really help you move forward in your bunker play. So let’s get into it.

The first is just kind of a classification of like what is the bunker. And the important thing to know is the edge of the bunker is classified as being in if the ball is class... Sorry, I’m screwing this up, but I’m going to keep this because I told you back in episode one, I’m going to be as authentic as possible.

So I’m just going to read this rule because it’s not super confusing. It’s just kind of trying to classify what does it mean to be in the bunker. So I’m going to start over.

The ball is classed as being in the bunker if it is touching the sand within it. So any point in the sand. So even if you’re on edge and half your ball looks like it’s in the bunker or something like that, you’re classified to be in the bunker.

So that rarely happens, I think, where you’re like, am I in the bunker or not? Because a lot of times there’s clear edges. If you’re that close to the edge, you’re probably falling back into the bunker at most courses.

So just something to be aware of is like if you’re on edge or something, if you’re touching any sand, you’re classified to being in the bunker.

So let’s start going through some of these unique rules.

The first is if your ball disappears in the sand. So if you’re playing a course with really soft sand that can just kind of consume your ball, you are allowed to look for it, and you’re allowed to use things to look for it, such as your feet, your club, or the rake.

So if you’re looking for your ball and that’s sunk into the sand, you can kind of like poke around with your club, you can poke around with the rake, something like that. And if your ball moves as a result of it, you can put it back without penalty.

Now, the question is, is well, what if it was embedded and things like that? Well, you just kind of put it back in the general area on top. Obviously, you’re not going to be playing, you’re not going to rebury the ball to play it. So you just put it back where you found it and you play the next shot, and you can do this without penalty.

I know at the course I play at, I don’t tend to play bunkers that have that soft of sand, so it’s really not a huge factor for me. But I know every once in a while I get to go to a nicer course that has that soft sand, and it is a possibility. I think it’s a super common rule, but it is good to know that one, you don’t have to play it fully embedded.

This is not embedded relief, we’ll talk about that in a little bit. But if your ball is completely lost, you do get the chance to find it without penalty. It can save you a lot of strokes if you take advantage of this rule.

The next one is identifying the ball. It’s similar to elsewhere on the course. So you are permitted to mark your ball and pick it up and clean it up to the point so you can identify it.

So if there’s two balls in the bunker, or I have been at courses where sometimes the bunker just is like next to a driving range and there’s balls in it that just haven’t been cleaned up, you are allowed to mark a ball and pick it up and look at it, and you’re allowed to clean it enough so you can look at it.

Now, if you clean it more than that, technically it’s a penalty. And that penalty would be a one-stroke penalty.

Now as the amateur, I’m not personally going to be too stingy on that sort of rule for myself. The key is you don’t want to make it seem like you have any advantage by picking it up and placing it. So you’re trying to, when you replace it, you need to have it identical as before. The ball shouldn’t be any cleaner than it was before other than enough to identify it.

Those are the actual rules. Of course, I encourage you all as amateurs to play within your own boundaries. I would say try to follow these rules the best you can, but be lenient where you just think there’s leniency.

So for example, if I was playing this rule, I would mark the ball, maybe not mark the ball. Technically the rule says you have to put a tee in the ground to say where it’s at. I can just use my eyes and see where it’s at. If I don’t have a tee in my pocket or something like that, I’m not going to run back to the bag just to grab a tee. I’ll see where it’s at just by the indentation in the sand.

So I’ll pick it up, look if it’s my ball, put it back right where the indentation is, make sure I don’t clean it any more than I need to, and play my next shot. That’s essentially, I would say, like the spirit of the rule. You just want to make sure you’re not giving yourself any advantage by picking up your ball and looking at it.

So here’s the next one I think is tough to assess your own penalty on, but there’s a reason why this is a rule that actually got me one time. I played a few matches in a golf league one time. It actually really helped me learn the rules years back.

And what this rule is, is you cannot touch the sand with your club when you’re about to hit the ball in the bunker. It might sound like a stupid rule, but the reason is one of the disadvantages of landing in a bunker is you don’t know what your lie is going to be, and that’s intentional and part of the game.

So if you’re able to put your club down behind the ball and touch the sand, then what you’re really doing is you’re feeling the density of the sand. You’re feeling how firm or soft it is, which could influence what type of shot you take.

If it’s really firm, then maybe you do more of a pick off of the top. I know I’ve done that before just because there’s not really a great chance you can dig into it. If it’s really soft, you can really dig into it, or maybe put more power into it.

That kind of advantage unfortunately isn’t allowed in the bunker. And all the best you can do is actually just take the visual test and look at the sand and try to guess, is it firm or is it soft? What sort of lie am I dealing with?

But that’s why that rule exists, is you can’t use your club to try to feel the firmness or the softness or the grit.

Now I would recommend really being attuned with how it feels walking around. That can be really telling, you just can’t do it with your club.

If you do accidentally touch the sand, it is a one-stroke penalty. And if the ball moves in the process, you have to put the ball back in the original lie and try to recreate it as accurate as possible.

You have seen this penalty on tour before. Even if you like graze a grain of sand behind the ball, technically that’s a penalty.

Now as an amateur, I don’t know if I would enforce that just in recreational play. But if you’re ever playing in like a tournament or something like that, it is something to be aware of, and people do, as you can imagine, get really on top of this rule.

This happened to me. I was approaching a shot. I just kind of grazed the sand a little bit behind my ball. Someone was watching me and he went out of his way to make sure I assessed myself a one-stroke penalty. I assessed it. It didn’t really matter to me. I tried to play by the rules. It kind of sucks.

But you see that in the tournaments too, is like guys will assess and will say penalties. And you might be looking on the camera or watching live in person, you’re like, that club doesn’t even look like a touch of sand. But the player knows that it did, and the honest ones will go ahead and assess themselves a penalty because of it.

It’s a tough rule. It’s sometimes done by mistake, but it is the rule of golf and it’s there for a reason.

To try to really punish play, that’s why the bunkers exist, is to kind of punish aggressive play or protect the greens, make shots harder. And they’re designed to punish you if you hit your ball into them.

So this rule is part of that punishment. Just kind of take your medicine. Don’t touch your club to the sand, and you’ll be okay.

So if there’s two balls close to each other, same rule applies just like fairway play. You’re allowed to mark the one ball so that you can go ahead and hit.

The ball that’s marked and picked up, just like looking for your ball or identifying the ball, it can’t be cleaned. And when you put that second ball back, you have to make the lie as accurate as possible.

So if they’re close enough, most likely the first shot is going to cause a bit of a hole in the bunker, so it can be raked, and we have to try to recreate it for that second shot.

This happens a little more often than you might think because a lot of bunkers are kind of sloped inward. So if you’re thinking it’s a harder bunker, maybe really, really firm sand, it does make sense that two balls in the same bunker could kind of roll back to the same spot.

So it is something to be aware of. There’s no penalty around marking your ball or anything. Just try to be fair. Try to recreate that lie so that you can move forward without any penalty.

So the next one is, again, probably a rule amateurs can kind of break just playing with friends. But this is the actual rule, is the advice of the line sometimes.

So sometimes you’re in a deep bunker or just the angle of the bunker makes it difficult to know where you’re making your shot or what angle of the shot. You are allowed to ask opponents what angle to shoot at.

So like have your buddy or someone like that say, “Hey, I can’t see the flag. Can you just stand real quick like in line with me and the flag so I have an aiming point?”

They are allowed to do that. The same rules though apply also about club selection, where you are not allowed to ask or solicit advice about the club selection.

Again, where amateurs I don’t think many of us are going to care that much, or for being honest, if it’s going to make that much of a difference. But in normal competitive play, if you’re following the actual PGA rules, you’re not allowed to ask for club selection advice or anything like that.

But you are allowed to ask for the line of play from your opponent, so take advantage of that. But don’t be too strict. I don’t think it’s changing too much for many of us if we ask for what club we should play.

Most likely we’re all playing the same club out of a bunker anyways. I pretty much have one go-to club, it’s not really changing much for me.

So loose impediments, kind of same as throughout the rest of the course. Rocks, twigs, leaves, things like that, you are allowed to move it. Just be careful not to move your ball in the process.

If your ball does move by mistake, it’s a one-stroke penalty and you have to put it back where it was.

We have movable objects rules. So the main movable object in a bunker is a rake. If it is affecting your ball, then you are allowed to move it without penalty. You have to replace your ball back where it was.

So sometimes this is not even happening to me. If your ball is like leaning up against the rake or something like that, you are allowed to put your ball back where it was. Just move the rake. If it rolls, you play where it lies, things like that.

If the rake is just in your line or something like that with your swing or just kind of in the way, you’re allowed to move it without penalty. Just do it. It’s not a big deal.

Take advantage of it though. Even if it’s in your line of sight, it might be worth moving just to remove the distraction.

Alright, so this is a big one, especially for casual golfers who may not be playing the best courses in the world, or more namely courses with the best drainage.

So I’m sure this has happened to all of us where we approach a bunker that we’ve hit our ball to and there is standing water in it. And what do you do with that standing water?

It starts with identifying how bad of a condition is it.

So if only part of the bunker is in water, or this also applies to like an animal hole or something like that, so some sort of abnormal bunker condition, most likely it’s for us, it’s water, you have two options in this case.

First, before you consider your options, you have to see is there an area of the bunker you can drop your ball, because that leads us into option one, which gives you a free drop without penalty if you stay in the bunker.

So if the only part of the bunker is covered in water, or if it’s even smaller like an animal hole or something affecting your ball, you can drop somewhere else in the bunker up to one club length from the hazard.

So if it’s a puddle of water, you can go to the edge of the water and you have one club length you can drop, and you have to stay in the bunker.

So you can’t use this to get out of the bunker without penalty, but if you drop it inside the bunker within one club length of that water hazard, you are allowed to drop without penalty and play your next shot.

Now sometimes you may think, especially if you’re not playing confidently out of the bunker, “Well, I prefer to just drop outside the bunker.”

This is a really important rule to know because this is where you might be able to strategize a little bit. If you’re willing to accept a one-stroke penalty, then you are allowed to drop outside the bunker if there is any level water or abnormal bunker conditions.

Now again, this is giving you a one-stroke penalty, so it’s something you’re going to assess. But this is how the rule is practically.

So with a one-stroke penalty, you can go back on the extension of the line of play. So where your ball is and the flag, you can go backwards from there as far as you’d like, and you can take a drop on that line.

And it doesn’t matter which direction the ball rolls after that drop. Even if it rolls closer, that’s okay in this case.

So if you’re saying, “I’m having a terrible bunker day,” or if you’re like, “This is a big pot bunker,” most likely with where I would have to drop it, even staying within the bunker, it’s still not a realistic shot for me. I’m going to go ahead and take a one-stroke penalty as if I hit it out and drop it back on the line, and then do like a chip shot over the bunker onto the green. It could really save you strokes.

I know there’s multiple cases I can even think of of my golf game last season where this could have been advantageous.

So this is, ever mind you, these rules are if the bunker is like partially in water or it’s partially bad conditions.

So I’m sure many of you are saying, “Well what if the whole thing is filled up with water?”

This happened to me before. I play some courses that just have terrible drainage. The bunkers end up being like a water hazard, things like that.

There are rules around that as well. So if we jump to the next section, which is like what happens if the bunker is completely flooded.

Unfortunately, the official rules in this say that you have no other choice but to take that second relief that incurs a one-stroke penalty.

When I play in course conditions like this, I honestly just take that and don’t take the penalty. Now if I’m playing like competitive or something like that with a friend, I’ll follow this rule.

But I’m thinking like this isn’t necessarily my fault. It’s the same idea behind like if the ball lands in a divot or something like that.

I’ll just take the free relief straight behind the bunker and play it as if my ball landed there.

It’s a weird rule in my mind. It’s like, it’s kind of the course’s fault that the bunker isn’t draining well or something like that.

You guys can play it how you want, but know that in tournament golf or if you are trying to play more competitive, the official rule is that you would have to take a penalty if you hit it into a bunker that’s filled with water.

Of course you can play it out of the bunker if you don’t want to take the penalty. You might just cause a big splash.

Something to keep in mind. It’s a sucky rule, but that is what it is.

Kind of like the divot rule, another sucky rule is if someone before you hasn’t raked the bunker and your ball falls into the hole or a footprint or something like that, then that also has to be played how it lies.

Again, sucky rule. I would probably advise you as amateurs just kind of ignore this in casual play. Rake the bunker, try to make it more of a normal bunker lie.

But if you’re playing tournaments or more competitive, unfortunately you do have to just play the ball as it lies.

This is a good reminder for everyone to rake the bunkers after you hit out of them because this could negatively affect players behind you.

So if you want to, you are able to declare your ball unplayable in the bunker, and you have, believe it or not, four different options you can take in that case.

So I’m thinking one time that I should have declared the ball as unplayable. We don’t have embedded rules in the bunker like we do in the fairway that gives us free relief.

So in the bunker, there was a time that I was embedded at the edge of the bunker, and I had almost a vertical one-foot section above my ball. So I just had no shot out of it.

And I played it as it lies. I took a swing at it and I embedded the ball even more. I took another swing at it, I got it out of the embedded, but it kind of rolled back down in the bunker. I took another swing at it and finally got out.

Well, I could have taken some unplayable ball rules that could have saved me a stroke there if I would have known about them.

And here’s your four options you have if you wanted to declare a ball in the bunker as unplayable.

If you stay in the bunker, you can drop within two club lengths of where your ball is for one-stroke penalty. So this could have really helped me in this case because I could have taken the ball out of the embedded spot, drop one or two club lengths back into a more manageable spot in the sand.

Option number two is if you continue to stay in the bunker, you can go back on the extension line from the hole to the ball and drop on that line. So that’s also a one-stroke penalty.

The third option is, and this might not be reasonable considering pace of play, is you can go back to where you had your last shot and hit from there. Could be an option if you’re not too far from it, like a chip shot or something like that. But that is your third option. That is also a one-stroke penalty.

So you have three options to you that’s only a one-stroke penalty.

Now you do have a two-stroke penalty option, which is the fourth one, is you can go back the extension line of the hole and the outside of the bunker as far back as you would like.

So it could be an option. I don’t see many cases that you would want to do that and take the two-stroke penalty.

I think in a lot of cases, just dropping it in the bunker in a more normal spot within two club lengths, or on the line while staying in the bunker, would be worth it for the one-stroke penalty.

But who knows, maybe you’re just having an absolutely terrible day, or you’re playing super, super difficult bunkers. Maybe it is worth the two-stroke penalty for you.

But it’s important to know your four options here if you want to declare the ball as unplayable.

A few rules here left to cover for bunker play.

If you actually accidentally play the wrong ball out of the bunker, you incur a two-stroke penalty and you have to go back and play the correct ball.

The ball that was played wrong has to be put back and put the best you can in the original lie.

If you hit the ball and it doesn’t get out of the bunker and it rolls back and lands in like your own footprints or something like that, it’s unfortunate, but there’s just nothing you can do. You have to also play that as it lies.

If you were unable to get the ball out of the bunker and it rolls back into it, you are permitted to rake your previous spot and your previous footprints, but you have to start following the normal bunker rules for your next shot from there on out.

At that point, you probably have a pretty good feeling for what the bunker conditions are, so you’re not really giving yourself any advantage by like raking your previous spot or anything like that.

If you hit the ball out of bounds trying to get your ball out of the bunker, or if you hit it to a place you cannot find it, you have to return to the spot you played your last stroke in the bunker and drop within one club length, incurring one penalty stroke. You do have to drop back into the bunker.

Now if this happens, I want you guys all to take advantage of one rule you are allowed to do during this. You are allowed to rake the spot before you drop it.

So this could give you a huge advantage for your next shot. You already took a penalty accidentally hitting it out of bounds. Give yourself the best chance possible to get on the green with the next shot.

Rake it really well, give yourself the grooves you need, whatever you need before you drop, so you have that perfect sand underneath your ball for your next shot. And it will minimize the effect of the sand on your next shot and hopefully save the hole for you.

And then the last bunker rule here, we’ve gone through all the ones that I want to cover today.

The last one used to be a penalty in the PGA. It is not anymore.

If you double hit a ball getting out of the bunker, not a penalty. It just counts as one stroke.

So those are all the bunker rules I wanted to cover today. For me, I think the biggest ones that I think will help my game out is, if I land in a bunker that has partial water, knowing that I can get free relief from that water if I stay in the bunker, or I can just take a one-stroke penalty if I drop out of the bunker. That is really helpful to me.

Knowing that if I hit the ball out of bounds on the bunker shot, I can rake everything before I drop it again. That’s a really good rule for me to know.

That’s happened to me before playing at some of the courses I play at that have like tight boundaries around the green and a bunker and things like that.

I think those are the rules personally that helped me the most. I’m curious to know which ones will help you all the most, so feel free to leave comments or contact me however you want.

I guess some updates for the app, I just released version 11.0.0. 11.0.1 will probably be out soon. And the difference between 11.0.0 and 11.0.1, 11.0.1 just has a few bug fixes for the app that I noticed when I’m doing a little bit of testing.

So not huge bugs that I realized, but just some slowness between like switching rounds and players on the scoring tab, things like that. That should all be fixed.

There was an issue that I fixed a couple versions ago that caused people to get logged out automatically when inactive after a very short period of time or closing the app. That’s fixed now.

So you should stay logged in for up to two weeks of activity. So if you log into the app and you do a match, and then you log in like a week later, that two-week time period refreshes. So as long as you stay somewhat active in the app, it’s not going to log you out.

If you’re inactive for two weeks, you are going to get logged out of the app. It’s just a security thing that I’ve implemented. So just log back in like you normally would.

I set up an email subscriber list. Current users of the app are not opted in automatically. I didn’t think that that would be quite fair.

So if you are interested in signing up for emails, there’s two ways you can do that.

Download the app, sign up, and during sign up it will give you the option to check a little box for the email sign up list.

If you’re already signed up, you can go to your profile page and check that same box.

I guess there is a third way you could do it. If you go to birdieboard.golf, you can also sign up for the email list on there.

So a couple, or I guess three ways you can do it there.

I just did this last week or last weekend, so there’s no one signed up yet other than myself. So I’m not going to start sending out like newsletters or anything until I get a few people signed up. But just something to be aware of, options for you.

Overall, I think Birdie Board is doing pretty good. The actual app isn’t getting tons of downloads yet, but I think that’s just because of the off season.

I’m trying to stay consistent with all the social media and podcasting and things like that, just building up a nice community for you all that you can just enjoy golf at.

But don’t forget that like the app is there. It’s there for you to use. It’s there for friendly golf competitions.

I’m very lenient on any sort of pay. I’d rather people just use the app and enjoy it.

I’d like to think I’m a pretty decent software engineer, so I’ve really optimized the app where it can run for a while without much revenue.

And that’s the advantage to everyone who is using it, that there is a very generous free tier. I just want people using the app and getting the feedback.

So I know it’s winter time right now. If you’re going on like a golf trip or something, please consider Birdie Board. I think you guys really enjoy it.

And I think that’s it for this episode of Birdie Board.

Thanks for listening, everyone. Thanks for tuning in to the Birdie Board Podcast.

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