I’m a single figure golfer on the fairway and a rank beginner in bunkers. I’ve had lessons. I’ve watched videos. I’ve spent hour after hour finessing little spinning wedge shots out of the sand.
Put a card in my hand and my ball in a trap, though, and watch me unravel. It would be embarrassing if it wasn’t so painful. This season alone it’s probably cost me two tournament wins.
So I understand completely how karma should be completely ruined in the following scenario: “I had a downhill putt on a green and ran it right off and into a bunker. I am rubbish in the sand. Is there anything I can do?”
Can you perform a great escape or do you need to hunker down with a bucket and spade? Let’s take a look…
Stroke and distance rule: Here’s how you can use it to your advantage
You’ve got quite a few options if you’ve found yourself in bunker hell and you don’t fancy playing it. Some are costlier than others. You can take back-on-the-line relief outside the bunker with unplayable ball relief. You’ll have to tack on a two-shot penalty for that.
But you don’t need to do that here. If bunkers trouble you that greatly and you are content with a one-stroke sanction, you can take stroke-and-distance relief and put that ball right back where it was on the green.
We often only think about stroke-and-distance when we’ve hit one off the planet out of bounds or when we’ve lost a ball following a search and have no other options.
Yes, it’s a brutal penalty in these cases and I’ve argued that perhaps it’s too great a burden for the average club player to bear.
If finding the sand, though, is going to cost you a lot of shots. If you’re that bad at swishing away that you’re inevitably going to run up a huge score, here is one situation where stroke-and-distance might get you out of scorecard jail.
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That’s because you have always got the option of stroke-and-distance. Rule 18.1 says it doesn’t matter where your ball is on the course, or even if a rule requires you to “take relief in a certain way or to play a ball from a certain place”, you can add one penalty stroke and play “the original ball or another ball from where the previous stroke was made”.
That’s right. Here’s a spot where you can even swap that distance ball that got you onto the green in the first place for an altogether softer model which might help you hold the putting surface this time.
And as you are on the green, you wouldn’t drop your ball. You would replace it.
Of course, we probably should just get better at hitting out of bunkers – or not go into them in the first place. But where’s the fun in that?
Got a question for our expert?
Despite the changes to the Rules of Golf in 2019 and 2023, there are still some that leave us scratching our heads. I’ll try to help by featuring the best of your queries in this column.
What do you think about the stroke and distance rule? Let me you what you think, and send me your own rules questions, by emailing me at s.carroll@nationalclubgolfer.com or by leaving us a comment on X.
