Does An Air Shot Count As A Stroke? About Golf Rules

Golf Monthly

In this video Neil and Jezz talks about air shots.

Transcript

00:00In this video, we are talking about air shots and what happens under the rules of golf if

00:05you attempt to hit the ball and you fail to make contact.

00:08I guess, Jez, there's two scenarios.

00:10There's one where the ball's sitting perfectly well and you attempt to hit it and you miss

00:15it, which is probably something that high-handicapped golfers might do from time to time.

00:19There's also another scenario where your ball's sitting up in the rough, like in this scenario.

00:24Fluffy stuff.

00:25You're trying to make good contact with the ball, often it will be a chip shot around

00:28the greens and the club just goes straight underneath it and you don't make contact with

00:32the ball.

00:33Now, what happens in that scenario?

00:35Are you penalised?

00:36Well, you're not penalised as such, but the important thing here is whether you were intending

00:43to hit the ball.

00:44A 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

00:52ball or not.

00:53It is a stroke, therefore the penalty, which isn't really a penalty, is just another stroke

00:58on your score.

00:59It counts.

01:00It counts as one.

01:01It basically counts.

01:02Yes.

01:03If 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.

01:09Yes.

01:10Go on, talk me through this one.

01:11Well, this came up in a recent piece we did in the magazine.

01:14If the ball's in a tree, you can't reach it, so you decide to hit another branch to make

01:18the ball move.

01:19Yes.

01:20Does 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

01:28ball at rest under Rule 9.4.

01:30Right, okay.

01:31So the net result is the same.

01:32It's another shot on your scorecard.

01:33So you can't hit something else to make your ball move and expect to get away with it.

01:38Okay.

01:39And then what's the last scenario we're going to talk about?

01:40Well, the last extremely niche scenario that I doubt many people have ever come across

01:45in their time in golf is…

01:46If you have, let us know.

01:47If the club head separates from the shaft on the backswing, crufty on the backswing,

01:54and you then miss the ball on the way down with the remains of the shaft, that would

01:58not count as a stroke.

02:00However, if the club would separate on the downswing, by that point you have made a forward

02:05movement of the club with the intention of striking the ball, it would count as a stroke.

02:09Niche.

02:10Niche indeed.

02:11Very niche.

02:12But hopefully, in this scenario, now air shots do happen.

02:15Hopefully, gentle advice there will explain exactly what you're doing.

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