00:00Hello and welcome to the London Club and this video looking at the five rules penalties that
00:05every golfer really needs to avoid and these are all things that are careless mistakes that golfers
00:11might make and I think if you play the game for long enough over enough years you'll probably end
00:15up making a few of these mistakes at some point and they can cost you penalty shots but hopefully
00:20after watching this video you'll be able to avoid them. Right let's head out now onto the
00:24heritage course here at the London Club look at our first golf rules mistake. Okay so the first one
00:34on our list relates to equipment and in particular these things your laser rangefinders. Now I've
00:39already zapped the flag here and I found out that it's 199 yards. We're on the 17th hole of the
00:44heritage course at the London Club. It's 199 but it's downhill and this tells me it's playing 192.
00:49Very handy in practice. Yes. But? But if you're at this stage of a round in a competition and you've
00:56had that slope function on for the whole round I'm afraid you would be disqualified. Oh no, I'm out.
01:01Yeah. Rule 4.3a gives you one strike and you're out almost. The first offence, first breach, whatever
01:06you want to call it, of leaving the slope function on is a two-shot penalty or a loss of hole in match
01:12play but if you then zap another yardage on the next hole that second offence and anyone's beyond that
01:19mean you are no longer. You're a goner. You are no longer playing in this competition. Oh no. And so
01:23you've got to be careful because on the side of the rangefinders is often a little switch that you
01:28can toggle on and off. Here it says slope addition when it's in slope. I'd need to just push that down
01:33now I'm out of slope and I can use this in competition. It's the sort of thing that you can
01:37accidentally leave on. You can and you know if you realise too late then it is as you say
01:43bad news. Yes, beware. Okay, so this one, Jez, is really carelessness, isn't it? Carelessness,
01:54lack of patience, lack of ability to control the putter I suppose really as well. Which is one of
01:58my problems. Talk me through what's going on here. Well, we're talking about a scenario on the putting
02:02green. Both balls are on the putting green in stroke play. You putt and you hit another ball at rest
02:07because someone's raking a bunker and faffing around somewhere and you think I'm not going
02:12to hit it. You haven't asked them to mark it. You're pretty sure you're not going to hit it
02:15and then the thing goes off in your hands and you do hit it. Yeah, so it's just an avoidable
02:18mistake but it can cost you, can't it? It costs you two shots in stroke play. You have to then
02:24replace the ball that was struck where it was. Your ball stays where it is. So I guess that may help you
02:30perhaps in a way in that it would have stopped it going further past the hole but you've cost yourself.
02:35And in match play? In match play no penalty. Again the ball is replaced and everyone just carries
02:40on with their business as if nothing happened. A lot of these just be wary of what could potentially
02:45happen in a situation like this. If there is another ball somewhere near the hole then ask
02:48that player to mark it. Definitely because it's a needless shot given away just like that.
02:57Okay, so for this one I'm going to talk you through the following scenario which I think is
03:01probably fairly common actually. Definitely, yeah. This is just to the right of the 17th green,
03:05quite heavy rough around here. Let's imagine I've blazed my tee shot out to the right and I'm in here
03:10somewhere and I come down and I see a golf ball in the rough. I can see it's a tight list,
03:15fantastic, mine's a tight list, brilliant. It's exactly where I think it is so I'm going to play it.
03:20What am I in danger of doing here, Jess? Well I think people do this quite a lot, don't they? You're in danger of
03:24playing a wrong ball. I think maybe people are so relieved they found a ball where they think theirs
03:29was going to be that they don't perhaps follow the checking procedures carefully enough before
03:34then playing it. Okay, so that begs the question then, what is the checking procedure? So, I come
03:38down, instead of just going off to my golf bag to grab a club I'm going to actually have a look at this,
03:43but how do I do it? Okay, so you can't see that it's yours from where it's lying, you can't see the
03:47marking, so you're allowed to lift it to identify it, but you must mark the position of the ball first.
03:52With TPEG? TPEG ideal, lift it up, check it's yours, you can't clean it other than the extent
03:59necessary to be able to identify it as yours, there's nothing on that one anyway, pop it back
04:03down and then play on if it is indeed yours, but if it isn't yours that's when we run into trouble,
04:08so if you haven't gone through that checking procedure and just gone ahead and played it.
04:11Yeah, and so quickly, Jess, what's the penalty for playing a wrong ball? Okay, well the penalty is the
04:15general penalty, so in match play it would be loss of hole, in stroke play it would be two shots,
04:20so it's quite severe, but you also have to then correct the error in a timely fashion in stroke
04:25play and that means before you hit your tee shot on the next hole or if it's the last hole before
04:30you return your scorecard. Okay. And if you don't correct your error in time, I'm afraid it's the
04:36old DQ. Oh dear, so I mean beware, in scenarios like this it is possible that you could play a wrong
04:43ball and it would be incredibly frustrating to get penalized for that, so watch out.
04:51Okay, so we've manufactured a situation here, so you're going to have to go with us a bit on this,
04:55but it's not uncommon and it's well worth knowing. So my golf ball is on the edge of the collar and the
05:00fairway, there's a loose impediment, a twig next to it, so I'm going to move that twig. Yes. Because I
05:06know that I can under the rules, I can move loose impediments. You can, but in this case it was
05:12perhaps an unwise thing to do because your ball has now moved. It's moved an inch. It has, now I
05:17think a lot of people now for various reasons think there's no penalty for accidental movement of your
05:22ball in the general area of the golf course, which is where we are, fairway, rough, fringe, whatever,
05:27but there is still a penalty if you cause your ball to move and in that scenario there it was clearly
05:32your movement of the twig that made the ball move, therefore you are penalized one stroke and you
05:38must put the ball back where it was. Why the confusion do you think? Well I think because
05:42you're no longer penalized for accidental movement of the ball on the putting green, you're no longer
05:47penalized for accidental movement of the ball when you're searching for it. I think people have maybe
05:52read too much into that and think that you can actually just accidentally move your ball anywhere
05:57and it's fine, just replace it, carry on. Well you do replace it and carry on, but there is a one stroke
06:01penalty accompanying it. Yes, so be careful, again like all of these, just be careful of what you're
06:05doing, make sure that that loose impediment that you're about to move is not going to cause the ball
06:10to move, then you should be fine. So this one is all about something you have to do on your scorecard
06:19after your round. Jez, what are we talking about here? Well I mean the critical thing we were looking
06:24at here is that you must sign the scorecard to attest the score that you've just compiled. I guess
06:30sometimes you come off the course, you're a bit flustered, you've made a mess of the last,
06:34someone distracts you when you're on the way to put a card in. Yeah, it's hot, you want a drink.
06:37Your mind's not quite there and suddenly the card's in the box without your signature on it
06:42and then you could have played your heart out for four hours and it will all be to no avail because
06:47you will be disqualified. Yeah and it's interesting because I think the more we head down this route of
06:51a lot of us using apps for scoring, maybe people get out of the kind of mindset of filling out
06:57a sort of an old-fashioned scorecard as it were but there are going to be tournaments when you need
07:01to do it and if you do do it then you need to put your signature on it. You do. And the other thing,
07:05Jez, is with the individual scores, like the main thing, what else do you need to do? Well I mean
07:09you've also got to make sure your marker has signed it and that your handicap is correct so
07:13you're signing to say you played off the correct handicap and then beyond that the gross scores,
07:17you've got to make sure they're correct for each individual hole. You don't have to do any of the maths,
07:22OK. That's not your responsibility and the one to be really wary of here is you signing for a score
07:28on an individual hole that is lower than that which you actually achieved. Because if you do that?
07:33If you do that again I'm afraid it's four fruitless hours and the big DQ against your name. Yeah,
07:38so as with a lot of these, just make sure you take that care and attention. Your scorecard is a very
07:44valuable thing. If you get it wrong it could be really costly. So there you have it, that's a look at
07:49our five rules penalties golfers really need to avoid. If you think there's anything probably more
07:54important actually in there that people miss out and the sort of careless mistakes, rules related,
07:59that they might make on the golf course, leave some comments below. If you've liked the video
08:03please do hit the like button as well. But that's it for now from The London Club, we'll see you next time.
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