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The rules of golf can be complex, especially when it comes to equipment. We simplify things by highlighting 8 specific ways you could be using illegal clubs without even realizing it. Learn the rules, understand the penalties, and play your next round with confidence.
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Now the rules of golf can be incredibly difficult to get your head around but don't worry I've done
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all the hard work for you. I've trawled through hundreds of pages of the rule book to bring you
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the eight ways you could be making your golf clubs illegal. Now it's really easy to do. A lot of you
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I'm sure would have fallen foul of some of these and look out for number three because I'm pretty
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confident everyone has done that one at some point. We're here at the beautiful Burley Park
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golf club in Stamford, Lincolnshire. Let's get into it. Now, the first way your golf clubs could become illegal starts even before you've teed off
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and this is one that so many golfers fall foul off. It's just having too many clubs in your bag
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as we know under the rules of golf you're only allowed a maximum of 14 clubs and often golfers
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we like to chop and change clubs in certain areas of the bag me for example i like to chop between
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my hybrid and my two iron depending on the conditions that i'm playing in but i'm not
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allowed to have both if i had both that would be 15 clubs and i'll be in for some serious penalties
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now the rules say that if you accidentally get to the first tee before your round and you realize
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you've got an extra club in your bag you need to take the appropriate steps to take that club
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out of play you need to declare it to your playing partners ideally you would leave that club behind
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so it's not in your bag if that's not possible you need to sort of make an indication that it's not
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in play maybe turn it around in your bag with the grip pointing up if you've got a buggy maybe leave
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it on the floor with a buggy so it's not actually in your bag so you've taken the appropriate steps
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to let everyone know that this club is out of play obviously you're not allowed to then use it
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during the round, but you're not going to incur any penalty shots if you go through this process
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Now problems start to occur if you tee off and then realise you've got an extra club in your bag
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That's when you're going to start incurring some penalty shots. So say for example, you tee off
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from the first hole, you're walking down, you look in your bag and realise, ah, I've got an extra club
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in my bag, what is the penalty? So you then need to take the same step, so realise, choose the club
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that you don't want to use, turn it over, put it in your bag, declare it to your playing partners
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let them know that that club is out of play. But because you've already teed off, you incur a two
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shot penalty. Now a penalty occurs here, two shots per hole in stroke play with a maximum of four
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shots. So if you tee off from the second hole and then realise you've got an extra club in your bag
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that's a four shot penalty. If you rewind back to Ian Woosnam at the Open Championship at Royal
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in the Litherman St. Anne's, got to the second tee, realized he had an extra driver in his bag
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He hadn't teed off on the second, so he only got a two-shot penalty, but it did cost him the open
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So make sure you check your bag before your round, make sure there's only 14 clubs in there
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and you won't incur any of those pesky penalty shots. Oh dear
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That wasn't very good. I've just noticed when I hit that, There's a little bit of a rattling noise on this club
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And obviously all modern drivers these days have some sort of adjustability
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Now these adjustable features are designed that they shouldn't reasonably be able to come loose
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during the course of a round or in reasonable play. And actually they should technically be rendered unusable if the screw is not in place So it incredibly unlikely that the adjustability features on your drivers would come loose during the course of a
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round however if any part of the club does become loose during a round it
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could be that the club becomes non-conforming so you need to make sure
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that you take appropriate steps to restore the club to its original position
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actually any sort of part of a driver that comes loose is technically classed
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damage. The definition of damage on a driver is pretty broad and it basically
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means the club condition has changed from what it was previously. So you can
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actually take appropriate steps to say, I've got the tightness GT3 driver here
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so you say this track has become loose, you make sure you get your wrench tool
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hopefully you keep it with you in your bag in case you need it, give that a
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tight and make sure you hear those clicks, that's going to give you that peace of
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mind that is properly tightened in place, it's not going to come out again
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and that's restored to its original position and you can carry on using that club. So
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takeaway from this, maybe on the first tee, make sure you listen for any rattles. If you do notice
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it, give the club a tighten and that means you can carry on using this club during the round
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Now let's say during the course of a round you're not really happy with how your driver's
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performing, maybe the ball flight's going a bit too high and the wind's getting up and you want
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to knock it down. The temptation might be to get your driver out between holes, get your wrench out
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and make an adjustment that would alter the playing characteristics of that club. Maybe
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knock some loft off to bring the ball flight down and hopefully make it perform a little bit better
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Unfortunately, that is not allowed in the rules of golf. You're not allowed to make any adjustments
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to the club during a round. You can do it before a round, before you tee off, that's absolutely fine
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But not during a round. If you do it during a round, you will be disqualified. Now, if you do make an adjustment to the club
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but then restore it back to what it was before without hitting a shot with it, that's absolutely fine
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But if you hit a shot with it, having changed the settings of that particular club
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that adjustable feature, you're going to be disqualified. Ah, now I've just noticed as you can see I have got one of the reflective stickers I was using to
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test this club on a photometric launch monitor. Now we know these stickers are used by those types
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of launch monitors to capture what the club is doing through impact. So a lot of golfers put a
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sticker on the face here to monitor club head speed if they're trying to increase their club
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head speed. There's a few other reasons why you might put a sticker like this on the face as well but I was doing some testing earlier. It's on there and the rules of golf say that something
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like this is a non-conforming external attachment. So if you do discover that you've got a sticker on
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your face like this, you're not allowed to hit shots with that in place. So you must take steps
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to take it off and if you've hit any shots with this sticker on a face, you're going to get
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disqualified unfortunately. We saw that happen with Rory Sabatini a few years ago after the
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the round realised that he had some stickers on his three-wood. He knew that he hit shots with that club during the round
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and therefore he was disqualified. But if you do discover you've got a sticker like this
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on the club face of one of your clubs, but you haven hit a shot with it you okay All you need to do is take the sticker off There you go get rid of that And now that club is conforming and you allowed to use it for the upcoming shot
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which I've got here, which is good, because I've got a 7-iron, which is the perfect club for this shot
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Just a quick break to say, if you are enjoying the video, please do click the like button, it really helps us out
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and do subscribe to the channel if you haven't already, so you don't miss any of our other videos
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And comment down below, have you fallen foul of any of these rules? If you've got any questions about the rules of golf
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when it comes to equipment and changes you can make, I will get our expert to reach out to you
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and answer any of your questions. Now another way your golf club could become illegal
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is if you damage it in anger and then attempt to repair or replace it
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The rules of golf are very clear. If you damage your club in anger
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so maybe you slam it into your knee, slam it into the ground
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you're not allowed to repair or replace that club. if you do, you're going to be penalised. You are allowed to continue using it, it's still
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conforming in that regard, but you can't repair or replace it. If you damage a club, whether
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you're taking on a shot like this, where who knows, when I hit it, the club might wrap
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against a tree and snap in half, I am allowed to repair or replace it under the rules of
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golf. Pretty unlikely you're going to be able to do that in a club match, unlikely to have
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a spare 7-iron available to you, but the rules of golf do allow you to do that. So as long
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you're not breaking a club in anger you are allowed to replace it if you need to. The rules
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are in your favour but... I'm a bit worried about this one. I'm a bit hesitant that we're going to
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break this club here. Nearly hit the camera. Luckily the club has become completely unscathed there
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We've got away with it. But there you go. If you do damage a club in anger and try and repair or
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or replace it, your club will become illegal. So make sure you don't do that during a round of golf
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Now another way you can make your golf club illegal is by drawing lines on the club face
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with a substance that affects how the ball performs. How it flies, how it spins, how it performs through the air
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Now we've seen this before. I don't know if you remember Hideki Matsuyama got disqualified at the memorial back in 2022, I think
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when one of his team applied a white substance on the face
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to help with his alignment. Now that substance was a whiteout material
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or a tip-ex we have over here, which sort of protrudes slightly
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from the surface of the face. And it was deemed that that would have an impact
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on how the ball would come off the face. Now it's worth pointing out that you are allowed
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to draw lines on the club base to help you with alignment
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wherever it might be. But those lines have to be very thin and not protrude in any way from the surface
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of the club base. So if you want to draw a line on your club base
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with a sharpie, for example, to help you with alignment, just like that. You're absolutely
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fine to do that. But if the thing that you're using to apply that line is going to protrude
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from the face and affect how the ball comes off the face, then you're going to get into
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a problem. And if you hit a shot with a club like that during a round, you will be disqualified
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If you remember, Ricky Fowler a few years ago drew some white lines on his driver. Looked
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very interesting, but that was perfectly fine because the lines were not sticking out from the face
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So a line like that with a Sharpie could well help you with alignment
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Perfectly fine within the rules of golf, but anything that sticks out a little bit
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is gonna be deemed non and make that club illegal Right come closer The next way your golf clubs could become illegal is down to these the grooves on your wedges Now there are rules in terms of how the grooves
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need to be a certain depth, a certain width and also have no sharp edges or raised lips. Now this
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is not something you need to worry about. The manufacturers have very tight tolerances when
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when it comes to manufacturing the grooves on their wedges and making sure they are conforming
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And then actually you can get some manufacturers that make illegal grooves to give you the extra spin
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around the greens that you can't use in competitions but will rip the cover off the golf ball
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if that's something that's important to you. But what's interesting about the groove rule
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is that basically any wedges that predate 2010 are probably gonna have illegal grooves in it
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So if your wedges are very old, there's a chance they could be non-conforming
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That said, there is a little bit of leeway when it comes to groove rule
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And unless you're playing in expert competitions, you're probably gonna be fine
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And there is a website, which I'll put in the description, where you can check your grooves on the database
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to see if the wedges that you'll carry are non-conforming. But I'll just read out what the USGA website says about it
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Basically it says, the USGA website states that the vast majority of golfers
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can continue to carry clubs manufactured prior to 2010 until at least 2024
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Obviously we're beyond 2024 now, but clearly they're not that bothered about whether you're using non-conforming grooves
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in your wedges, especially at the club level, I think you're gonna be fine
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And as I said, if your wedges are before 2010, you probably wanna think about upgrading anyway
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because you're gonna be reducing the amount of spin you're getting around the greens. But I've got a brand new wedge here
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which hopefully has conforming grooves and will hopefully still give me a good amount of spin
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on these types of shot around the green. Not my best effort there, but there you go. That's another way your golf clubs could become
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illegal if your wedges predate 2010. There's a chance they are, but there's generally a
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lot of leeway there and you're probably going to be fine. Now, we're often taught that a putting stroke would be a good thing to try and implement
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when you're chipping in terms of taking the wrist out of the action and having a nice
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smooth, controlled actions, try and get better results when you're chipping around the green
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But that doesn't mean that you can go to extreme lengths and put a putter grip on your wedge that you chip with
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The rules of golf say that all grips, the cross section of all grips must be circular
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on all clubs apart from your putter. You'll notice on a lot of putter grips
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they have often a slightly off-center or off-circular cross section and often a flat front edge here
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to help you with your putting, but you can't take that a step too far
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and have a grip like this on your wedge to help you with your chip shots around the green
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All your grips on your wedges must be completely circular, as you can see I've got here
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So don't go putting putter grips on wedges. That's going to deem your clubs illegal
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under the rules of golf. Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed the video
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As I said, do click the like button if you liked it. And if you're after any more rules of golf advice
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do check out the Golf Monthly website, because there's a whole host of articles there that are really going to help you out
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regardless of what situation you find yourself in on the golf course
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That's all for me here at Burleigh Park Golf Club. See you next time
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