You’ve played what looked like an absolute beauty of an approach into a difficult green. It was flying straight at the pin!
But you got the clubbing wrong and it’s come up 10 yards short in a greenside bunker.
Not to worry, there’s been some light rain and the bunkers are firm, the ball shouldn’t have plugged. Maybe you can still save par!
You reach your ball and it’s sitting nicely atop the sand, right in the centre of the bunker giving you a good opportunity to splash onto the green and secure the up-and-down.
On closer inspection though, there’s (what looks like) a stone just behind the ball, roughly where you would aim to strike the bunker to execute the shot correctly.
You’re confident on this one. You’re sure that Rule 15 on Loose Impediments comes into play – a stone is a loose impediment – “any unattached natural object” – You can remove a loose impediment anywhere on or off the course so long as you don’t cause your ball to move in so doing.
Fine, you can pick up that ‘stone’ without disturbing your ball. You reach down and take hold of it. But, as you lift it, you realise to your dismay that it’s not actually a stone. It’s a clump of wet sand that was, unhelpfully, disguising itself as a stone. It crumbles in your hand.
What is the Ruling? Have you just incurred a penalty?
Unfortunately, the answer to that question is – Yes.
You have broken Rule 8.1. You have “Improved conditions affecting the stroke.” In Rule 8.1a the prohibited actions a player might take to improve conditions affecting a stroke are listed.
One of those is to “remove or press down sand or loose soil.”
In this instance you have removed sand from behind the ball and have made it easier for your next shot, clearing the path into the back of the ball.
For breaking Rule 8.1 – you would receive the general penalty of two strokes in stroke play and loss of hole in match play.
If the ‘stone’ that turned out to be a clump of sand wasn’t near your ball and its removal did not affect the conditions of your next stroke. You would avoid a penalty.
You wouldn’t have broken Rule 8.1 as above.
You also didn’t deliberately touch the sand to learn information about the next stroke so wouldn’t have broken Rule 12.2b. You had been attempting to care for/tidy the course and that is allowed.
So, if you accidentally pick up and remove a clump of sand from a position that improves conditions for your next stroke, you would incur a general penalty. If you accidentally do so elsewhere in the bunker, thinking it’s a stone you would normally be given the benefit of the doubt that you weren’t testing the sand and were caring for the course.
