DEREK
CLEMENTS
CUTTING UP ROUGH
IT IS my fervent belief that the late , great Seve Ballesteros was the only person on the planet who properly understood the rules of golf – and he needed to , because he hit his golf ball into some pretty unlikely places .
Look at Tiger Woods – penalised at The Masters for not knowing where to drop the ball after it had finished in a water hazard . He should , of course , have been disqualified . And it is not the first time he has fallen foul of the rules .
It is hardly surprising that Woods , and many other top pros , can ' t get their head round the rules though when they vary from course to course . At some clubs you can ' t remove stones from bunkers – excuse me , but do you really think that I am going to leave a stone where it is if
I know that it is going to take a chunk out of the sole of my brand new sand iron ? I don ' t think so . Then there are grass cuttings – if your ball lands in the middle of a pile of grass dumped on a fairway by a sadistic greenkeeper , then you have to play it as it lies . Bizarrely , the same applies to leaves in bunkers .
Now call me old-fashioned if you want , but I always thought that a bunker was meant to contain sand – and only sand . So if my ball lands in a sandtrap and is surrounded by leaves , I am going to expect that I can remove them . Apparently not .
And speaking of bunkers , how can it possibly be right that if you hit a ball into a trap that is full of water and you have to drop said ball outside the
THEZONE / ISSUE 23 47