I was getting ready to take a shot out of a bunker when I made a conglomeration of violations that were the result of me simply slipping. I was waggling the club and firmly planting my feet, and I slipped. My club ended up stabbing at the ball accidentally, and that moved it a few feet forward. I replaced the ball, but I have no idea how many penalty strokes to assess myself. I believe there should be two for grounding the club in the hazard, and there should be one for accidentally hitting the ball when not in the process of a swing. Do I take three full penalty strokes? Or does one rule supercede the other?

There is no penalty for grounding the club in a bunker when used to prevent falling. For accidentally moving the ball 1 penalty stroke.

jev wrote:

There is no penalty for grounding the club in a bunker when used to prevent falling. For accidentally moving the ball 1 penalty stroke.

Well...technically, I wasn't preventing myself from falling. I really wasn't in danger of falling at all. The club grounded because I was trying to waggle above the ball, but when I slipped forward a few inches, the waggle hit the ground and punched at the ball.

Bryan K wrote:

The club grounded because I was trying to waggle above the ball, but when I slipped forward a few inches, the waggle hit the ground and punched at the ball.

This exact case isn't in the decisions, but there are a couple of indicators that I think will tell us what to do. D 13-4/15 talks about the removal of a loose impediment within a hazard and as a result the ball is moved. The answer to that case begins with the phrase: "As a single act resulted in two Rules being breached (Rule 13-4 and Rule 18-2a), in equity (Rule 1-4), a single penalty is applied."

Further more, D 13-4/12 talks about a ball that was touched in the hazard but not moved. No penalty there - the act of accidentally touching the ball in itself is not a breach of 13-4.

Since you didn't test the conditions of the ground in the hazard and placed the ball back to its original position, I would say in all equity you would not get penalized for touching the ground in the hazard but will get penalized for moving a ball at rest as per 18-2a(ii).

Thanks for another interesting case!

Thanks for the response.

I just want to clarify, though, that I did touch the sand with my club. In fact, I accidentally moved quite a bit of it though I wasn't intentionally testing the ground. I get more information with my feet than I ever could with my club anyway, so I would never have any reason to test the ground in a bunker.

However, this brings up the next question. As a result of accidentally grounding my club and moving the ball, I changed the lie of my ball dramatically (for the worst), and I had no idea how to properly fix that. When I replaced my ball, I was forced to give myself a horrible lie whereas before I actually had a pretty decent lie. Did I do this correctly?

Bryan K wrote:

Did I do this correctly?

Hard to tell since we where not there. However, having said that, rule 20-3b specifically states:
----8<------------------
If the original lie of a ball to be placed or replaced has been altered:
<snip>
(iii) in a bunker, the original lie must be re-created as nearly as possible and the ball must be placed in that lie.
----8<------------------
So, you prolly should've brought pail and shovel (you always have one of these in the bag I presume?) and started digging and building .

Ahh...this got me thinking to the bloke who posted here a while back about finding a friggin' sandcastle in one of the bunkers. A friggin' sandcastle. I can only imagine what it would be like to have this disfortuitous turn of events after having my ball being lodged in the side of the sandcastle.

"Do I have to recreate the sandcastle perfectly? What? How am I supposed to remember if it had a bay window or not!??!"