How to Make a Stroke

The fundamental challenge of the game of golf is to direct and control the movement of your club by freely swinging it at your ball without anchoring it. The Rules give us a few Dos and Don’ts to help ensure that fundamental challenge is preserved:

DO

• Fairly Strike Your Ball. You need to make a real, free-flowing swing at your ball with only momentary contact between club and ball.
• Hit Your Ball with the Head of Your Club. We’re still trying to figure out what advantage there might be to using the handle, but the Rules require you to strike your ball with any part of the head of your club.
• Use Only Yourself and Your Abilities. Generally, you can’t accept help from an outside source while making a stroke, whether it be holding a branch out of your way or using an artificial device that helps you grip the club correctly. Your success needs to be exactly that – your own.

DO NOT

• • Push, Scrape or Scoop Your Ball. If you take a normal backswing and then swing through the ball, this shouldn’t be an issue. But making a pool cue stroke, scraping the ball back into the hole or scooping the ball out of a difficult spot are all examples of strokes that will get you a penalty.
  • Anchor Your Club. There are two distinct ways to anchor your club, either directly against your body or indirectly by anchoring a part of yourself against your body to create a stable point around which you swing your club. Essentially, if you’re creating a pendulum motion by holding the club or your forearm against your body, you’re likely making an anchored stroke which is not allowed under the Rules.

• • Make a “Croquet-Style” Stroke. You can’t make a stroke while deliberately standing across or on your line of play or the extension of that line behind your ball. This doesn’t prohibit you from doing this to avoid standing on someone else’s line but is really specific to preventing the croquet-style stroke pictured here.

• • Play a Ball While It Is Moving. There are rare times when you are able to play a moving ball without penalty – when it’s moving in temporary water or moving in water in a penalty area or falling off a tee for example. Outside of these cases though, you’re not allowed to play your ball while it’s moving.
  • Accept Outside Help. This is a broad way of covering the various limitations you have in making a stroke.
    • You can’t give or accept advice from anyone other than your caddie, your partner or your partner’s caddie.
    • There are only certain ways you can have the line of play pointed out to you depending on who is pointing it out.
    • You can’t get help with aiming, either from an object set down on the ground, line drawn in the sand or dew or from your caddie, partner or partner’s caddie standing on an extension of your line of play behind your ball.

• • • You can’t accept outside physical help or protection from the elements from anyone during the stroke.

• Have More Than One Caddie at a Time. Your caddie can give you advice and take other helpful actions for you, but the Rules only allow you to have one caddie at a time. Having more than one caddie at a time will earn you the general penalty for each breach.

All of the above are covered under Rule 10. If you don’t follow these Dos and Don’ts and make a stroke in breach of this Rule, you get the general penalty (which is either loss of hole in match play or two strokes in stroke play). In stroke play, you also count the stroke you made!

Accidentally Hitting the Ball More Than Once

This Rule isn’t all about prohibitions and penalties though! Every once in a while, you end up doing something unintentionally that results in you hitting your ball more than once during a single stroke. You may even be talented enough to hit the ball accidentally three or four times in the course of a single stroke.

In this case, you are not penalized for playing a moving ball or for striking it more than once – your intent was to only hit your ball once while it was still stationary. Therefore, the Rules will say that you have made only one stroke. However, you are required to play the ball from wherever the double (or triple) hit comes to rest.