The more eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that a fence has been erected around the sandpit that lies between the 15th tee the 16th green. As the club has progressed the new greens project over the past couple of years a lot of sand has been extracted. The sandpit remains an active worksite and as such only authorised personnel should enter for safety reasons.
To ensure your safety, Members are not to enter the sandpit to search or retrieve their ball.
With effect from the 24th December, the sandpit is now declared to be ‘out of bounds’ – stakes have been erected to define the area.
Now if, for example, you slice a shot from the 16th fairway and it goes over the fence into the sandpit the ball is out of bounds and rule 18.2 applies. Your only remedy is to take a stroke and distance penalty, which means that you must go back to the point on the fairway from where you hit the shot that went out of bounds, add one shot to your score and play another ball from that point. So, if you hit your second shot out of bounds the new ball that you hit will be your fourth shot.
Please also note that as with the recently published clarification regarding the optional rule introduced by the R&A to allow you to drop a ball where you believe your shot went out of bounds under penalty of two shots, MGGC has elected not to implement this rule, so stroke and distance always applies.
So to help keep things moving, as with the lost ball situation, if you think there is any chance you have hit your ball into the sandpit please hit a provisional ball to save having to take the walk of shame back along the fairway to hit another ball.
MGGC Match Committee
24 December 2024