Bunker Shots and options

[Nutsmacker]

I was watching a clip of Patrick Reed taking three shots to get out of a pot bunker in the Scottish open.  I was thinking when he was trying to figure out his first shot, why not take an uplayable lie and give himself a better chance to get it out and on the green.  What is the ruling there?  Wouldn't it have been smarter to take the penalty stroke and give yourself a chance to get it out and on the green instead of hacking away inside a pot bunker?   There was no shot of him getting it out on the first stroke, and he almost hit himself with the ball when he hit it.  Then he had an even worse shot on the 2nd attempt.  

[Shindig]

I didn't see the shot.

I suspect he thought he'd get out in one, first of all.  Then again, Johnny Miller once thought he'd get out of a bunker in one.  Probably many times, but I'm thinking of a particular instance. 

Second, if you take an unplayable lie in the bunker, your options are more narrow.  One, you could go back to where you hit the previous shot from and take stroke and distance.  However, if you choose two-club relief or keeping where the ball is between you and the hole and stepping back, and the ball being declared unplayable is in a bunker, you must drop in the bunker.  That probably doesn't help Patrick Reed that much.

[Piz]

It absolutely makes sense to declare the ball unplayable when it is unplayable.  

[DaveP043]

Two things.  If he takes an unplayable lie, he either has to drop in the bunker, or go back to the tee.  A drop into that soft fine sand would almost certainly have resulted in a similar fried-egg lie.  To give up  stroke, and still have a bad lie, probably not the best possible choice.  But the other thing, all of these pros are so good, they believe they CAN get the ball out, and out towards the flag.  And really, he probably could have, with a perfect shot.  Hindsight is perfect, maybe he should have gone sideways on one of his first two tries, over a spot where the lip is lower, but from what I could see that might have brought the adjacent bunker into play.   Those little pot bunkers are pretty challenging, not many good options when you hit into one.

[Shindig]

Copy of the video for anyone interested: 

 

I think if it were me, and again, Reed is a better player than I am, if you're behind the ball looking at the pin, I'd have probably tried to play out 90 degrees left, towards the front of the green.  Then again, at least for pot bunkers like that, I'm in that set of players who would be better off it it were surrounded by red stakes. 

[billchao]

28 minutes ago, Shindig said:

Copy of the video for anyone interested: 

 

 

That lie doesn't look too bad, it's just a bit too close to the wall. That sand is way soft though and probably softer than what he would've liked.

I also think the play on the first shot was more to the left of the green, but I'm just a Monday morning quarterback. 

[David in FL]

I don’t fault his choices.  He just didn’t execute in the manner he’s fully capable of...

[Nutsmacker]

If it was me, I would have known that I had no shot of getting it out so I would have probably taken the penalty.  One other question I have on bunkers is that there is a course that my friends and I play that for some reason has bees swarming all over the sand in every one of the bunkers.  It is actually pretty scary to go in there and take a swipe at the ball when there are hundreds of bees hovering an inch off the sand.  We usually just rake the ball out and play from behind the bunker because none of us want to have a sting.  What would be the official ruling on that? 

[DaveP043]

37 minutes ago, Nutsmacker said:

If it was me, I would have known that I had no shot of getting it out so I would have probably taken the penalty.  One other question I have on bunkers is that there is a course that my friends and I play that for some reason has bees swarming all over the sand in every one of the bunkers.  It is actually pretty scary to go in there and take a swipe at the ball when there are hundreds of bees hovering an inch off the sand.  We usually just rake the ball out and play from behind the bunker because none of us want to have a sting.  What would be the official ruling on that? 

This is covered by Decision 1-4/10:

http://www.usga.org/rules/rules-and-decisions.html#!decision-01

Essentially, you can drop it in a location that's not dangerous.  When in a hazard, you have to drop it no closer to the hole in the same hazard, or in a similar nearby hazard.  If that's not possible, you can drop it outside the hazard, with a stroke penalty, essentially proceeding per the rule for an unplayable lie.

[Golfingdad]

1 hour ago, Shindig said:

Copy of the video for anyone interested: 

I think if it were me, and again, Reed is a better player than I am, if you're behind the ball looking at the pin, I'd have probably tried to play out 90 degrees left, towards the front of the green. 

 

53 minutes ago, billchao said:

I also think the play on the first shot was more to the left of the green, but I'm just a Monday morning quarterback. 

I don't think you guys would have been able to do this because the direction you guys are talking about aiming would just send your ball into one of TWO other similar pot bunkers.

 

36 minutes ago, Nutsmacker said:

If it was me, I would have known that I had no shot of getting it out so I would have probably taken the penalty.

Which penalty?  Would you re-tee, or would you just drop further back into the sand?  You'll still have the fried egg (at least for the remainder of 2018, come 2019 and we won't have that problem anymore)

I don't think he had a better option than what he chose, he just didn't execute.  If he was a lefty then, yeah, maybe consider the blast out sideways (right), but his best option was to do what he did.

[Shindig]

7 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

I don't think you guys would have been able to do this because the direction you guys are talking about aiming would just send your ball into one of TWO other similar pot bunkers.

Oh, I thought he was in the one closest to the front.  

[Nutsmacker]

23 minutes ago, DaveP043 said:

This is covered by Decision 1-4/10:

http://www.usga.org/rules/rules-and-decisions.html#!decision-01

Essentially, you can drop it in a location that's not dangerous.  When in a hazard, you have to drop it no closer to the hole in the same hazard, or in a similar nearby hazard.  If that's not possible, you can drop it outside the hazard, with a stroke penalty, essentially proceeding per the rule for an unplayable lie.

I am going to take a video of the sand traps the next time I am there.  Its crazy how many bees are in there.  I have no idea why or how that happens.  

[DaveP043]

2 minutes ago, Shindig said:

Oh, I thought he was in the one closest to the front.  

At about 0:45, you can see the nearest bunker as he takes his second try.  

[Nutsmacker]

24 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

 

I don't think you guys would have been able to do this because the direction you guys are talking about aiming would just send your ball into one of TWO other similar pot bunkers.

 

Which penalty?  Would you re-tee, or would you just drop further back into the sand?  You'll still have the fried egg (at least for the remainder of 2018, come 2019 and we won't have that problem anymore)

I don't think he had a better option than what he chose, he just didn't execute.  If he was a lefty then, yeah, maybe consider the blast out sideways (right), but his best option was to do what he did.

I was thinking of just dropping in the bunker again, but far enough away that I could clear that lip.  Reteeing would be pretty crazy to do I think because I would need to stuff it and put the putt down in order to make it worth it.  I will say Reed's third shot was impressive.  My point is that if he had taken the penalty, he could have had that shot to begin with and made a 4 instead of a 5

[Golfingdad]

1 minute ago, DaveP043 said:

At about 0:45, you can see the nearest bunker as he takes his second try.  

At 0:10-0:12 you can get a good perspective from above.  There is almost no area left of the pin that isn't leading towards those two bunkers.

[DaveP043]

3 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

At 0:10-0:12 you can get a good perspective from above.  There is almost no area left of the pin that isn't leading towards those two bunkers.

And he couldn't hit straight away from the green, the bunker wall would be in his backswing, and he'd be hitting towards the tall fescue.  I played at Gullane (Courses 2 and 3) just a couple weeks back, and found the sand to be just as soft as that bunker appeared to be.  

[Golfingdad]

3 minutes ago, Nutsmacker said:

I was thinking of just dropping in the bunker again, but far enough away that I could clear that lip.  Reteeing would be pretty crazy to do I think because I would need to stuff it and put the putt down in order to make it worth it.  I will say Reed's third shot was impressive.  My point is that if he had taken the penalty, he could have had that shot to begin with and made a 4 instead of a 5

It was low risk for him because he basically did get that shot after the first miss.  There was very little lip for him to clear with the second shot and it wasn't even that "fried-eggy", he just blew it.

[billchao]

36 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

I don't think you guys would have been able to do this because the direction you guys are talking about aiming would just send your ball into one of TWO other similar pot bunkers.

I don't mean hard left, I meant like 15° left which is away from the hole but where the lip of the bunker seems to be lower than the line he initially took.