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Is your club legal?

As technology advances, golf club manufacturers are using wind tunnels and space-age materials to create ever more forgiving equipment to sell us. A specialist club seems to exist for almost every conceivable situation. And for as long as golfers have the unquenchable desire to find the 'magic' club that will transform their game, there will be a ready market for such products.

In some cases, manufacturers flirt with the limits of legality, where clubs run the risk of breaching the Rules of Golf, and we have recently seen a polemic about 'hot' drivers between the two governing bodies of golf, the USGA and the R&A.

Hardly surprising then that players may sometimes question the legality of their equipment, especially if they are playing 'serious' competitive golf, where disqualification awaits the player whose club or ball does not conform.

We have been contacted by a Mr Colm McLoughlin of Dubai, a single handicap player, who was given a state-of-the-art sand wedge for Christmas by a friend, with the promise that it would cut strokes off his game by slicing far more effectively through the fine sand which is such a feature of golf in the United Arab Emirates. Mr McLoughlin tells us that he is finding the club difficult to get used to, and before he invests a lot of time in the practice bunker he would like assurance that the club will be legal for competitive play.

Well Mr McLoughlin, you've done the right thing in contacting us! After getting in touch with the R&A (in accordance with Rule 4 - Clubs: A player in doubt as to the conformity of a club should consult The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews.), we are sorry to advise that your new sand-iron apparently contravenes at least six sections of Appendix II (Design of Clubs) to the Rules, namely 1a, 2c, 4a, 4a(iii), 5a and 5c(i). We are sorry to be the bearers of bad tidings, but it is best that you find out like this, rather than in the heat of competition.

Golfers, you are warned! That miracle club you've been looking for may indeed exist, but before you splash out hundreds on it, make sure you are actually allowed to take it into battle.

(Photograph courtesy of Raven Fox, publishers of Duty Free News International, with our thanks.)
 
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