Loose Impediment in Bunker Rule of Golf Video Transcript

Sawasdee Ka, I was excited to get this email from Tom Shanks (Golf Video Pervert) who writes: “Hi Slice Girls, I was walking the streets of Philadelphia and I remembered a golf story which happened to me a long time ago. I hit my ball in a bunker and when I came up to the bunker I accidentally kicked a pine cone into it, which wasn’t near my ball. I picked it up and threw it out, then though this might have been against the rules. Am I right?

Well Tom, you are right, this was wrong. The pine cone is something called a loose impediment, and you can’t remove loose impediments from hazards. The penalty is loss of hole in match play and a two shot penalty in stroke play. In general, the only thing you can remove from a bunker is a rake.