Many of today’s best-selling drivers come with the option of adjustability. You can adjust the hosel to create more or less loft and to promote a draw or a fade bias.
Depending on your game, you can maximise your performance by finding the optimum setting.
Other clubs, putters in particular come with removable and replaceable weights to alter the weight and feel of the club. In different conditions, on differing surfaces, altering the weighting can help you find the best set-up to get the very most out of your game.
Before a round of golf, during a practice round or at the range, you can try the different settings to see what effects they have on performance.
But if conditions change during a round, or you find yourself struggling with a particular fault in your game, can you adjust your club to try to rectify the problem or to get the most out of it?
Well, if you’re not playing in competition or a counting round, you can do what you like. As long as you’re not holding the course up in doing so, you can adjust away until your heart’s content. It might annoy your playing partners but there’s nothing to stop you.
If, however, you are playing a round to the Rules of Golf, you cannot adjust a club during a round.
Rule 4.1a(3) says that “A player must not make a stroke with a club when they have deliberately changed that club’s playing characteristics during the round.” You are also not allowed to make changes to a club mid-round if play is suspended for any reason.
So, you are not allowed to use the adjustability feature on your driver or any other club after a few holes because you realise you’re hitting too much of a fade, as an example.
You’re also not allowed to make your putter heavier if you realise after the first couple of greens that the surfaces are a little slow.
The only time you can move your adjustable club is if it moves out of position. Then you can move it back to its original position before making a stroke.
But, the simple answer to the question – can you adjust a golf club during a round? No – you can’t do so without breaking Rule 4.1a in the Rules of Golf.
If you do adjust a club and then make a stroke with it, you will be disqualified.
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