When You Can Rake a Bunker During Play

A player can rake a bunker while their ball remains in the sand, provided the work is ordinary course care and does not help the upcoming stroke. The restriction is about advantage, not simply touching sand. Raking is allowed when it does not improve the ball’s lie, stance area, swing space, route to the target or the area available for a drop.

The danger comes when smoothing changes a relevant part of the shot. Cleaning footprints close to a ball before a short bunker escape, for example, could be viewed as creating a benefit along the ball’s route. The rules are more accepting when the smoothing is farther away or the shot is longer, such as tidying marks well ahead of a ball in a shallow fairway bunker before an approach. Players also cannot deliberately disturb sand to find out what it is like, and they must avoid the sand immediately around the ball except in limited situations allowed by the rules.

Breaking these restrictions can bring a two-stroke penalty in stroke play or loss of the hole in match play. The same rule section also permits some other actions golfers often avoid, including grounding a club, when they do not test the sand or improve conditions for the stroke.