It’s a real Homer Simpson moment. You’re out on the course, you reach into the bag for a club and find one you didn’t expect to be there.
Now you’re frantically shifting them all about, performing a desperate count as you go, and praying you haven’t done something silly.
Yes, I have done this. I’ve got midway through a round and realised I had more than 14 clubs. D’oh, indeed. If you’ve found yourself in this position, you know you’ve broken a rule.
But what is it, how big is the penalty, and why does it exist in the first place? Why can golfers only carry up to 14 clubs? There is an interesting backstory here, so let’s reveal all about this golf club limit rule…
Golf club limit rule: How many golf clubs can you carry in your bag?
Looking for someone to blame? I’m looking at the golf bag. Check out those old paintings of players at St Andrews back in the 1800s. You don’t see people carrying a billion clubs then. That’s because they were limited by the number they could fit under their arms.
Fast forward to the mid-1930s and it was reported Lawson Little had as many as 31 with him when he made off with back-to-back Amateur and US Amateur Championships.
“The highest recorded total was in 1935 when a player showed up with 32 clubs,” Rand Jerries of the USGA told Links Magazine.
“He had a full set of left- and right-handed clubs in the same bag. His feeling was, ‘If my ball came to rest against a tree, why should I be disadvantaged?’ It was around this time everyone decided things were out of control.”
Yes, the ever burgeoning numbers irked rules makers and, in the summer of 1936, Robert Harris – part of the Rules of Golf Sub Committee at The R&A – proposed limiting the number a player could use to 14.
In the excellent, The Rules of The Green, A History of the Rules of Golf, Kenneth Chapman says Harris didn’t get his suggestion through the first time round but when the USGA adopted the measure in 1938, the R&A followed the next year.
Check out the amended Rules of Golf in September 1939 and it’s right at the top alongside playing a ball from the teeing ground – emphasising its new importance to the overall game.
“The clubs used by a player during a round shall not exceed 14, and the clubs carried shall be restricted to that number”.
Why did this happen and why 14 clubs?
Chapman says it was about the advent of steel shafts, which were starting to become popular in the 1920s and 1930s. While hickory and wooden shafts were workable, the “rigidity of steel made it necessary to use more clubs to produce the same result”.
But why 14? Why not seven – the number Francis Ouimet used to beat Harry Vardon and Ted Ray in a playoff for the 1913 US Open? Why not 10 or 12?
It appears the number was decided arbitrarily. As Chapman reveals, in his 1953 book Sixty Years of Golf, Robert Harris wrote the number was reached “without the why and wherefore of only fourteen clubs being questioned or debated.”
He also had some buyer’s remorse: “It is now apparent that fourteen is too many – these debates with caddies regarding digits, when the player is afraid of the shot, are slowing up the game”.
What on earth would he think now?
What do the Rules say about 14 clubs?
You’re not allowed to start a round with more than 14 clubs or have more than 14 during a round. So says Rule 4.1b.
If you begin with fewer than 14, you can add clubs up to the limit during the round. If you discover you have more than 14, once you’ve become aware of this you “must take the excess club or clubs out of play before making another stroke”.
How you do that depends on when those extra clubs were added. If you started with more than 14, you can decide which club you want to remove. If you added a club during the round, that’s the one you must take out of play.
How do you remove it? You don’t have to sprint back to the clubhouse or snap it in two. You can just tell your playing partners, or your opponent in match play, or you can turn it upside down, or give it to someone else, or put it in your golf buggy. The idea is that you take “some other clear action” to show you’re not going to be using it anymore.
And don’t worry about picking up a lost club on the course and putting it away for safe keeping in your bag. It isn’t treated as one of yours. You just can’t use it.
The penalties you’ll rack up for having more than 14 clubs are potentially card wrecking. You add two strokes for each hole where a breach happened up to a maximum of four – adding those two strokes at “each of the first two holes”.
In match play it’s slightly different. You adjust the score of the match by deducting holes up to a maximum of two. The rule, 4.1b (4), gives the example of a player who begins a match with 15 clubs and figures it out while playing the 3rd – which they win to go 3up.
“The maximum adjustment of two hole applies and the player would now be one up in the match.”
And don’t go thinking that because you’ve topped up on the penalties you can resume using the forbidden club. Rule 4.1c says the penalty for doing that is disqualification.
Should we be allowed more than the 14 golf club limit?
With all manner of hybrid and wedge options now, you could fill a bag with different bounces and grinds on their own. Is it time to look again at the 14-club rule?
I think the current number is a nice balance. It gives you flexibility in the bag but also brings a touch of tactics to the game. I have occasionally spent far too much time wondering whether to take a 19-degree hybrid or opt for the 4-iron, or whether another wedge could help but would necessitate losing something else I might want to employ.
It does make me think strategically about which clubs I might want to use on which holes and – although it’s occasionally frustrating – it’s a part of the game I wouldn’t want to lose.
Now have your say
What do you think about this golf club limit rule? Should we be allowed to take as many clubs as we like out on the course? Do you think it’s time for a change? Email me at s.carroll@nationalclubgolfer.com or leave a comment. You can also get in touch on X.
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