Joel Dahmen’s ‘bizarro’ penalty raises question: why are you only allowed 14 clubs in your golf bag?

There aren’t many more frustrating ways to start a round than to discover that you’ve got too many clubs in your bag.

The rules state that a player must not have more than 14 clubs in their bag at any point in the round which is why Joel Dahmen was hit with a four-shot penalty at the Shriners Children’s Open at TPC Summerlin in Las Vegas.

The American noticed his mistake on his fourth hole and he was duly slapped with the penalty which carries a maximum of four shots – Dahmen therefore had to add two shots on his first and second holes due to there being an extra 4-iron in there.

“Bizarro, never happened to me before. I travel with 15, 16 clubs. I think most people out here do depending on conditions and courses. You know, been traveling out here for a long time and never happened before,” explained Dahmen who opened with a five-over 76 to sit one off the bottom spot.

“I’d like to blame (caddie) Geno (Bonnalie). That would be the easy thing to do. It’s not his fault either. I played Tuesday and Wednesday out here. We didn’t see it in there. It was an extra 4-iron, so I had two 4-irons in the bag.

“I don’t know how it got there. It sucks. We got to 4 tee and I grabbed a water and I walked over to my bag and I saw a 4-iron that was in the wrong spot and our stuff is always in the right spot. It wasn’t in the right spot.

“You just want to get so mad and you want to get mad at everything. At the same time, just got to keep playing golf, and I didn’t do a great job of that afterwards. It’s tough to refocus.

“Shot one over if you take the penalties away, which is not very good out here. Frustrating, disappointing, but if you play golf long enough weird stuff will happen out here.”

The 36-year-old is 124th on the FedEx Cup standings and is looking to improve his status on the PGA Tour in 2025.

14-club rule and its origins

Rule 4.1b states ‘The player gets the general penalty (two penalty strokes) for each hole where a breach happened, with a maximum of four penalty strokes in the round (adding two penalty strokes at each of the first two holes where a breach happened.’

Interestingly if a player starts a round with fewer than 14 clubs, they may add clubs during the round up to the limit.

The 14-club rule was introduced in 1938 and is in place for a number of reasons. It is there to make a player decide upon which clubs will suit a certain course and to encourage some level of shotmaking rather than to have a perfect club for every yardage.

Before the 1938 cut off players would carry as many as 20 clubs to cover every conceivable shot. Steel-shafted clubs were brought in and players would bring both their steel and hickory-shafted clubs to tournaments which meant the caddie would have to carry the lot.

Scottish clubmaker George Nicoll was the first to create a matching set of steel-shafted clubs and and he would number them from one to nine so, when you add in a putter and four wooden clubs, 14 was deemed the ideal number.

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