1. The 2019 Rule Change: A shift many golfers still haven’t adapted to

For decades, water hazards came with a nearly instinctive mindset:

- No grounding the club.
- No practice swings touching the water.
- No accidental contact of any kind within the hazard.

But in 2019, the USGA and R&A completely redefined this philosophy. Hazards were no longer called “hazards”; they became penalty areas.

Inside a penalty area, players are allowed to: Ground the club, touch the water or ground during practice swings, move loose impediments, set the club behind the ball as normal

The only restriction: you may not improve the conditions affecting the stroke.

The intent was to make the rules simpler, but it created a gap: many golfers—even at a high level—still behave as if the old rules apply.

Wyndham Clark was not one of them. He leveraged the new rules to their fullest.

2. What Clark did — and why it was brilliant

Before hitting the actual shot, Clark stepped a few feet back into the water and made several aggressive practice swings, splashing water with the clubhead.

Why?

He wanted to:

- Feel the resistance of the water on the clubhead

- Assess how the club would travel through the water

- Judge the entry angle and the expected rebound

Determine timing, speed, and how much the water would slow the strike

Most importantly: he knew the rules allowed him to do this.

Armed with that information, Clark executed a clean strike, launching the ball high and leaving it just 25 feet from the pin.

A birdie from a submerged lie like that is not luck. It is the product of rule awareness, courage, and adaptability.

Typically, with a partially submerged ball from 60 yards, most golfers would take a penalty drop. But for Clark, the drop zone created its own problems: poor angle to the green, potential interference, and uncertainty about lie quality. He also needed momentum to chase Scheffler.

Hitting from the water carried risk — but the pre-shot practice swings reduced that risk dramatically, allowing him to calibrate for the exact resistance and conditions.

This is the strategy of a golfer who understands that golf is a game of probabilities — and the rules increase your probabilities if you know how to use them.