The arm
A sweeping bar that knocks your ball clear. There is no shooting around it — only landing somewhere else.
It is a place, not a timing puzzle
If your ball comes to rest anywhere inside the arm's circle, you cannot play on until the arm has come round and struck it. Where it ends up afterwards is not yours to decide.
That is the important thing to understand: you are not timing a gap. There is no line through the circle that gets you past it. The only way to beat the arm is to not be in the circle when your ball stops.
Playing around it
Treat the circle exactly as you would a bunker you cannot escape: a place your ball must not come to rest. That usually means laying up short of it or carrying well past it, and it means thinking about rollout rather than just carry — a shot that lands short of the circle and releases into it is the same mistake as flying straight into it.
The compensation is that the arm does not cost you a stroke. It costs you position, and sometimes it gives you a good one.
How to play it
- Work out where your ball will stop, not where it will land. Rollout is what puts people in the circle.
- Laying up short of the arm is nearly always cheaper than trying to thread past it.
- If you do end up inside, accept it. There is nothing to play and nothing to salvage — wait for the strike.
- The arm is not a penalty. Being flung is sometimes better than where you were.
Where you will meet it
The arm appears on a minority of holes and never on a crossing.