One of a Kind

The Masters - By the Book

At this year’s Masters tournament, there were two Rules incidents that attracted much public interest. Partly because of incomplete information supplied by the press, they seem to have generated much misunderstanding among the golfing public.

First, the Tiger Woods incident. On the second day, after his pitch to the 15th green hit the flagstick and rebounded into the water hazard in front of the green, Woods elected to proceed under Rule 26-1a, which meant playing again from where his previous shot was played. This Rule requires the ball to be dropped as near as possible to where the previous stroke was played from, but Woods chose to drop the ball about a yard farther back; this meant he had dropped the ball in the wrong place, for which the penalty is two strokes. When he signed his scorecard, he did not include this penalty. Normally the penalty for signing for a score better than one’s actual score is disqualification (Rule 6-6d). The reason he was not disqualified had nothing to do with any “new rule”. It was because the Committee had reviewed the videotape, (incorrectly) thought that there was no problem and did not interview him. His signing for a wrong score was therefore deemed to be the result of a Committee error. Under such circumstances, the disqualification penalty is, of course, waived (Dec. 34-3/1 illustrates this principle). It has nothing to do with the new Decision 33-7/4.5, which the authorities brought in to cover only such situations where a fact unknown to the player causes him not to include a penalty, such as his ball moving an infinitesimal amount that can only be picked up by a powerful zoom lens. This new Decision does not exempt a player from penalties incurred through breaching a Rule for any other reason, whether inadvertent or not.

Second, the Guan slow-play incident. It has to be understood that a group is timed (“put on the clock” ) only if it has exceeded its prescribed time for the number of holes played and it is out of position in relation to the group in front. Guan’s group was out of position from the 10th hole. He got his first “bad time” on the 13th, for which there is no penalty, and his second “bad time” on the 17th, for which the penalty is one stroke. In eight holes, despite warnings, the group had failed to catch up, this despite the fact that Guan was playing with two fast players in Crenshaw and Manassero, so it is clear that he was guilty of slow play over a period of over two hours and had not made an adequate effort to speed up. It is virtually unknown in professional golf for a group to be out of position for that length of time. I am sure we are all proud of Guan’s performance and are delighted he made the cut, but there is no doubt that he deserved the penalty and, hopefully, will in future learn to play at a more acceptable pace. – Dr Brian Choa, Chairman, Rules and Decisions, Hong Kong Golf Association