Rules Of Golf Outrage Going Viral
I'm not sure if this speaks to a general disdain for the rules or maybe just the power of ESPN.com, but as happened during the last freakish golf story (Tiger and his women), an item about the Dustin Johnson violation has landed in my email box in three different chain email forwards in the last two days. The text does not include a byline, but unlike in the Tiger case, this one is real and it can't be spoofed because we know the incident was already teetering on the edge of farcical.
The column, which I found after a quick Google search, is by Rick Reilly. You may recall he once dabbled in sportswriting and now is a budding Sportscenter anchor!
The key component of his take, copied and pasted in the chain emails:
The reason you can't ground your club in a bunker is that you might (a) be able to move enough sand to improve your lie and (b) you might be able to "test the surface," i.e. figure out if there's a lot of sand under your ball, not much sand, soft sand, hard sand, rocks, etc. But when a bunker gets treated like a weedy bleacher, with thousands of people clomping through it, it's no longer a bunker, nor should it be played as one. It's not a bunker anymore, it's a dirt path.
Johnson in no way violated the spirit of the grounding-the-club rule. All he did was gingerly set his club behind the ball and swing. No advantage gained. Yes, he was stupid to violate the rule. But Whistling Straits was stupid to make it.
Let me ask you this: How was Johnson even supposed to know he was in a bunker? He's played golf most of his 26 years and never before has he come upon a bunker where a dozen people were standing in it with him. Has it ever happened to you? If Whistling Straits is so intent on playing a slab of trampled sand as a bunker, doesn't it owe it to the players to maintain it like one? Why didn't it have ropes around them if it was expecting players to have to play out of them with such tenderness?
Even the champion's caddy thought it was a joke. "It's a bit farcical," said Scotsman Craig Connelly, the caddy for Martin Kaymer. "You can't have bunkers that people are walking through and grass is growing out of. It is a pathetic ruling to say that was a bunker."
Golf is an ass sometimes.
Commenters, please spare me your Rick rants. I get it, you don't like him anymore because he makes too much money and maybe it's gone to his head a wee bit. Can we stick to the notion that outrage may not be subsiding as we near the one-week anniversary?
Friday, August 20, 2010 at 12:21 PM
Reader Comments (43)
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/john_gonzalez/20100817_Gonzo___Arcane_rules_and_a_bunch_of_bunk.html
He's not the regular golf guy.
Sure, it Was DJ's fault that he grounded his club in a bunker, and he probably should have read the rules sheet. But, I don't think the rules makers envisioned a situation where the bunker is one of 1200, small as a desk, 30 yards off the fairway, and full of spectators.
CB MacDonald had similar feelings, but I don't recall the exact nature of his statement.
Dustin screwed up. Next thing we will have is the apologists claiming a printer's error on Roberto's scorecard.
He thought he was somewhere on the sidelines. I would have thought the same.
Given the pressure of the moment, I might have also believed I was in the Emerald City if you told me.
I think I need to call 2 strokes on myself for reading the op-ed.
thanks for the link. Funny, yet not funny at all reading.
digsouth
I'm on page 45 and what do I read?
"It is an interesting fact that few hazards are of any interest out of what is known among medical men as the direct field of vision. This does not extend more than 10 to 20 yards on either side of the direct line to the hole. Hazzards placed outside this limit are usually of little interest, but simply act as a source of irritation."
- A. Mackenzie (1920) "Golf Architecture: Economy in Course Construction and Green Keeping", Simpkin, Marshall, Kent & Co. Ltd.
That about says it all.
Because this statement by Mr. Reilly has little if anything to do with the Rules of Golf: "Why Whistling Straits calls unkempt, unraked, shaggy pits of sand that spectators have been standing in, sitting in, sleeping in, eating in and smoking in all week bunkers, I'll never know."
Me niether, Rick. Seems to me like an architectural problem. Please point me to the impassioned Rick Reilly column for ESPN that examines the history and architecture of Whistling Straits. From last month. I think there are a half-dozen of them, by Geoff Shackelford.
And indeed didn't Mike Davis of the USGA (the same USGA that Rick Reilly loves to ridicule) suggest, quite rightly, that the problem we saw at Whislting Straits was a set-up and architectural problem? Not a Rules problem?
I have to say it; Rick Reilly isn't just an ordinary idiot. He's actually a dangerous idiot.
Jayem, above is quite right in a vacuum. Rules are rules.
However, we are Americans, products of revolution and the wild west, the frontier, rugged individualism. Some rules are made to be broken..but not in golf apparently and ay, there's the rub.
I was watching the final round with a small group of new to golf viewers and they were incredulous that DJ could be penalized so harshly for violating a rule which gave him zero advantage but a horrendous penalty, i.e. taking potential victory from his grasp.
They were thinking that the there is a difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.
The example ToddH gives above is salient.
The stereotype of golf being a whites only country club, elitist, snobby, anal game is manifested in these picayune interpretations of small little rules which are meaningless when interpreted with zero input into the situation.
For example its against the law to speed, but if I tell the officer my wife's pregnant and is delivering, he may let you off.
Similarly, I am sure there are the "purists" out there who vehemently disagree, but this myopic devotion to archaic and downright stupid rules are more in line with the old USSR and present Singapore, than to our great country.
Nothing was said about the rule until a fan favourite got caught. If it was Monty or Sergio, we would be reading about the bonehead player mistake.
Yes you are right "The "spirit" of the rules is not the priority" and that goes against the grain of just about every fair-minded American who is willing to judge an incident on the basis of what is right and fair not what is necessarily whats in the rules. Some rules in country clubs in the not too distant pass say that they don't allow in black members, which is fine but some would say those rules are wrong.
Thats why we Americans look at the World Cup, the most important athletic event in the world, with incredulity when they don't put cameras in the goal area or major league baseball who won't bend to technology when everyone can see an obvious blunder by the umpire going unchanged because of slavish adherence to narrow minded tradition.
Golf, if not for Tiger, would be dying on the vine right now. A bunch of colorless, drab personalities playing a slow game to watch with incomprehensibly complicated, anachronistic rules which sometimes needlessly penalize players.
Look at football and basketball, constantly refining their game to suit the demands of a frustrated public.
Football with instant replay and rules designed to protect the QB and produce more offense...basketball getting rid of foul shots after defensive fouls, bringing in the 3 pt. shot, eliminating hand checking etc.
To the traditionalists clinging to the "gentlemanly" golf game of 1915, you're entitled to to your opinion.
To the rest of the nation living in 2010, some of the rules of golf make no sense and the glacial pace of change and the denial within the bureaucracy threaten the popularity and the "branding" to the at large public.
And bless his optimism, Wind trusted that the U. S. G. A. would try to do something to make sure it wouldn't happen again. He believed that they would make some attempt to bring the traditions of the game into line with the realities of present-day, big-time, high-stakes professional golf. Even Wind, a staunch traditionalist, recognized that something had to be done . . . 42 years ago.
It's not the fault of the course. The course might not meet the approval of those who frequent this site, but I'd say it is just about perfect for a major championship in 2010. Only a few weeks ago, the pros were taking apart the Old White at the Greenbrier. But Whistling Straits, IMHO, produced golf that was dramatic and often electrifying. A lot of good players were in it at the end, and they were gunning for birdies. Johnson was brilliant down the stretch. In the playoff, Watson threw a birdie at Kaymer, and Kaymer came back with a deuce at the 17th. Pete Dye did his job.
It's a clear cut violation of the rules. I think the problem is more automaton players who don't think and have no subtlety or creative intelligence, something golf historically prizes.
Am I mistaken (maybe) or did Nicklaus NEVER ground his club, bunker or fairway?
Why excuse the infraction Geoff? The outrage is mostly mouth-breathers who haven't played golf...ever!
Should the rule be changed? Maybe. Or maybe golfers should be professionals who are not only physically gifted, but above average strategists.
Here's my problem in a nutshell. Mulligan wrote above: The "spirit" of the rules is not the priority. And of course, unless you read the rules, neither is the intent. It has to be the same for everyone if it is gonna count.
Unfortunately in this case, the rules weren't the same for everyone. Johnson appeared to violate the rule only after replays were viewed. Someone else making his mistake on Thursday morning gets away with the violation which we all can concede, was not one he intended to make, but extenuating circumstances caused it to happen.
I hate the idea of intent creeping into these decisions, but isn't it only fair to ask the player intent as you watch the replay, over and over again, which puts him at a disadvantage?
That was the best line in the post for sure.
You seem to be in touch with "those who should know" whether or not DJ was in a bunker. What do they make of Connelly's assessment?
http://www.golfclubatlas.com/images/SH12b.jpg
The divot hole in the fairway. Sure, it sucks being in one, especially since you did everything "right". But, someone define a divot hole completely and totally objectively. Because I've never seen a definition that doesn't blast open the door to rampant abuse. That is, every single bump, depression, scrape, gouge, bare patch, etc. will now be called "clearly an old divot hole" and there are people who will never have to hit off of anything but a completely flat perfect lie, even if the resulting lie was completely natural. And, not hitting off the natural rolling, undulating, imperfect ground is very much the original spirit of the rule. So, the rule is in place so that there are zero judgment calls about this. You don't have to call over your partner, your competitor, the official, your wife, or your pastor to ask if the slightly bumpy lie you find your ball in counts as an old divot hole or not. You simply play it as it lies.
The wind moving your ball. Firstly, the rule of golf are very clear, that when you have addressed the ball and the ball moves, it will be presumed to have moved because of the player. The important phrasing in there is addressed, because you are considered to have addressed the ball when you have both taken your stance AND grounded the club. (Of course, except when in a hazard, addressed equals only having taken your stance then.) The point is that if you are in 40+ mph winds, don't ground the club! Then, if the ball moves because of the wind, so long as you haven't fully addressed the ball, you can legitimately argue the wind moved the ball. Sure, it takes practice to do it, but I would think that any professional should be able to do it adequately.
Again, the rule is in place to make the judgment calls as minimal as possible. You addressed the ball and it moved? Then it is on you. You didn't address the ball yet? Then you can decide if it was your fault or not.
Lastly, I think that the point that is always missed is that good luck happens in golf too. Sure, sometimes you get bad breaks, and sometimes those breaks are the result of a rule, even a rule that you think is stupid.
But, how many times have we sliced a ball that was going into a stream, but hit a tree and bounced back? Hit the white stake denoting the OOB line and bounce back into play? If we want to undo the effects of bad luck -- like finding your ball in the fairway in a divot hole -- then it is truly only fair if you undo the effects of good luck, too.
You hit the cartpath on your drive, took a huge hop, and got an extra 70 yards? No fair, you need to drop that ball 70 yards back.
You hit that tree that saved you from penalty strokes? Nope, you need to give yourself those strokes.
You skulled a chip and hit the flagstick? Not fair, go throw the ball over the green and into that bunker where it belongs.
Good and bad luck happens in the game, and I bet they even out pretty darn close. The game wouldn't be so addicting if it didn't, really.
Now, you want to talk about the scorecard rules... then I'll listen. But, the nonsense of the divot holes and wind has very valid reasons behind the rules.
the percentage of balls beng replaced exactly in the same spot is unrecordable.
If the wind is blowing, then not unlike LCP, the rule should be suspended.
How many times have we seen much time wasted as a player trys to figure out how to hit a 3 foot putt in the wind without grounding his club, and then missing to boot.
What purpose does the 'ball moving' have to do with aiding score? If It moves simply replace it. It was picked up in the first place. Soon super slo mo will be used to call penaltys on players who replace their ball .00001 closer to the hole.
it's all bs, my friend. Tell me any logic, when THE PLAYER PICKS THE BALL UP AND MOVES IT. (CAPS SUB FOR ITALICS, NOT SHOUTING)
the penalty serve no purpose.
Play well.
digsouth
Pulled over to local yokel pizza shack coming home from a golf trip to watch ending? Check.
Four guys watching and not one of them mentions that he is in a bunker? Check.
CBS handles it terribly? Check.
_____
Against spirit of rules? Does not matter.
CBS graphic shows it was bunker? Does not matter.
PGA Rules guy did not warn Dustin? Does not matter.
Feherty insists not a bunker? Does not matter.
Nobody reads the rules sheet? Does not matter.
Course built by a psycho? Does not matter.
Fans standing in bunker? Does not matter.
Drive fanned 40 yards right? Does not matter.
Marble mouthed PGA spokesman explaining rule? Does not matter.
Other players' tweets? Do not matter.
_____
Dustin not going back to spot with official to claim his ball was in a blown out area of previously defined bunker? Mattered.
Let's move on.
If its ok to ground your club lightly in a bunker so long as you dont gain an advantage when do you think you have grounded your club to forcefully?Who decides if you have gained an advantage or not.?Do we need intent police at every bunker?
Or will we all cheat like hell and hope nobody sees us-cos apparently its ok to break a rule if nobody notices.
Just askin.
The original rules were just that-short and simple.
The reason that all changed is because in practise the Rules were found to be totally inadequate.Also too large a pecentage of golfers habitually cheated.Most,if not all, of todays rules-however daft they may seem - are there for a good reason.They are not the same as in 1915(in fact they were much simpler then!) and they are reviewed/revised every 4 years.I would change 1 or 2 myself but just because I think its a good idea doesnt mean everybody does-there needs to be concensus.
Applying intent and discretion will never work.Why?Judgement calls by their very nature can never be consistent.And lots of golfers cheat!
Mr Q
You are right in that it is 2010 and many expect everything to be easy, we have to be sure to offend nobody and everybody wins/nobody loses. Pathetic liberal aspirations that threaten the integrity of the sport and do not belong in the game of golf, now or ever.
Take up another game, a feel-good one that gives everybody a trophy. But you will only be fooling yourself.
The Saturday pm nine holes are "MPM" - Match Play Madness. Very simple, very easy. Pairings are made on the fly during lunch or on the first tee. Rules are easy too:
Rule #1: Play it as it lies
Rule #2: If in doubt see Rule #1
There is no relief from cartpaths, divot holes, water in bunkers etc etc, you just play it as it lies. Makes for an interesting 9 holes, and leaves one wondering if we really need any more Rules, other then #1 & #2.
@NRH: Exactly.
FWIW: I don't think there's anything wrong with the ROG now. I am on the side of those critical of Reilly's central theme. Bignose and Mulligan have it right.
Let's see you left out the Nazis in your post with the Soviets and Singapore(?)
And if I hear once more about how the game would be dying without the serial adulterer and control freak. I will vomit.
How on earth did golf survive hundreds of years without TW, TV and the rules changes of the NBA????
You are killing me here.
I am the father of a 23 year old. I am familiar with the entitlement and excuse making. This whole thing is absurd.
And Geoff, I've been over this and bored by it for 4 days.
Well past time to move on.
Have a nice day.
James H.
The addendum was posted that in effect said, " This course is all messed up, bunker-wise"- ask if unsure."
I enjoyed watching the championship. It's difficult for me to intelligently comment on the architectural quality of WS, but I thought it was picutresque and a decent challenge to the competitors. The leaders weren't 30 under par or 10 over par at the conclusion.
The situation of DJ on hole 18 was unfortunate. I was very impressed with the way he handled it when interviewed by Feherty in the locker room. When I was 26 I don't think I could have been that cool under those circustances. And I thought rules official Price was very even handed in his comments, very commendable.
I've been to several Rules of Golf meetings/courses that the USGA sponsors. They are quite educational, really help with understanding the "why" of many of the rules. Most pros (and golf writers) would do well to attend one. And though the rep may not be completely undeserved, one does not come away from one of those courses with the impression of the USGA as bunch of tight assed, old fashioned, blue blood elitists.
I realize winning is the most important priority with the competitors, but DJ dropped a bundle of cash with the penalty. There was a substantial difference between tied for 2nd and 5th place. It hurt me and wasn't even my money to win or lose.
Out of respect to Geoff's request I will not make any comment about what an insufferable prick that Rick Reilly is.
Re: Wind 'rule': Whom decides at what point LCP rules are instituted? The saturation of a course can be as concentrated as the wind differential from hole to hole. There's your answer to whom determines the wind exception.
As to my overall take: really *just eliminate the rule*..... as stated ...(caps sub for italics) WHEN YOU PiCK UP YOUR BALL AND MARK IT, THERE IS VIRTUALLY NO CHANCE YOU REPLACE IT IN THE SAME SPOT..... so what's the point? if your ball moves, simply replace it as best as possible, that is all you do after marking
As to the grounding of a club in a bunker.... I understand the reasoning for a penalty.... you are challenged to hit a shot from a (for most) unnatural position, that is , you cannot ground your club.... being in a hazard is meant to be penal. I question it being 2 strokes VS one stroke: you are already in a penal position: maybe the reason it is 2 is some would take the penalty to have a better opportunity to successfully make the shot???? I don't know.
As to the ROG: I play by the rules, and I call penalties on myself. I am not in favor of 'no one saw' , or cheating by any means. But that does not mean that I cannot lobby for a more fair set of rules. They were not carved by lightening on 2 stone tablets, though some seem to think they were.
I am just for fair, and common sense. There needs to be rules, but what happens when you have bad rules, is the marginal player may 'justify' dissing the 'good rules' in disdain for the 'bad ones'....and that is cheating, something we don't want.
play well.
digsouth
you make a quantum leap from a call for a real rules revision, to some sort of give everyone a trophy conclusion.
Amazing you use a computer vs telegram.
Just funnin ya a bit. ;)
have a good weekend.
digsouth
I would go for that.
hit it and hit it again.
digsouth
First, as I understand it, it was replay where it was first seen. The officials watching in the scoring area and other places saw it immediately.
Second, to say that because others weren't caught earlier in the week means we should ignore it doesn't work. About 15 years ago, I was playing in a tournament. It had rained heavily that morning. A player in my group removed some water from a tree before playing his shot from under it. This is a violation of Rule 13-2 (Decision 13-2/23). Since I was the only rules official that I know of who was playing in the tournament, I was also probably the only person (or one of a few) who knew this was a violation. Other players might have done the same thing that day. Should I have ignored it because this poor sucker was playing with the one guy who happened to know that?
Of course you shouldn't have, the problem is that those on television get extra scrutiny, with as many replays as necessary to make the call. Just seems to be an awkward situation. And as we know, in these instances when the player has resisted, they've then been asked the intent question. Perhaps Johnson should have made the officials make the call. I suspect the playoff would have had to come back on Monday if that was case.
jb