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)
Connelly's "assessment" has nothing to do with your point that DJ wasn't in a bunker to begin with.
And again, I'll point out that many of the people in the bunker were marshals holding the fans back OUTSIDE of the bunker.
And Geoff, I'd challenge your statement that it was only upon replay that they decided he was in the bunker. They called it right away, from what I've heard, and only replayed it to a) be sure, b) prove it to Dustin. Additionally, and as with our legal system, parties are assumed innocent unless proven otherwise (or they confess), and so the right of presumption of innocence extends to the field.
DGS, your simple "play it as it lies" rule breaks down quite easily. What do you do when you lose a ball? Or you hit a ball that's not yours? How about if you improve the lie of your ball (in a bunker or otherwise)? Is it legal to draw a line on the ground to assist you in lining up your body or the shot? What if you tee off outside the markers? What if a player gets advice?
I could go on, but that makes the point...