Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Much ado about Tiger


Dear readers,

As you may have surmised, my mailbox is beginning to fill up with questions and comments about the two-stroke penalty Tiger Woods received on the 15th hole at Augusta National during the third round of the Masters.

The most accurate and detailed account I have read thus far was written by Barry Rhodes. I would highly recommend that anyone who wishes to fully understand the situation read his account. Here is the link:

Briefly, I believe that Tiger should have been disqualified. He chose the stroke and distance relief option for a ball in a water hazard [Rule 26-1a]. This option requires that a player play a ball “as nearly as possible at the spot from which the original ball was last played.”

By his own admission in a post-round interview, he returned to the original spot and deliberately dropped a ball two yards further back. The penalty for doing so is two strokes. Since he did not include the penalty in his score for the round, he signed a card with a score that was lower than what he actually had. The penalty for this is disqualification. Period.

Rule 33-7 allows a Committee to waive a penalty of disqualification in exceptional cases, and Decision 33-7/4.5 gives examples of when a Committee might choose to do so. The Decision states quite clearly that “a Committee would not be justified under Rule 33-7 in waiving or modifying the disqualification penalty…if the competitor’s failure to include the penalty stroke(s) was a result of either ignorance of the Rules or of facts that the competitor could have reasonably discovered prior to signing and returning his scorecard.” In other words, (1) ignorance of the Rules is not a legitimate reason to waive a disqualification penalty; and (2) disqualification may not be waived when the player has knowledge of what transpired. There was no justification for waiving disqualification: Tiger’s ignorance is irrelevant, and nothing happened that could only be detected by a review of slow-motion video. Tiger was well aware that he did not drop as near as possible to where he hit his previous shot.

The bottom line is that Tiger intentionally dropped in a place where a drop was not permitted, did not include the two-stroke penalty in his score, and should have been disqualified. I believe that a proper disqualification would have garnered respect for the Rules and for this particular Committee; failure to rule correctly has many people thinking that Tiger has a separate set of rules that apply to him alone.

I am going to answer one e-mail on the topic, from a reader who is interested in learning the correct procedure under the Rules, which should be our main concern on this blog:

Dear Linda,

Forget that Tiger just did it… I want to know what to do IF I do it…

Situation: From the fairway, ball is struck and flies and hits pin in the hole on the green and then ricochets back into a water hazard.
Question: Where do I legally place and play my replacement ball?

I thought you could walk from the hazard as far as you wanted, keeping the hole and the point of entry in the hazard in line…drop and count 1 stroke penalty. Tiger somehow was required to replay the shot from the point it was originally played?????  He wouldn’t want to put it in his divot, so he would drop a little way from the exact spot anyway.  ??????  This is totally confusing.  Could he not come up to the hazard and drop two club-lengths from the hazard at a point nearest where the ball crossed the hazard?

I’ve heard lots of commentary, but none re-iterating the appropriate rule which I could understand.

Thank you.
Lou

Dear Lou,

The first thing you need to understand is that the hazard on the 15th hole at Augusta is a water hazard (yellow lines, in this case), not a lateral water hazard. As such, there is no option to drop within two club-lengths of where the ball last crossed the margin of the hazard. This option is only available for lateral hazards.

Tiger (and you, had it happened to you) had three relief options:

1. Drop a ball where he hit his previous shot. This is known as “stroke and distance,” and is the option Tiger chose.
2. Drop a ball behind the hazard on the line of sight* to the hole. Since Tiger’s ricochet last crossed the margin of the hazard left of the flagstick, this option was not a good choice. I believe there is inhospitable terrain on the left side of Hole #15. (*Line of sight means that you imagine a line that begins at the hole, passes through the point where the ball last crossed the margin of the hazard, and continues back to infinity. This is the “line” on which you may drop a ball as far back as you wish.)
3. Drop a ball in a designated Dropping Zone (not always available, but it was an option on the 15th hole at Augusta). Tiger did not choose this option because he didn’t like the wet conditions in the drop area.

When you choose the “stroke and distance” option, you must drop the ball as nearly as possible on the spot where you hit your previous shot. You may not drop it on a “better” spot two yards back. The Rules are very clear on this point, and I cannot begin to understand how Tiger (and his caddie, apparently) “forgot” this requirement. Neither do I understand why Tiger did not summon a Rules official before proceeding, given the very unusual set of circumstances that preceded his drop.

Please keep in mind, with regard to your own play, that you should not sign your scorecard if you are uncertain whether your procedure on a given hole was correct. Let the Committee hash it out and give you a ruling first.

Linda
Copyright © 2013 Linda Miller. All rights reserved.