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.
