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Golf is not a perfect game.
Mistakes happen. And golfers aren’t the only ones who make them.
At the US Open earlier this month, we now know that a rules official made a mistake while guiding Rory McIlroy through a free drop during his final outing at Los Angeles Country Club.
The incident occurred on the par-5 14th hole, where McIlroy’s third shot connected into the fescue over a green bunker.
Because his ball was bound, McIlroy was entitled to a relief without penalty. That’s what he got. There are no problems there.
The problem, Thomas Pagel, the USGA’s chief governance officer, acknowledged in the meeting with Sports Illustratedis that the official rules misplaced the nearest relief point, leading McIlroy to take an incorrect drop.
Just as not all bad shots ruin a scorecard, not all bad judgments have equal consequences.
And in this case, the USGA decided, there was none, as McIlroy ended up dropping back pretty close to where he needed to be (no more than 18 inches from the proper place, the USGA said), on basically the same terrain (right shelf ) of the green) which he would have played from had the foul not been made. The USGA considered that he did not gain an unfair advantage or suffer an unfair harm. The error had no material effect on McIlroy’s score.
“He didn’t get a break,” Bagel said.
But since golf is also a game that inspires assumptions, it’s only natural that the rest of us would ask, what if?
What if it turns out that the wrong judgment has a material impact? That the improper landing unfairly burdened McIlroy or provided him with an unfair advantage? so what?
Let’s raise this question.
For starters, says Craig Winter, senior director of rules and amateur status at the USGA, once you hit the shot, it counts. It cannot be rolled back. Nothing in the rules allows this.
This does not mean that mistakes can never be corrected. The rules provide a lot of guidance about that.
It is not uncommon for tournament committees to review disputed rulings. The USGA often receives inquiries from local event organizers, seeking clarification regarding this or that incident. When certain errors are made, solutions are available. Suppose, for example, that a player gets a free drop from a side hazard when he should have taken a one-hit penalty. Based on the committee’s review, the score can be modified. Winter noted that in extreme cases, when critical errors are caught, entire rounds can be canceled.
But Winter emphasized that such scenarios had nothing to do with what happened with McIlroy in the LACC. It unfolds in a “very different world” than the National Championship.
“On a professional level, I’m not aware of a ruling that comes close to entitlement to cancel a round,” said Winter. Much less in a major.
At a small local event, with shoddy staff, little to no attendees, and limited organizing experience? maybe. But not at the US Open, with plenty of eyeballs and cameras on the job, and seasoned rules officials with easy access to video review.
“Of course, we always want to have a championship season without mistakes,” Winter said.
But, he added, the real significance of the incident in the LACC is that it provided a teachable moment: a chance to educate golfers about the rules.
In relief of the inline ball, this rule was simplified in 2019, as part of an ongoing update effort aimed at making golf’s guidelines easier to understand and follow. Where the rule once called for a golfer to put the ball down as close as possible to the place where it was included, it now allows one club length of relief, from a reference point directly behind the ball, to an area not close to the hole.
It’s simpler, okay.
But golf remains a delicate game, which is played on a variety of lines and has filled an infinite variety of scenarios. Consider, for example, what happened at the PGA Championship, at Oak Hill, in May, where in subsequent days wins, Corey Conners and Victor Hovland had eerily similar putts on hole number 4, both ending with lies embedded in the bunker.
The same rule was applied to them as it was applied to McIlroy, but where McIlroy ended up with a lie and a plausible stand, Conners and Hovland ended up in awkward situations that left them no choice but to hack.
You get the point. Strange things happen in golf.
What happened in LACC happened.
We’ll wait to see what happens next.