Former member of the USGA’s Rules of Golf Committee, Lew Blakey, has created a wonderful new website on the rules called throughthegreen.org. Lew is one of the greatest minds on the Rules in the world.
He is the original author of the quizzes that can be found on this site.
The USGA and R&A have released the new and revised decisions for 2010-2011. There are 28 new decisisons and 51 revised ones. Only one decision was removed. In addition to the usual article, there is a discussion of one change and how it cam about. We got a copy a few days ago and I’ll have some comments on the new decisions over the next few days.
They also released a statement on the use of cell phones and the like as distance measuring devices. If you have an iPhone with a distance measuring application, you can’t use it as a DMD if it also has other functions that would be illegal, even if you don’t use them. For example, my iPhone has an app that allows it to be used to measure the slope of greens, which I use in doing hole locations.
I’m running the NCGA / CIF Northern California Girls High School Championship today. We are at Almaden Country Club in south San Jose. We had a 30 minute delay due to frost. The first frost of the season here. Fortunately this is my next to last tournament of the season.
Always a pain with everyone running around asking when we’ll be playing and I’m at the mercy of the superintendent.
This past weekend at the NCGA Junior Tour’s Tour Championship we had two examples of conflicting stories about incidents that happened.
The first one came when a parent stopped one of our officials and said that a player had hit a ball that was out of bounds on the 15th hole. The player had already teed off on 16 so if that was true, he would be disqualified. The official caught up with the group on the 17th tee. He interviewed the player who said that his first ball was out of bounds, but his provisional, which had ended up about 2 feet from the other ball, was in bounds. The other two players in the group agreed. Given that the three players all agreed, the official considered the incident closed. Then he got stopped by another parent who said that the boy hadn’t hit a provisional. The first parent also said that he hadn’t hit a provisional. This got really confusing. But the three boys were adamant that he did. We finally went with the kids testimony as it was possible that the parents didn’t see him hit it.
A little later we had an incident on the first green. A girl hit her first putt up just short of the hole. Another girl claimed that she then walked up, started to hit the ball, but stubbed her putter in the ground. Then she started over and tapped the ball in. The girl in question denied this. The third girl in the group said she hadn’t been watching and hadn’t seen anything. None of the adults watching had seen anything either. In the end, we don’t know if it happened or not, but with something like this, we went with the first player’s story and didn’t a stroke. Only she knows if she was telling us the truth or not. If she wasn’t, she’ll get to live with that.
Decision 34-3/9 was added a couple of years ago to provide guidance in incidents like these.
The USGA has put an article about interesting rulings on their website. The most interesting stuff is on the links at the bottom to the rules pages from the three opens: US Open, US Women’s Open, US Senior Open.
I spent the weekend being an observer at the President’s Cup. On Saturday I was the observer in the morning foursomes match between Tiger Woods / Steve Stricker and Tim Clark / Mike Weir. If you watched any of it on TV, you know that Tiger made a 20+ foot putt on 17 to square the match and hit an awesome 2nd shot that lead to a conceded eagle on 18 to win it.
The most interesting almost ruling was on #15. Mike Weir’s tee shot hit a tree that is on the fairway side of the lake. The ball dropped down into a decent lie through the green. In front of Tim Clark on the second shot was a group of trees and in the trees a large video scoreboard. This was directly between Clark and the hole. Mike Davis was the referee and I let him know that as he walked around the lake. When he and Clark got there, Mike showed him the area where he could drop if he wanted relief. After looking he decided he liked his lie where the ball was and that he could easily play over the video screen so he played the ball from where it had come to rest.
On Sunday I was the observer with the Tim Clark vs. Zach Johnson match. Dean Ryan from the Canadian Golf Association was the referee. We had no real rulings and only a few times where the two players were about the same distance from the hole. When that happened I went to the Shotlink tower and they would tell me who was away. The best part of this match was the incredible play on the back 9. Clark had jumped out to a 5-up lead after 7 holes. The halved 8 and 9. From 10 through 15 Zach Johnson went 3-3-3-3-2-3. Clark went 3-3-3-3-3-3. Zach shot 5 under par over 6 holes and only made up one hole. It was some amazing golf that ended with Clark chipping in on 15 to halve the hole and win the match 4 and 3.
It was a great honor to be asked to help there and I really had a great time with it. Working with people like Mike and Dean is really a treat.
Today I’m at a University of California mens collegiate tournament at the Meadow Club. We’re working hard to get 36 holes in today as we’ll probably get rained out of the 3rd round tomorrow.
During the play of the 18th hole in the second round of match play at the US Mid-Amateur, a player hit his second shot way to the left. It actually was on the far side of the lake from the green. It was in the hazard. He and the official got over there and after shooing away a small alligator found a ball plugged in the muddy bank. Evidently the ball had spun down into the bank and then somehow spun part way back up so that it was suspended about half way down the hole. The player needed to lift the ball to identify it. When he did so and attempted to replace the ball, it fell all the way to the bottom of the hole. Since the lie of the ball to be replaced had been altered, they had to find the nearest most similar lie. There was another small hole nearby that they were able to put the ball into and have it about the same depth below the ground. He chose to hit it rather than take the penalty and go back. From there he hit it into the water and conceeded the hole and the match.
Remember that, with the exception of a ball in bunker, if the lie of a ball to be placed or replaced is altered, the ball shoudl be replaced in the nearest most similar lie within a club-length.
During the first round of stroke play at this year’s US Mid-Amateur, I was assigned to work on the 8th and 9th holes at the River Course along with two other officials. I was on #9 while the other two shared #8. The eighth hole is a long par 5 with a cape tee shot over a lake. The player can choose how much to carry off the tee. There was also a drop zone established on a forward tee which gave the player a straighter shot but still had to carry the water.
A player hit his first tee shot into the water and then went to the drop zone. His next shot also skirted the water. When the group got up there, our official, Chris, went over to help. The hazard is bordered by some shortish grass. Outside that is a waste area and above it before the fairway is some 2-3 inch Bermuda rough. While most of the players and caddies searched near the hazard, the player in question’s caddie was sure it carried and was looking in the Bermuda. After 5 minutes, Chris said the time had expired. A few seconds later the ball was found in the hazard. Chris was able to give the player relief at a spot about 30 yards back that point on a small spit that the ball would have crossed before re-entering the hazard. The player dropped and continued play.
As he was describing this to me a few minutes later, I asked, “How did you have virtual certainty at the time the ball was lost?” If there wasn’t virtual certainty, the player would have had to go back to the drop zone under penalty of stroke and distance. Chris realized that he hadn’t thought about that. There then followed a lot of discussion about this and Chris started to feel guilty that he had made a mistake.
While he might have made a slight mistake in not considering it, the final decision, after talking with Bill McCarthy and a call to another USGA official overnight, it could be said that there probably was virtual certainty. Many officials will say that because the caddie was looking elsewhere virtual certainty can not be established. In the end, we felt looking in the other areas where the ball might have been can establish virtual certainty by ruling them out as possible locations.
The fact that the ball was found in the hazard after the 5 minutes should not influence that because, what counts is what did you know or were virtually certain of at the time the clock ran out.
