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Anyone who doesn't like BG's 'director's judgement' rule should have seen this tournament
Posted By: Chuck Bower In Response To: PGA Championship -- OT (Bill Riles)
Date: Monday, 16 August 2010, at 1:15 a.m.
1.1 INTERPRETATION. The Tournament Rules and Procedures cannot and should not regulate all possible situations that may arise during a match. No set of rules should deprive the Director of his freedom of judgment or prevent him from finding the solution dictated by fairness and compatible with the circumstances of a particular case.
I've played golf, caddied at golf, and watched golf for some or all of the last 42 years. I've never seen a situation like occurred on the last hole of regulation today (to one of the players in the final twosome). (Roberto DeVicenzo's disqualification at the 1968 Masters occurred 2 months before I learned the game. That situation has a lot of similarities.)
The PGA officials' ruling was the only one that was compatible with the rules. Unfortunately the PGA made local rules (which is a standard procedure in US golf) which set up the potential for this travesty. Instead of ruling that unraked sand areas be designated "waste bunkers" (meaning no penalty for a player touching his club to the ground before the swing), they designated them as strict bunkers where such an action would result in a two shot penalty. As Bill points out, the gallery was allowed to trample some of the sand bunkers throughout the tournament to the level that they were virtually hog trough quality. Unfortunately Dustin Johnson and his caddie, deep in concentration on whether he should try to win outright or play for the safe bogey and playoff, overlooked the possibility that his ball was actual in a strict sand bunker. He grounded his club, and after making bogey (which appeared to send him into a playoff with Martin Kaymer and Bubba Watson), was taken to the officials' conference where he eventually (correctly and honestly) came to the conclusion that he had grounded his club and therefore incurred a two shot penalty.
Eight weeks ago this same player entered the final round of the US Open as the leader, only to have his game unravel in front of tens of millions of viewers around the world. He regrouped quickly as few have ever done in this game to have a chance at winning another Major, only to have a ~33% chance of that zeroed out by a technicality which (admittedly in hindsight) never should have been a possibility.
I've never seen spectators allowed to trample a strict sand bunker while it was still in play. I'm sure it has happened before, but "fairness" was not adjudicated today.
To his credit, Johnson (so far as I saw) took it well. If that's the case we're going to see a lot more of him in contention in majors over the next 15-20 years.
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