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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: Anyone who doesn't like BG's 'director's judgement' rule should have seen this tournament (Bill Riles)
Date: Monday, 16 August 2010, at 4:40 p.m.
Feherty is an excellent announcer, and his sense of humor is a big part of that.
But besides he, who was the oncourse announcer with the final pairing (and always gets a ringside seat for any shot he wants), there were two people in the booth who themselves are pretty familiar with the game:
1) Jim Nantz was (for a very short time) a teammate of Fred Couples and Blaine McCallister at U. of Houston. I recall that well after his college days he had a (low) single digit handicap, but I don't know if he plays regularly enough to keep that. Still, the guy is the #1 non-pro announcer in golf today, probably ever.
2) Nick Faldo is CBS's #1 expert announcer who sits next to Nantz for the full telecast, commenting on the live telecasts' scenes. He has five Major Championship trophies on his mantle and doesn't hesitate to speak up if he sees something amiss.
NO ONE (that I can remember) on the live telecast mentioned any of this until the rules official called Johnson aside after he finished putting on 18.
So we have five experts (Nantz, Faldo, Feherty, Johnson, Johnson's caddie) who completely missed this rule breakage. Were Johnson and his caddie wrong in not knowing the local rule (which Johnson admitted he hadn't read) and recognizing the situation? Technically, yes. Should he have been penalized? Within the rules of golf the answer is clear -- yes. Was the PGA rules committee wrong in writing the local rule like this? I think that one is a monster yes.
The outcome was the only 'fair' one (to the entire field) as the rules are written. But the PGA tournament rules committee really blew this, and as Bill says, they likely know it.
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