Intent And The Rules Of Golf
In writing about the Kenny Perry dust-up over his FBR Open playoff actions, Lawrence Donegan quotes the European Tour's top rules referee, John Paramor:
"The fact is the player is allowed to put his club behind the ball, otherwise he would never be allowed to address his ball in any circumstance. As soon as any player puts his club on the grass behind the ball, then the grass will be flattened," he says. "The issue is, is there excessive pressing down with the club?" In other words, was there intent? "Looking at this, I don't think Kenny Perry did use excessive pressure when he put his club behind the ball. It does look bad, it does look like the lie was improved but, as long as there was no intent to do so, and I don't think there was, then it is not a penalty."
To our rules gurus out there, I'm curious, is this intent concept used commonly in the rules of golf?
After all, Roberto de Vicenzo did not intend to sign an incorrect scorecard...
Sunday, May 17, 2009 at 09:31 PM
Reader Comments (23)
Not in the Illinois Women's Open.
Unless they didn't intend to hit their tee shot OB.
Seriously, letting rules officials start judging a player's intent is potentially harmful to the rest of the field, and ehtically ororous, to my thinking.
4p
Keys sticking.
STORY OF THE DAY:======================
PGA Tour pro sees ball in deep rough, calls caddie over and yanks a 3-wood out of his bag. He starts tap-tap-taping behind the ball.
"Is that a 3-wood lie?' asked the caddie.
Tap-tap-tap.
"Not yet," winked the pro.
4p
Obviously there are cases where it is not important at all, as in whether the ball goes in the hole or whether it is in a hazard. But in situations where a player "improves" his lie or "tests" the conditions of the course, judging intent is imperative.
Let me give one simple example. Suppose you have just marked your ball on the green, and in the act of picking it up you lose your grip on it and it rolls several feet. Is that a stroke penalty? Well, if you purposely rolled the ball on the green to see how fast it would run, you'd be testing the green speed and it would clearly be a penalty. If you just dropped the ball, then that would be extremely harsh. And where would you draw the line? Is it a shot penalty whenever you drop your ball on a green? How about if you drop it two inches as you're putting it back down after marking it? What if you are handing it to your caddie and he fumbles it?
So I don't know the US tour rules on this, but the R&A rules are based on intent according to the "expert" I know. And thank god they are! I know some of you want things to be black and white, but I think it makes far more sense in these gray areas to judge intent. Hell, if you want to make this a black and white issue, then the rule should simply be that you can never ground your club at all -- I'll bet we could bring in a scientist to prove that any club grounding microscopically improves a player's lie. Is that how we want golf to be judged?
So based on what I know, Paramor's comment sounds quite reasonable.
I'm willing to concede that Perry didn't intentionally improve his lie. But what difference should that make? He negligently did so. Enforcing the rule, which makes no mention of intent, provides a deterrent to players being similarly negligent in the future.
That's how rules are supposed to work.
[quote]
Stroke - A "stroke" is the forward movement of the club made with the intention of striking at and moving the ball, but if a player checks his downswing voluntarily before the clubhead reaches the ball he has not made a stroke.
[/quote]
Now there may be a disconnect between what his big brain is telling me and what my little brain is hearing but I don't think so. I do realize some of the decisions (i.e. 16-1a/12) include the word intent but in reading the big book one comes away with the feeling that intent does not carry much weight over the entirety of the rules. It is used very sparingly and usually becomes applicable when a player is 'intentionally' gaming a rule such as in the decision noted.
In the Kenny Perry case, the questions to me is simple. The player cannot press the grass down with more force than would be exerted by the normal weight of the club. Clearly, Perry did this by the manner in which he repeatedly "dropped" the clubhead behind the ball. More than the resting weight of the clubhead was applied on the grass behind the ball, and his lie improved as a result.
His action, however, to me does not constitute a violation. If I saw it in competition, I would not call it on the player, aside from a whispered "be careful" while standing on the next tee box. I believe Perry "lightly" grounded his club and although he approached the fuzzy line defined in Rule 13-2 and Dec. 18-2b/5, he did not cross it. Golfers commonly ground the club in the manner Perry did; it is part of the process of preparing to play a shot.
and it isn't all or nothing; some violations require intent and others do not. why is that so hard to take in?
Barring other factors like overhanging branches, ball in a hazard, fear of cuasing the ball to move, etc., I don't know why Perry would be required to make a different address just because the ball is in the rough.
In this case, if I were KP's lawyer, I'd show the Committee about 20 other videos of him doing the exact same thing under circumstances (like the middle of a fiarway at Augusta) where the lie couldn't possibly be improved.
Kenny Perry cheated, whether he intended to or not.
you either violate a rule or your don't...regardless of intent.
he's a cheater.
"A player must not improve...the...lie of his ball, ...by...pressing a club on the ground."
Speaking of intent -
- they are looking at it from the point of justifying his actions, rather than looking at his actions to derive that he obviously either 1) didn't care (best case scenario, of course) whether his lie was improved through his actions, OR 2) that he was actually trying to (worst case scenario) improve his lie.
It's the players obligation to not cheat, what part of "must not" is ambiguous here?
He cheated, knowingly or not, it wasn't caught, and now like average political operatives, they are feebly attempting a cover up.
If that was noticed by a rules official or competitor, and they didn't say something on the spot, then the official or player let down the rules of golf and the rest of the field.
You could barely see his ball in the rough, and then after the club grounding, you could easily see most of the ball.
I agree; circumstances might indeed requrie a player to take a different stance or make a differnt address than he usually does.
But in this story, people have been assuming that what Perry did was to intentionally create a better lie for himself. By doing whatever it is he does at address. And that theory presumes that Perry did in fact give himself a better lie.
I start with the fact that no one knows if he ever got a better lie; what he did was what he always does, rough or no rough. I have no reason to assume that he got a better lie. I have no reason to expect that he was trynig to create a better lie, just doing what he always does. I'd be more suspicious if this was the only time anybody had ever seen him do this.
You seem to suggest that the could not make his normal address because of the possibility that it might appear that his adderss was improving his lie.
Of course it was a rules violation! Are these people writing in saying Kenny would not cheat the former SEC inspectors who did the due diligence on Bernie Madoff?
My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I'm sure I remember reading something similar to this a while back. As I say, the details are fuzzy, but I think it was something about the tour boys keeping the driver in their hands after they hit a sketchy shot. Then, when they get to the ball, they can 'check' the lie using the driver head before taking their club. Of course, those huge driver heads tend to do a pretty job of 'making a lie more manageable'. I understood that this was very, very common practice.
he improved his lie, intentional or not.
he violated the rules.
he cheated.
I don't think Kenny is "a cheater" but I do think he broke the rules. As said, intent doesn't matter here, and he wasn't even addressing the ball when he did the tap tap tap to improve his lie.
I'm willing to leave a small margin for the possibility that the camera angle is somehow misleading - if the grass that was obscuring the ball was six inches behind the ball, that's not really affecting the lie but it could affect his takeaway, for example.