TGC Rebroadcast Of Questionable Schwartzel Drop: 9:10 ET
/I believe it all starts 40 minutes into the broadcast, which re-airs at 8:30 ET, 5:30 PT, and carries on for several minutes after Brendle says he's "not really entitled to relief."
The views on Twitter were mixed, but Sir Nick and Peter Oosterhuis sounded emphatic about the lack of a need for relief while rules official Jon Brendle did his best to question Schwartzel, but the Masters Champion and proud animal killer insisted he feared he might hit the sprinkler head, which is a big difference than it physically interfering.
Thanks to the drop, he went from an awful lie to a beauty in the fairway.
As you can see from the screen capture, to hit the sprinkler he'd have to take a line of play right of the green, which, from a hook lie was possible. You can also see how far down his ball was sitting. And when he took his drop he never hesitated to use the club length and head straight for the fairway lie. Might a sportsman have at least dropped in the intermediate cut after an official made it quite clear he wasn't really buying your claim?
As Faldo noted after Schwartzel then hit the green in two shots instead of a likely layup from the lousy lie, "it's all in the players' conscience."
**A YouTube video is up, which will have some poor PGA Tour employee writing emails to YouTube on a Friday night trying to get it taken down.
**About three hours turnaround time for the men with red pens in Ponte Vedra to get the video down. Not bad for a Friday!
**Jason Sobel summarizes the situation and talks to the parties involved. Schwartzel's quote here is different than what he initially told Brendle about fearing he might swipe it. Now he's sure he was going to hit it.
Schwartzel said he was confident it was the correct ruling and won’t have anything weighing on his conscience.
“He left it up to me,” he said, “and I said to him, ‘I’m pretty confident that I was going to hit the sprinkler head with that lie.’ If it was an uphill lie, I wouldn’t even have asked him.”
After the ruling, Schwartzel hit his second shot to 12 feet, then two-putted for birdie. He posted a 1-under 71 and will go into the weekend at 1-under overall, seven shots behind leader Steve Stricker.
