Sectional Qualifier Imposes Penalty, Gets DQ'd From U.S. Open

A show of integrity from Memphis qualifier Jason Millard, who will be replaced in the field after not feeling good about a bunker shot.

From the USGA:

Jason Millard has been disqualified from the 2014 U.S. Open Championship on Saturday, June 7 after reporting a self-imposed penalty in sectional qualifying.

“We commend Jason for bringing this matter to our attention,” said Daniel B. Burton, USGA vice president and chairman of the Championship Committee. “At this time, we have no recourse but to disqualify him under the Rules of Golf and specifically Rule 34-1b.”

Millard, who qualified in Memphis, Tenn. after carding a pair of 68s, was playing his third shot on the 18th hole of Colonial Country Club’s North Course, his 27th hole of the day, when the penalty occurred.

“I’m pretty sure I grounded my club in the bunker,” said Millard, who will be replaced by amateur Sam Love, of Trussville, Ala., the second alternate from the same qualifying site. “I didn’t see anything for sure but I felt something and I saw a small indentation. It happened so fast, I really don’t know 100 percent but deep down, I believe I did. I couldn’t find peace about it. For five days, I practiced and I couldn’t get it off my mind.

“It’s heart-breaking but what I was feeling in my heart didn’t feel right,” said Millard, who played in this year’s PGA Tour Honda Classic and was a two-time All-American at Middle Tennessee State University. “It’s the right decision and I am sticking with it.”

Love, who will compete in his first U.S. Open and recently completed his senior season at the University of Alabama-Birmingham (UAB), shot 68-69--137 at Colonial Country Club on June 2.

Jason Sobel talked to Millard and the story gets even more incredible.

Millard notified playing partner Tommy Gainey, but he was on the other side of the green and didn’t see anything. He told a rules official, who informed him that it was his call and his call alone.

It was a decisive call. When the 36-hole qualifier was over, he’d earned a spot in the field by one stroke. If he’d given himself a two-stroke penalty, he would have missed a playoff by one.

For five days, he thought about it. All the time.

“I literally thought about it for every single second of the day,” he says. “I just kept asking myself what to do. I kept saying, ‘I’m not 100 percent sure,’ so I never did anything. But it kept on eating at me inside.”

On Saturday morning, Millard packed up for Pinehurst and started driving from his Murfreesboro, Tenn., home with his caddie. They’d driven about an hour, halfway between Murfreesboro and Knoxville – “in the middle of nowhere,” he calls it – when he had a change of heart.