When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
John Hawkins calls Tiger's free loading dock relief drop an embarrassment and asks...
Since when did the clubhouse and parking lot become part of the golf course? I’m no rules aficionado, but I’ve always thought that any shot that leaves the field of play is considered out of bounds.
BTW, did anyone actually see the ball turned over to Steve Williams or Tiger, as Bill Kratzert said on TV?
You have to love her honesty. And while they'll never be confused with Grisham, she probably should brush up on them a bit.
The Independent's Andy Farrell reporting from Royal Lytham:
And this is the basis of the problem with Michelle, which is ours as much as hers. Wie has done has great things, getting into contention in the majors, almost winning last week at the Evian Masters, and through to final qualifying for the men's US Open.
But she is not the finished article, and at 16 why should she be? She is still learning her trade and is still not a full-time golfer. This is her summer holiday, and yet already her every score, every shot, every action, every word is scrutinised.
Last autumn she turned professional, earning millions in the process, but in many ways she remains a talented amateur, albeit one with great potential. While she remains in mainstream education, she will not be able to complete her golfing apprenticeship.
It's the little things. She cheerfully admitted to not being quite ready for her early tee-time on Thursday and promptly bogeyed the first three holes. It's also the not so little things, like not being aware of the rule about sweeping away a loose impediment on the backswing in a bunker.
A two-shot penalty resulted when she did just this on Friday. "It's not a great read," she said sweetly when asked if she would be examining the Rules of Golf more closely. But an important read, and the fact that a shocking number of players have a limited knowledge of the rules is no excuse for a professional.
David Fay can't wait to tell Jim McCabe that the drop circles at Winged Foot were his idea.
Drop areas had cropped up all over Winged Foot -- 50 in all, seven around the 18th. White chalk circles were seemingly at every turn of the head and even worse, they were being used, even if it meant moving the ball closer to the hole.
Good gracious, what's next? Players can buy mulligans on the tee for $5? Gimme putts if they're inside the leather?
Surely, someone in the US Golf Association had goofed. The matter had to be brought to the attention of the executive director, David Fay. Did he know about this?
Turns out he not only knew about it, he initiated it. And he denied my request for two minutes of his time.
``You'll get more than two minutes," said Fay. ``This is my baby. This is why I'm wound up."
Imagine if we could get him this worked up about the ball!
``This slow game has, over the years, gotten slower, and in my judgment part of it was dealing with these things in `big-time golf' called temporary immovable obstructions," said Fay, his reference being all the grandstands and scoreboards that are constructed. Fay estimates that it takes as much as 10 minutes to take a free drop on a ``TIO" ruling, because it involves an array of particulars, like keeping the arc so that the angle of the shot remains similar, not moving the ball closer to the hole, getting patrons out of the way, taking down ropes.
``And time spent doing a TIO drop is time you never get back."
Almost Meeksian in its tone.
Thanks to reader Tom Kirkendall and reader Edward for the heads up on this interesting Steve Campbell story about Steve Elkington WD'ing after being told he couldn't wear spikes at Lakewood Country Club.
USGA rules allow players to use spikes at next week's U.S. Open at Winged Foot. At the sectional level, the USGA allows the host sites to set the rules. Of the 13 sectionals on American soil, two allowed long spikes and 11 required soft spikes.
"I made a stand for the sport," Elkington said. "The USGA does not have an across-the-board way of qualifying. How can they have some sites that are spikeless and some sites that are not — and the rules of the USGA don't apply?
"They lost the plot here today about what it's all about."
The Paula Creamer-Annika Sorrenstam spat at last week's Championship may tell us a lot about the state of the LPGA Tour under new Commissioner Carolyn Bivens.
Just a quick recap courtesy of AP:
The season-ending ADT Championship got off to a rocky start Thursday when the top two players on the LPGA Tour got into a tense dispute on the 18th fairway over where Sorenstam should have taken a drop from the hazard.
"Neither one of them was going to budge," rules official Janet Lindsay said.
After a debate that lasted so long it was almost too dark to finish at Trump International, the ruling ultimately went Sorenstam's way. She was allowed to go to a ball drop instead of returning to the tee, although she still made double bogey and fell out of a tie for the lead.
Hee-Won Han led with a 5-under-par 67 that essentially went unnoticed.
This round might be remembered as the start of a rivalry between the LPGA Tour's best players — one the undisputed star who already is in the Hall of Fame, the other a 19-year-old rookie with moxie.
"We were trying to determine where it went in," Sorenstam said. "We're standing 220 yards away, and we're talking about inches."
Creamer, who finished with a 68, stared hard at Sorenstam as the Swede spoke to reporters, and later had an animated discussion with LPGA Tour Commissioner Carolyn Bivens and Lindsay.
It would be interesting to hear what the animated discussion is about. It's hard to imagine that Creamer would be so insistent unless she believed Sorenstam was bending the rules.
Since the LPGA's firing of 18-year official Barb Trammell (who reportedly lost her job after she would not budge when a player wanted to belatedly enter an event after the standard entry deadline), the LPGA Tour has seen two high profile rules incidents since her departure. Neither of which was handled very well.
Golfweek's Jay Coffin reported that Trammell's "resignation" may have been motivatd by "a group of players who had made known to Bivens their increasing displeasure with Trammell's 'by the book' demeanor."
Just typing out loud here, but someone might want to tell Bivens that respect for the rules is vital to the integrity and image of a pro golf tour.
Instead of the Wie DQ going away, it seems to have opened the door not only for the media to write about itself, but also to question the rules of golf. Mike Bianchi in the Orlando Sentinel certainly raises some fine points in comparing pro golf to other sports, but I'm not quite sure about the ideas regarding players keeping score (and how wrong that is). Thanks to reader A.L.F. for the heads up.
Lawrence Donegan wonders if professional golfers are as honest as they claim to be.
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
