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
Tim Rosaforte's Golf World Monday column looks at Arron Oberholser playing the Web.com Tour Finals on a medical exemption after years of struggle with his left hand (four surgeries). 
And as reader DTF notes, if this isn't bifurcation, what is?
It took a special glove, approved by the PGA Tour (after the USGA deemed it non-conforming), to make a comeback possible. Even with that accommodation, he was still icing down the hand and taking Advil to reduce the swelling and pain.
"The glove isn't the cure-all by any stretch of the imagination," he said. "That's why if it doesn't hold up over the next three weeks, then I'll probably see a lot more of you in the studio."
One of the nice annual touches from the R&A is their forensic analysis of rulings at The Open Championship, now posted on their website.
Right off the bat there was this stark reminder about the difference between the '12 and '13 Opens.
There were 234 rulings at the 2013 Open, which compares with 339 in 2012 at Lytham where a large number of rulings were given due to casual water on the course caused by the very wet summer.
Matsuyama was then given a second bad time for his second shot to the 17th hole. Given his tee shot had gone in to the crowd and considering the difficulty of the shot, Matsuyama was given additional time to deal with the crowd and to go forward to assess his shot. The timing for the shot therefore only started when the player had returned to his ball; however he then took a further 2 minutes 12 seconds to play the shot. That second bad time resulted in a one shot penalty being applied to Matsuyama’s score on the 17th hole which became 6.
Julie Williams with a nice wrap of Friday's day one Solheim Cup brouhaha over an incorrect drop taken by Carlota Ciganda.
Ciganda hit her fourth shot onto the fringe and made the par putt to secure an unexpected halve with Lewis and Thompson.
“Obviously I’m not happy about it,” Mallon said. “The thing I’m most unhappy about is that it took ... about 25 minutes for this to happen. And from our perspective, the momentum, which was coming in our favor at that point in time, obviously had stopped.”
Questions were posed at the time of the drop, Mallon said, but perhaps not the right ones. Play proceeded, and Pettersen birdied the next hole to take the Europeans 1 up. They won by that margin at the 18th, when Pettersen made a clutch two-putt par.
Golf Central has the video and also the Captains talking about what ended up being an incorrect drop.
And while (maybe) not as dramatic as his second stage Q-School penalty from 2012, the Web.com player could not have picked a worse time as he vies for a PGA Tour card.
Jeff Shain reports on the 66 that would have put him in second place.
As it turned out, Barber realized the error as he was discussing the aftermath of last year’s DQ with reporters. He returned to the scoring area after finishing, asked for his card and saw the discrepancy.
Once a player leaves the scoring area, his card is deemed official.
“I looked [the card] over and didn’t see it,” Barber said, noting that he’d confirmed the proper total with his walking scorer but didn’t compare the hole-by-hole scores. “Somehow I missed that one on 16.”
From an unbylined Sky report on day two of the 2013 U.S. Open at Merion.
When asked about the freak incident on the fifth, Pettersson admitted he "had no clue" as to who hit the rogue shot, which was likely to have come from the adjoining second hole.
"I was getting ready to go and pulled the club back and a ball bounced and hit my ball, so I managed to stop," he said. "I've never seen that or experienced that before.
Alex Miceli with a report on the PAC members meeting at Muirfield Village and joining in by phone. The takeaway? A variety of emotions on anchoring, bifurcation and rules, though he suggested more players were again in favor of the ban for reasons unknown.
According to one participant, some PAC members who were on the fence now seem to be going back to supporting the ban.
Anchoring on its own has unique issues: the potential for limiting high-profile players from competing as they have for years, potential litigation and how the Tour might be perceived if it goes against the anchoring ban.
“We’ve got a process we follow as a Tour, and we're going to let it play out,” said PAC member Bo Van Pelt. “I think that’s what you get with 144 guys. Everybody has a differing opinion.”
From Stephen Hawkins' AP story on Jeff Overton, who was DQ'd for using a putting alignment aid mid-round after an official told him he could putt while a 10th tee backup worked its way out.
Soon after coming off the course, Overton tweeted "3 group back up at the turn. Rules official tells me we can practice chipping and putting. Disqualified for using my practice putting aid!"
Overton immediately followed that with another tweet, "Why do rules officials initiate that conversation to begin with. I wouldn't even have gone up there if I had know that. What a joke!"
Going to a designated practice area is permissible during a round, but use of artificial or instructional devices isn't. The penalty is disqualification.
"If ur gonna inform someone on a rule of something a person can do, make sure u remind them of the small things they can't do," Overton added on (at)JeffOvertonPGA.
How could that darned official not know that Overton uses a putting aid? Why, it's what all the kids do these days!
Or, Jeff could go to Rules School? Or, use your brain to wonder if you should ask before pulling out the aid? Or, I don't know, maybe have a caddy who would wonder if that's a good idea? It's got to be anybody by the players' fault!
The Overton Tweets for posterity:
Tough break today. Looks like I gotta go back and rememorize a couple hundred pages of the usga rules book!
— Jeff Overton (@JeffOvertonPGA) May 25, 2013
Why do rules officials initiate that conversation to begin with. I wouldn't even have gone up there if I had know that.What a joke!
— Jeff Overton (@JeffOvertonPGA) May 25, 2013
If ur gonna inform someone on a rule of something a person can do, make sure u remind them of the small things they can't do.
— Jeff Overton (@JeffOvertonPGA) May 25, 2013
Tough break today. Looks like I gotta go back and rememorize a couple hundred pages of the usga rules book!
— Jeff Overton (@JeffOvertonPGA) May 25, 2013
Golf Central's report starts at the 13 minute mark.
Randall Mells's explanation of the decision and rule 14-3/10.3.
Doug Ferguson talks to the PGA Tour's Tyler Dennis who says it's still more productive for the PGA Tour to have one more official on the course instead of in the booth.
Of course, if the tour wasn't being so stingy with what is obviously such an important role (no contract for rules officials since January 1!), they could just hire another official to be in the booth or in a Ponte Vedra TV room and not take one of the officials off the course.
Nicolas Colsaerts is in deep doodoo, the game has gone down the toilet and, well, the list goes on and on.
Thanks to reader Ruediger for the link to this video from the Volvo World Match Play showing Colsaerts taking relief from a 10th hole restroom. (Graeme McDowell won the match play over Thongchai Jaidee Sunday.)
Thanks to reader Ian for Brad Ziemer's story on James Lepp of Big Break fame (I wouldn't know, under doctor's order not to watch) learning from Golf Canada's Dale Jackson that the saucer shot he featured on the show (still don't know, still under doctor's order) has been ruled illegal by the USGA/R&A joint rules committee.
“The rule that would be breached is Rule 14-1 that says in part the club can’t be pushed, spooned and scraped,” Jackson said. “Pushed and spooned don’t apply here, but scraped here basically means you are intentionally dragging or pulling the club along the ground before it hits the ball, which is what he does.”
Lepp’s saucer shot is a hybrid of sorts, part hockey snap shot and part golf chip shot. Lepp, a former NCAA champion and multiple B.C. Amateur and Canadian Tour winner, came up with the shot to combat the occasional yips he was suffering when chipping off tight lies near the green.
He used it with considerable success on last fall’s Big Break series on Golf Channel and Lepp has videos of the shot posted on his website for Kikkor Golf, the shoe and apparel company he owns and operates.
Can't wait for the first cries that this, too, will be stifling massive growth of the game after Commissioner Finchem reveals that nearly 20% of golfers use the saucer to combat yips.
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
