"Collateral Damage" Coming From The New HD Video Decision

The governing bodies are receiving nearly universal praise for closing a loophole to HD armchair rulings, and while I see what factors have some celebrating Decision 18-4, the blogger in me says this creates more problems than it solves. Having seen technology repeatedly fly over golf cognoscenti's heads, I'm not sure this is going to work out as hoped.

First, the praise.

James Corrigan in the Telegraph says this a step forward in eliminating phone-in rulings but that it "stopped short of ridding the game of these vigilantes all together."

The USGA's Thomas Pagel, quoted in several stories on the announcement, would not say if Tiger Woods's oscillate-gate this August might have ended differently with this decision in play, Corrigan reports that the R&A's David Rickman was willing to agree Woods would have escaped penalty. Which, considering the evidence, would have not been a satisfying conclusion to most golfers.

Here is Pagel talking about the Woods/BMW situation, quoted in Alistair Tait's Golfweek assessment.

“In that situation the only question that was asked was, Did the ball move? And the ball did move. That’s why the ruling was handed down the way it was,” said Thomas Pagel, the USGA’s senior director of the Rules of Golf.

“It’s difficult to go back and speculate what the ruling would be because we have a new set of criteria and it’s difficult to test that criteria against an old set of facts,” Pagel said. “If there’s some compelling evidence that the player truly believed that the ball was back in its original location, then the committee would want to consider that.”

Ewan Murray notes that this "Decision" was in the works for some time, long before the Woods incident this summer.

Privately, the R&A points out this change has been in the offing for 18 months and was set in stone before the Woods controversy. Golf's rulemakers are also not of a mind to halt the ability of television viewers to report possible breaches, as this has proved a help at times.

ESPN.com's Bob Harig assesses the situation and says in hindsight, Woods would have been exonerated if the new Decision were in play. And the PGA Tour issued this statement:

"The PGA Tour is pleased that the USGA and R&A continue to focus on the important issue of the effect of television evidence on the Rules of Golf, and we continue to work on additional projects with the governing bodies in this area," PGA Tour executive vice president Ty Votaw said in a statement.

Interestingly, PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem has very wisely accepted the status quo on armchair rulings because he's thought through the ramifications should video be taken out of the equation. Finchem knows that opening his players to accusations of getting-away-with-a-crime results in those players possibly having their reputations tarred permanently. In today's era of GIF's, YouTube, and other technologies allowing fans to see a potential violation over and over again, leaving the call up to the player seems irresponsible and frankly, lazy.

Jason Sobel notes this in his guarded assessment of Decision 18-4.

Even though Woods would not have been assessed a penalty at the BMW under the current policy, it calls into question a player’s motives. Yes, golf is a game of honor and we’d all like to believe that no competitor would attempt to circumvent the rules. But in the future, if a video replay shows a ball moved and the player maintains that he honestly, sincerely didn’t see it happen, the resulting collateral damage could be worse than impugning a scorecard, ultimately placing his reputation at stake.

In general, the leaders of golf have been slow to understand the power of social media and other digital communications. The more widespread these technologies have become, the more users are able to access viral photos or videos. If the Woods situation arose post-January 1, 2014 when Decision 18-4 takes effect and it was his word versus the video, the new decision would have put Slugger White in the position of having to accept Woods' view that the ball had not moved.

However, if the general public's reaction to seeing the video was as one-sided as we saw in the wake of the BMW incident, Woods would take a much bigger credibility hit since his "naked eye" assessment didn't match what the pictures told us.  As Sobel notes, the collateral damage of a player having gotten away with a violation may prove far more toxic for the player's reputation than anything we've seen to date in the wacky world of armchair rulings.