Tough choice for Monty
This past weekend delivered a boatload of intriguing golf stories beyond the usual tournament reports. Herewith, in no particular order, some Monday morning blather.
Tough choice for Monty. With three wildcard picks to complete the European Ryder Cup team, Captain Colin chooses another Molinari, Paddy Harrington and Luke Donald. That means he has to leave Paul Casey and Justin Rose off the team. Casey is ranked #9 in the world, one spot ahead of Donald while Rose is ranked #22 and has two wins on the PGA Tour this year. That’s two more than either Harrington or Donald. The toughest bit for the Scottish Captain may have been trying to choose amongst three Englishmen and an Irishman.
Some people still haven’t figured out that the LPGA Tour is not an American product anymore. Apart from the huge contingent of non-American players, twelve of the twenty-six events are played outside the US. So there’s no valid explanation for the idiotic comment from one late night pundit who suggested that Michelle Wie “still hasn’t proven anything since her two wins on the LPGA Tour were in Mexico and Canada. She still hasn’t won on US soil.” One suspects he’ll be eating those words pretty soon.
While we’re on the topic of word eating, perhaps the CBC should re-think their choice of Ron McLean as host of the CN Canadian Women’s Open telecast. McLean is clearly not a golfer. Otherwise, how to explain “the 17th and 18th holes are the 18th and 19th hardest on the course.” He certainly has a gift (curse) for inane chatter as evidenced by all the throwaway lines like the one he made after a great bunker shot by Michelle Wie. “How can you grow up in Hawaii and not be good in the sand?” Apparently Mclean has never met a silence he couldn’t fill. Gail Graham does a fabulous job as second banana, delivering solid insight and very capable commentary. Her performance is all the more laudable given that she has to teach McLean about women’s golf during commercial breaks.
Kind of a ho-hum finish to the the US Amateur at Chambers Bay yesterday. Peter Uihlein (son of Wally, head honcho at Titleist) took an early lead over David Chung and never let up, finishing 4&2. The real excitement was provided by the golf course which sits hard on the shores of Puget Sound, south of Tacoma, WA. The links course is scheduled to host the 2015 US Open and the Amateur was a test case. It has all the bluster of a typical seaside links in the UK but features several holes that might be all world. If the USGA sets up the course to play as designed (hard, fast and dangerous), then that will be one US Open you won’t want to miss.
Another decent outing for David Hearn on the Nationwide Tour. A little slippage on Sunday dropped him out of the top 10 finishers but the $10,000 pay cheque moves him up to 19th place on the all-important money list and still comfortably inside the Top 25. Hearn needs a win or a couple of top three finishes over the next two months to ensure a return to the PGA Tour next year. Apart from Jon Mills, who is still lingering in the neighbourhood, the other Canadians on the Nationwide Tour are at least a long distance call away.
Larry Smich, a journeyman caddie on the LPGA Tour has alleged that two Korean players cheated and tried to cover it up. Both players were DQ’d in Winnipeg. This particular caddie has made other allegations about conspiracies amongst the Koreans. Add recent comments made by LPGA Hall of Famer Carol Mann concerning too many Koreans on the Tour and one has to wonder if there isn’t another xenophobic brouhaha pending. If it isn’t Muslims building a mosque near Ground Zero, it’s Koreans trying to steal the Women’s Tour. Stop the insanity!
Equitable isn’t always apparent when it comes to The Rules of Golf
The Rules of Golf have certainly come under some intense scrutiny this past week. First we get the ruling at the PGA Championship that Dustin Johnson grounded his club in a sand trap on the 72nd hole incurring a two-stroke penalty that knocked him out of a playoff.
On Saturday LPGA Tour veteran Juli Inkster gets DQ’d from the Safeway Classic for using a weighted ring to warm up after a rain delay. Inkster was in second place at the time.
And closer to home, Jose de Jesus Rodriguez, one of the hottest players on the Canadian Tour, fired a course record tying 61 on Saturday at the Seaforth Country Classic but left the scoring tent before signing his card. Instead of taking a three shot lead into Sunday’s final round, Rodriguez will be heading on down the road muttering something like, “what a stupid I am!”
There is no doubt in any of these examples that the players clearly breached the rules. The web traffic, blogs and editorials are pretty divided on the issue, especially about Johnson’s bunker gaffe. The video evidence is clear – he did ground his club. However, what is unclear is whether he or anybody else could tell if he really was in a bunker. On TV it looked like hard packed dirt. Spectators were walking all over the area, kids were building sand castles.
The Rules of Golf are very specific and in case there is any doubt about their application, there exists an even bigger book called the Decisions of the Rules of Golf that accounts for virtually every scenario that has been encountered in assessing the Rules. Already there’s probably a new Decision for the Johnson ruling.
What is unclear and what has never been explained to my satisfaction is the part about the Rules of Golf being equitable. OK, so Johnson grounded his club in a bunker – technically a breach. However, it’s clear from the video that he didn’t test the sand, didn’t drag any material away from the back of the ball to provide for a cleaner hit and in fact didn’t do anything at all to gain an advantage over his fellow players. So how is it “equitable” to assess him a two stroke penalty for something he wasn’t even aware was a bunker.
The Inkster situation is even weirder. Inkster could have taken a couple of wedges from her bag to warm up if she wanted to swing additional weight. Instead she uses the lead donut and gets the bum’s rush from the premises.
Not signing a scorecard is something probably every competitor has done once in their lives. And just once, because forever after, in every tournament you play, it will be indelibly etched on your brain to sign the damn thing before you get up from the table. I don’t know the specifics of the Rodriguez situation but he was undoubtedly excited after shooting a 61 and breaking the course record, he would be thinking about having a three shot lead and there would be a pile of media people waiting to talk to him. However, his caddie would be there, his fellow competitors and at least two officials of the Tour would be at the table, yet not one of them checked to see if his scorecard was signed.
It happens and I get it but it’s another golf technicality that makes no sense. It’s certainly not equitable. Rules purists will blame the player alleging that it’s his responsibility. They’re correct but that doesn’t make it right.
All of these rulings stir the pot and make for great debate but if you read the input from casual golf fans and players you’ll note an almost unanimous sentiment that they think the rules are stupid and should be changed. Most casual golfers play by their own rules so these infractions are very curious to them.
In the case of Sarah Brown, a month or so ago, the officials at a Duramed FUTURES Tour event were so convinced that Brown was using wedges with illegal grooves that they DQ’d her mid round. Turns out they were wrong and the grooves were OK. Too late for Sarah though.
To me it seems like the Rules of Golf have resulted in a lot of players being penalized for things that didn’t give them an advantage over their fellow competitors. There’s nothing equitable about that.
Someone once said, and I’m paraphrasing here a bit, “if the law results in one innocent man being hanged then the justice system is not working.” Maybe it’s time the Rules of Golf had a do-over.
Peter Mumford is the Editor and Publisher of Fairways Magazine in Toronto. Fairways is intended for avid golfers and this blog site is an extension of that same philosophy - we don't dumb it down for the uninformed!