All sports have sets of rules and in most cases all sports have rules officials of varying degrees. Baseball has its umpires and basketball has its referees. In the game of golf, there is usually a walking rules official who is assigned to each group in a pro tournament, but generally it is the player who serves as his own referee, a most unique situation for organized sports.
In a sport like football, referees throw a flag when they observe an infraction. It”s a matter of judgment. If they don”t throw the flag, then there isn”t a penalty. Because of the nature of the game, if you can get away with an infraction without being caught, then the play stands. It would be unheard of for an offensive tackle to suddenly announce that he was holding and the play that went for a touchdown should be nullified.
Golf is far different and a national television audience last Sunday afternoon got to observe firsthand how very different golf is with regard to its rules and infractions. The setting was Harbour Town and the event was the Verizon Heritage Golf Classic, a longtime PGA Tour event that is historically played one week after the Masters. Harbour Town is a neat golf course that was co-designed by the diabolical Pete Dye and a young PGA Tour golfer who was involved in his very first design endeavor, namely Jack Nicklaus, way back in 1969.
After 72 holes of regulation play, former U.S. Open champion Jim Furyk, who just the week before had missed the cut at the Masters, found himself tied atop the Heritage leaderboard with 35-year-old journeyman Brian Davis. For the Englishman, this was rarified air. He had won twice on the European Tour, one time in 2000 at the Peugeot Open of Spain and another time at the ANZ Championship in 2004, beating out Paul Casey.
Davis had decided to try his golfing fortunes with the American PGA Tour and came in first place at Q School in the autumn of 2004. Over the past three years he has finished safely on the tour”s exempt list and last season he ended up 43rd on the money list. His best finish was a runner-up at the 2008 Reno-Tahoe Open, a tour event played during the same week as the World Golf Championship at Firestone in Akron. Yes, in comparison to Jim Furyk, Brian Davis was in a very new situation as the two men teed off in sudden-death overtime at Harbour Town”s signature 18th hole.
Both golfers found the fairway and Davis was away. The only reason he was even in the playoff with Furyk was that he came up big on the 18th some 30 minutes earlier at the conclusion of regulation play. Davis had attacked the front left flag, rolled 15 feet beyond it, and then drained the putt for a birdie.
In overtime he again attacked the flag, only this time he came up three yards too short. His ball bounded left off the mounding and left him in a giant waste bunker.
Furyk took the safe play, hit the back of the green, and lagged his 60-foot putt to within three feet. Davis was some 30 feet away from the flagstick. He could take a one-stroke penalty and drop the ball within two club lengths of where he crossed the hazard, but that would also mean that he”d have to chip in for par to tie Furyk. The only sound alternative was to gouge his shot out of the waste bunker, get it somewhere on the green, and hole the putt to tie and go onward to the next hole.
After much deliberation, Davis grabbed his sand wedge, pulled the club back and released it through the sand. It exploded beyond the flagstick and left him with a putt of some 30 feet. But instead of getting prepared to make the putt that could extend the playoff, Davis instead went to the rules official and reported to him that he might have committed an infraction. He might have clipped a lose impediment, a small dead reed, on his backswing. Doing such a thing is in violation of Rule 13.4 and the end result is a two-stroke penalty.
At that moment, play came to a screeching halt. It was kind of like the instant replay in a football game when the officials in the booth review a controversial play. Finally, after about seven minutes of super slow motion film review, it was ascertained that Davis had indeed clipped the loose impediment on his backswing. Because the naked eye couldn”t detect Davis” infraction, he could have gotten away with it, but instead he chose to call attention to his actions, received a two-stroke penalty, and lost to Furyk.
Of course, as a true golf professional, Brian Davis not only did the right thing, he also did the only thing. Like others before him, he called a penalty on himself. The loss to Furyk meant he had $400,000 less in his bank account. He didn”t win his first PGA title. He didn”t get the exemption into all of golf”s four major championships. He wouldn”t get an invite to the season opener at Kapalua for tour winners.
On the flip side, Brian Davis, up until this moment a veritable unknown in the world of golf, has gotten positive accolades for his honesty and integrity at Harbour Town. In fact, he”ll be better remembered for the class he showed in overtime at the Heritage than if he had won the tourney. Think fast ? who won the Heritage last year? Not many people recall that Brian Gay won last year, and one year from now far more people will remember that Brian Davis called a penalty on himself and didn”t win the Verizon than will recollect that Jim Furyk did.
The golfing lifestyle hasn”t been all that easy for Davis. A spokesman for the Skin Cancer Foundation, he has had three serious bouts of skin cancer that have resulted in surgery. However, something tells me that the golfing gods will smile a little more kindly on Brian Davis in the future. After all, he respected the greatness of the game by following its rules, even when no one else was aware of what happened. He ignored the short-term gain of victory for the long-term consequence of integrity, class and respect. It came at a time when the world of golf could use a healthy dose of respect.
