It’s the weekend of the 2017 Masters. The final 36 holes are still to be played. The professional golfer who can survive the always possible pratfalls that are so very prevalent at Augusta National during the course of the final two rounds will don the green jacket and forever find himself a part of golfing history.
Earlier in the week, prior to the striking of the first tee shot on Thursday morning, there was a bevy of written and spoken words on a variety of topics. This is the first Masters since the passing of its favorite son as well as a former four-time champion, Arnold Palmer. There was Dustin Johnson’s injured back from a stairwell fall at his Augusta area rental house. Talking heads reminisced about 20 years ago and the stunning Masters triumph by 21-year-old Tiger Woods. And then there was the reaction to Lexi Thompson’s one-day late penalties that brought her from three strokes up to one stroke down in the midst of her final nine holes at the first LPGA major of the year, the ANA Inspiration (Dinah Shore) at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage. For obvious reasons, the Lexi issue was first and foremost on the minds of the pros at Augusta National.
During third-round play at the ANA, Thompson had a 1-foot putt on the 17th green. She reached down, marked the ball, hastily replaced it, and putted it into the cup. It all seemed to happen quite quickly. An at-home viewer looked at Thompson’s actions on the greens and determined that she had replaced her ball slightly left of her mark. When I say “slightly,” I am estimating that the repositioning of her ball was altered by one-eighth to one-sixteenth of an inch. Watching closely from the angle of the television lens, the ball wasn’t precisely replaced. Yet it was such a close call that it is safe to say that zero advantage was gained on the 1-footer.
The home viewer who observed the infraction emailed the LPGA Tour at Mission Hills. The rules staff became aware of the email Sunday morning and followed up on what the golf fan had observed. The rules committee determined that Lexi Thompson had incurred a two-stroke penalty for her inaccurate replacement of her golf ball after marking it. She received a second two-stroke penalty for signing for a lower number on her official tournament scorecard. As harsh as the second two-stroke penalty may seem, it is a kinder, gentler version of the rule that has been in effect since 2016. Prior to that year, an incorrectly signed score card resulted in disqualification from the tournament.
Lexi was told of the situation during the back nine of the final round. She had just finished her 12th hole carrying a three-stroke lead with six holes to go. She handled the negative news with composure, caught up to get herself into a sudden-death playoff, but ended up losing the ANA in overtime when Seo Yeon Ryu rolled in a birdie putt to claim her second LPGA major.
Phil Mickelson added to the intrigue of Lexi-gate when he seemed to strongly infer that inaccurate replacing of the golf ball was a noticeable occurrence on the PGA Tour. Phil was quoted as saying that a “number” of golfers commit the very same rules violation that Thompson incurred last Saturday. Phil claimed that some marks were off by two inches. Former Bing Crosby National Pro-Am champion and three-time Ryder Cupper Johnny Pott recalled a three-time major champion from his era who consistently mismarked his ball on the putting surface. Pott contended that the golfer wasn’t trying to cheat or gain an advantage, but he certainly seemed to have a difficult time replacing his golf ball in a deadly accurate manner.
The golfer and his or her playing partner are responsible for adherence to the rules while playing in a tournament. The fact that Lexi Thompson’s replacement of the golf ball on the 17th green on Saturday wasn’t observed by anyone else on the green points to the fact that it wasn’t an abusive disregard of the spirit of the rule. Sometimes mistakes are made during the heat of competition and a violation occurs that isn’t noticed or called. This past Monday a missed call on an out-of-bounds play that awarded the ball to North Carolina inside the one-minute mark may have impacted the collegiate national championship game with Gonzaga. Decades ago, the Kansas City Royals advanced to the seventh game of the World Series when the first base umpire missed an obvious out call, ruling Jorge Orta safe instead.
Yet golf has a two-fold problem with the Lexi-gate situation. To the common fan, golf is a way too difficult game with a rigid set of rules. Once again it seemed to be unfair. Lexi’s crime didn’t seem to come close to fitting the punishment. Plus every time you commit a rules violation that is missed on a previous day you get that extra two-stroke penalty for signing the wrong scorecard. If you don’t know that you incurred a rules violation, then how can you sign for an accurate scorecard? In the world of equity, only those on television can be observed.
Secondly, professional golf has set itself up for failure by allowing armchair rules officials to call the tournament site and report an infraction. In 1987 at Torrey Pines, a viewer watched Craig Stadler kneel on his towel while hitting a shot from underneath a tree, called in the infraction the following day (in theory, Stadler was building a stance), and he was disqualified. The floodgates were suddenly open and golf’s ruling powers were comfortable with letting armchair rules officials inside the ropes in their own concocted way. I thought it couldn’t get any worse last June at the United States Open with the Dustin Johnson issue, but the ANA’s combined penalties of four strokes definitely determined the final outcome of the first major championship of the season. The four-stroke penalty was way too much to overcome.
Penalties impacting major moments of golf are way too excessive when you consider the stories of Jackie Pung at the 1957 United States Women’s Open, Roberto de Vincenzo at the 1968 Masters, and Michelle Wie at the 2007 State Farm Classic. Those rules violations involved signing a wrong scorecard or forgetting to sign a scorecard. Now we’ve got the television viewing rules guru to deal with as well. For fans of the game, it leaves you with a strange feeling. After all, Lexi Thompson was playing better golf than anyone else during those four rounds. She took less shots than anyone else in the field, but she didn’t get the win. I bet we’ll get some changes in the Rules of Golf before the next video rules debacle rears its ugly head.
