I don’t think so, based on his Twitter comments today. I agree that if he asked for a ruling and got one, even an incorrect one, he should be able to rely on it. That doesn’t seem to be the case here.
I’m confused as to why he couldn’t use the “keep the spot where the ball crossed into the hazard between him and the hole” rule. That didn’t apply here? Couldn’t he have dropped right in front of the pond if he wanted (keeping that line between him and the hole)?
Ah, never mind. I see it now. If he wanted to take advantage of that rule, he would have had to drop on the other side of the fairway, not where he did. Yeah, that’s an obvious DQ. The Masters should be ashamed.
As this is pretty strictly a sports issue, it has been moved to The Game Room forum.
The idea that Woods should DQ himself is laughable. It is up to the officials to decide. I have a real problem with viewers calling in rulings, it puts players look Woods, woods every shot is televised at a disadvantage.
Any ruling that undermines the “DQ for signing an incorrect scorecard” rule is good with me. It is on the short list of the stupidest rules in any sport. If something is wrong with a scorecard, just friggin’ fix it. And that goes for every single golfer out there, and doubly so when someone watching TV literally makes a phone call to buff their knowledge of the sport with the stupidest rules on the planet.
And I say this as an avid golfer: the complexity of the rules is totally out of hand, and something should be done about it, and anything that undermines the stupid rules of golf is fine with me.
In general I have problems with outside influence. Golf is self officiating but the other players in the group have a role to make sure the rules are followed. Someone on TV should not be able to affect the outcome. The TV angle undermines the goes against the gentleman’s game, self officiating position.
That’s the quagmire that is golf. It’s got a bajillion rules, many of them pedantic if not outright stupid, and yet it’s universally agreed that the rules (and the tradition of having so many damn rules) that makes it unique.
I agree with Ravenman though. I appreciate it as a sport, not a game. The goal is to whack that ball and tap that ball into 18 holes with as few strokes as possible. Not adherence to the frivolous externalities that hang on the peripherals.
As for the scorecard issue, to me it’d be analogous to someone in basketball shooting a 3. He naturally wants to get as close to the line as possible. He steps on the line, shoots and makes it. Ref signals it good. Someone asks him to sign an affidavit that he scored 3 points. Then instant replay shows that he toed the line and it’s actually a 2. The points change but his affidavit stands.
Except this time it worked to his advantage. The only rationale for not DQing him is that they had thought about it and decided not to penalize him… despite the fact that they didn’t tell him. Since he confessed later it’s clear that he should have known the rule and penalized himself.
That’s a great point. With no television coverage, the officials would have simply thought that Tiger replayed the ball from the spot he hit it from. When he admitted that he backed up 2 yards for a better shot after spectators, his playing partners, the caddies, fish in the pond, and everyone else there saw it hit off of the flagstick and cross the hazard in the other direction, the Augusta officials would have had no out to waive disqualification.
That’s a fine assumption to say that everyone saw and knew the exact angle of rebound…:rolleyes:
I never said people saw the “exact angle.” If he dropped on the other side, but TV viewers with computer projections showed that he was off, I would join you in the howling.
But nobody (unless I’m blind and everyone else was) saw the ball drop into the pond from the shot or hit the stick and bounce back at Tiger before going into the pond. He knew it bounced in the other direction, but chose not to play it “as close as practicable” to where he hit it from. He admitted it. Why is it a controversy when the man admitted he broke the rules? And Augusta penalized him 2 strokes for breaking the rule, but didn’t follow the next rule and DQ him for signing a wrong scorecard.
"TV viewers with computer projections showed that he was off " . . . . Good grief!
Did Tiger have access to TV or computer projections? Um . . . . . . . . . no.
Have you ever actually watched a golf tournament in person? If you did, were you able to see it on TV at a later time?
Have you ever played in a golf tournament?
Have you ever played golf and then seen it on TV later.
If you have done this (and I have no reason to believe you haven’t) - - - did what you experience in person have any correlation to what you saw on the TV?
No, this was the correct result under rule 33-7. It was put into the rule book after Padraig Harrington has a similar situation occur in Abu Dhabi a couple of years ago. People howled about Harrington’s DQ, just as they did when Craig Stadler kneeled on a towel before hitting a shot. None of them knew they were breaking a rule at the time it occurred, so this rule was put into place. Tiger’s situation is a perfect example of why the rule was enacted.
Tiger signed the card that the course officials had determined was the correct score before finishing the round. Then they changed their minds. I have no problem with them finally having a rule that prevents DQs in such situations.
This ignores the idiotic nature of the tradition of the players keeping their own score and tournaments accepting TV watchers calling in and tattling on people. If the exact same thing happened to some random player it would never be an issue because that person wouldn’t have been on TV.
I also think it is stupid that when the course officials saw where he dropped it they determined it was an appropriate drop. But later, when Tiger said a version of “I dropped it where I meant to drop it” then suddenly the location of the drop was no longer appropriate.
The corrects sequence of events yesterday would have been a) The Master tournament tells all the people calling in to go fuck off. b) they’re actually monitoring their own event and determine that Tiger made an impermissable drop. They inform Tiger of that (and his motivations for the drop matter not at all) and charge him the 2 stroke penalty. He signs the card with a 73 on it.
Instead we get the idiocy of something like LeBron James making what may be a buzzer beating shot to win a game. The officials look at replay and decide he did beat the buzzer. In the post game interview James says “I thought it was late but cool” and the next day the officials subtract the points and Larry Bird howls that Miami should vacate the game altogether.
I’ve been on several golf-centric message boards today, and almost everyone is getting this wrong.
Most hardcore golf fans were watching the pre-game coverage on the Golf Channel this morning, and formed their opinion from that. Which is too bad, because GC had Brandel Chamblee blathering complete nonsense.
First, he thought that Tiger was being saved from DQ by the “Harrington Rule,” which says that if you have no reasonable way of knowing that you are breaking a rule (like when the ball makes a movement that is detectable only with close-up HD cameras), then you will be penalized rather than DQd for signing an incorrect scorecard. Tiger’s mistake in dropping the ball was inadvertent, but he should have known the rule, so that rule doesn’t apply. Brandel used that logic to say that therefore Tiger should DQ himself, even if the Committee offered him a penalty.
But that was the wrong rule. The rule the Committee invoked was 33-7, which says that the Committee can waive a DQ when they feel the circumstances warrant, period. There’s nothing in that rule about HDTV, or what a player knows or doesn’t know, it’s just a catchall to cover extraordinary circumstances.
The circumstances in this case were that the Committee was aware that there was a dispute about Tiger’s drop while he was still playing the round, but they reviewed the tape and felt that it was a legal drop, and so they didn’t give Tiger a chance to review it before he signed his card. They felt that was their mistake, so they gave Tiger a penalty rather than a DQ.
Incidentally, there are photos on the Augusta Chronicle website that seem to show that it was a proper drop, and that Tiger was mistaken when he thought he went back a couple of yards. But that’s all moot now. What is not moot is that ANGC discussed their decision with rules experts from the USGA, the R&A, the PGA Tour, and the Euro Tour, and they all agreed that the ruling was correct.
The other thing Brandel railed about at some length was that Tiger gained an advantage by moving back, and the field must be protected. That’s true, but that’s what the two stroke penalty is for. Brandel acted like Tiger got away scot free.
The funniest thing to me was that Tiger tweeted that he accepted the decision of the committee and the penalty, and Brandel criticized him at length for doing that, rather than withdrawing. But it was almost word for word what Guan (the 14-year-old who was penalized for slow play yesterday) said about his penalty, and Brandel praised him to the skies as an example of good sportsmanship.
The other main thrust of the guys who want Tiger DQd is that they DQ’d Craig Stadler for an incorrect scorecard (true), and they DQd DeVicenzo for an incorrect scorecard (false), and Bobby Jones DQd himself (Brandel said that, and it’s also false). But none of that is relevant, because the rules have changed since then. It used to be against the rules to clean your ball if it was on the green with a big gob of mud on it. Now everybody cleans their ball whether it needs it or not, because the rules have changed. And guys who think a DQ in this situation should be automatic are evidently unaware that the rule about that was changed, too. Rule 33-7 is a new rule, enacted in 2011. Anything that happened before then is not relevant.
In fact, both 33-7 and the Harrington Rule were enacted specifically to address how unfair the old rules were. In this case, the new rule succeeded in making the penalty proportionate to the “crime.”
Finally, the charge that they’re only doing it because it’s Tiger and/or they care about ratings is ludicrous. Before this happened, the most common complaint about the Masters was that there was only four hours a day of coverage. The other majors get more like 10 or 12 hours a day, and ANGC could get sponsors for double the coverage they offer with a snap of their fingers, but they deliberately limit the coverage. They could also triple the price of their tickets and still sell out, but they are past caring about money. Ratings are the last thing they worry about.
And as for Tiger being their favorite son, that’s even more ridiculous. Even if you don’t know about ANGC’s racist history, it was hard to miss that Billy Payne went out of his way to trash Tiger, in an unprecedented personal attack, during his Chairman’s Address preceding the 2010 Masters. Tiger is the last person that they are going to show favoritism toward.
But this is a windfall for the Tiger bashers. No matter that he complied with the rules by accepting the penalty imposed by the Committee, he’ll always be a cheater to them, and they can stop invoking the notorious boulder incident (which was also completely in accordance with the rules), and trot this out whenever comparing Tiger to St. Jack.
Tiger should be DQed. Rule 33-7, Decision 4.5 says that DQed cannot be waived by the committee due to ignorance of the rules by the player.
Tiger was initially given the OK on the location of the drop because it was reasonably close to the where one would estimate is the nearest position of the previous shot. They were not giving the OK for Tiger to intentionally drop 2 yards behind where he knew he had taken the shot. The situation was changed when Tiger admitted he knew which divot was his and that he had intentionally dropped 2 yards behind it. Rule 33-7/4.5 does not permit cancellation of DQ for ignorance of the rule.
This is NOT similar to the Padraig Harrington situation. The Padraig situation was one where he was not aware the ball moved after he addressed it. He was well aware of the rule, but was not aware he broke it, the ball moved so minutely. Only after a viewer called in saying he detected it in slow motion while replaying it, after Harrington was done playing and had signed his card, was the ruling (correctly) made that a penalty should have been added. Harrington did indeed sign for an incorrect score and was DQ’d. Fair and square, according to the rules.
Everyone, me included, agreed this was technically correct but a pretty shitty outcome. A player who understood the rules, and who reasonably believed he was following them, got a pretty harsh penalty as a result. Hence the rule. If the “the committee is satisfied that the competitor could not reasonably have known or discovered the facts resulting in his breach of the Rules, it would be justified under Rule 33-7 in waiving the disqualification penalty prescribed by Rule 6-6d. The penalty stroke(s) associated with the breach would, however, be applied to the hole where the breach occurred.” The DQ was legitimate when it happened, but if the same thing occurred again, no DQ. Fair and square.
Fast forward to yesterday. Tiger knew he dropped the ball two yards back from where he had hit the prior shot. He DELIBERATELY did so, because it was advantageous to change the distance. This was not a situation where he inadvertently dropped at the wrong divot or something like that, only to have an honest mistake discovered after the fact. I am confident Tiger didn’t know what he did was a rules violation when he did it, but not knowing the rules is NOT what this new rule guards against. “Holy shit, was that against the rules?” is not an excuse, nor does this rule, as written create an excuse for such a situation.
Players are still expected to know and follow the rules, and to sign a scorecard that reflects his true score. Rule 33.7 does not change that. The rule he violated, rule 26, is not an obscure rule, BTW. It is incredible he didn’t know it. Even great golfers have hit into water hazards hundreds (thousands?) of times. The rules, like 'em or not, don’t require anyone else to monitor the players or make a ruling (unless they request one). The player is responsible for keeping his score and following the rules, period.
Tiger deliberately did something against the rules that created an advantage for him (albeit, an advantage he mistakenly thought was permitted), did not assess a penalty for the infraction, and signed for the wrong score. However shitty we think such rules are, those are the rules. This is EXACTLY what the DQ rule is designed for: a player who deliberately or through carelessness or ignorance signs for a lower score than he’s entitled to. Signing for a lower score than you deserve is the absolute worst violation a player can commit. For that you get the death penalty. He should have been DQ’d and the only reason he wasn’t is because he’s Tiger.
Emphasis added. That is not how it works, sorry! No one is owed a chance to discuss or review a potential violation. Had they done so, fine. But people seem to think this is like other sports (whether or not it should be), where someone other than the player is responsible for identifying and assessing penalties. This was Tiger’s responsibility, as the rules currently stand. Hell, even if the rules guys were CERTAIN he had committed a violation and could have stopped him before he signed (which they certainly would have), it should not have changed the proper result, a DQ, if they decided not to. Tiger is responsible for his card.
ETA: To clarify: No one is responsible for monitoring Tiger, determining violations, and bringing it to his attention, is what I’m trying to convey.
The committee did review the incident while Tiger was still playing and they decided there was no infraction, so when he signed the card, the score was correct.
When they got more information, they decided an infraction had occurred, penalized him two strokes and waived the DQ based on rule 33-7. All perfectly fine according to the rules of golf.