I missed out making it into the Nationwide Tour event in Minnesota yesterday in a playoff. I shot 2 under par 70 to get into a 16-for-5 playoff. My round was about average…nothing spectacular but also fairly steady.
I was the first tee time off at 7:00 and made 5 birdies against 3 bogeys. We finished around 11:30 and I waited around until 5:30 for the playoff.
The playoff was more of the same for me…3 solid but unspectacular pars…actually 4 pars but that’s another story. It required a birdie on 1, 2 or 3 to gain one of the 5 spots.
I saw something that really upset me yesterday after my round. While returning from the parking lot I walked past the ninth green and noticed that something was “strange” about how the twosome was playing the hole. Both players were looking at a putt along the same line. When the first player replaced his ball about 25 feet from the hole I then spotted the second player’s ball on what looked to me like the exact same line, but 35 feet away on the fringe. The first player struck his putt and the second player immediately jumped in behind him to see how the ball rolled to the hole. The first player holed out and then the second player rolled his ball from the fringe with the first player visibly rooting him on.
This looked a lot like the first player was playing out of turn to give the second player the line on his putt. As I walked to the scorer’s table it began to bother me for two reasons. First, what I witnessed appeared to be the first player helping the second player and therefore failing to protect the rest of the field. This just seemed “wrong” to me and I wasn’t sure if it was a violation of the rules. Second, since I thought I may have witnessed a violation of the rules, I thought I would be subject to disqualification if I did not report it. So, I stopped at the scorer’s table and reported what I saw.
At this point I had no idea whether it was a rules infraction, what the penalty would be or what the player’s respective scores were.
I ended up talking to the head rules official on site who showed me Rule 1-3, Agreement to Waive Rules and Rule 10-2c, Stroke Play, Playing Out of Turn. These rules state “if the Committee determines that competitors have agreed to play out of turn to give one of them an advantage, they are disqualified”.
The only course of action for the rules official was to confront the two players and ask them about their intent in playing out of turn. Their response was that the first player was “just trying to get out of the way” and that there was no intent to show the other player the line. Since I can’t read minds, I have no way of saying what their true intent was. I can only say that from my perspective it looked very much like the first player was trying to give the second player a line on his putt by playing first. I also can’t say whether the second player asked for or authorized this.
I spoke with a few friends at the event…guys who have played the game as their career for many years…and we all agreed that in the same situation we would have told the first player not to putt before us because it would give an unfair advantage and would look like a rules infraction.
The player who received the benefit in the situation ended up shooting better than 70 and made it into the field this week. I will not mention his name or his score because it’s not fair to do so without giving himself a chance to explain himself. If he did something wrong, it’s on his conscious.
The entire situation is unpleasant. Had he been disqualified there would have been one more spot available. When the playoff ended, there were 4 people remaining. Two of those players had yet to play the fourth hole which was probably one of the harder 6 holes on the course. Me and the other player had already made pars (more on this later). So, I feel like there would have been between 2 and 4 players standing on the 5th tee playing for that last spot. Perhaps this was the one I would have gotten?
What really bothered me about the situation is that golf is one of the last bastions of integrity in our society. I hate to see a situation like this that seems to violate the honor in our game.
Back to the playoff. The tournament officials tried their best, but communication problems led to what was the worst coordinated playoff I’ve ever been involved in. I went off in the first of 4 foursomes on the first hole. When all four of us made pars, our scorer instructed us to go to the second tee and continue. This didn’t make sense to me because any large playoff I’ve ever been in has halted all groups after the first hole until everybody had completed it.
A big problem with making us continue was the nature of the second hole. You could either layup conservatively behind some bunkers or drive it over the bunkers to leave yourself with a short pitch to the green. There are two different ways to play it depending on whether you need to be aggressive or conservative. If I had seen 4 birdies in the other groups on number one, I would definitely have hit driver knowing that birdie was necessary on number two. Conversely, if I had seen 8 bogeys on number one, I would have felt better laying back on number two and playing the hole conservatively. So, every group behind ours had that much more of an advantage in knowing how to play the second hole. I mentioned this to the official and he agreed that it was wrong. But, since we had already begun to play the second, we needed to finish it out.
I made par on number two and was asked to continue with the other player who made par onto number 3. We both parred number 3 and continued to number 4. We both finished number four and realized that the other players were all waiting on the adjacent second green. Evidently the scorer with our group had trouble with their radio and didn’t receive the direction to hold us up. So, again the players behind us had the advantage of knowing what they needed to make on number 3 since it was clear to everybody that pars continued to play. The other problem was that now we were waiting about 30 minutes for the final foursome to catch up with us on the fourth green.
The official in charge realized there was a problem and actually allowed us to go to another green to practice chip and putt to keep loose. It was unfortunate that their communication systems didn’t work well enough to coordinate the playoff competently. To their credit, when they realized the problem they tried to do what was equitable.
After all that I got a good break at the airport when the flight back to Atlanta was delayed two hours. Therefore, I was able to make it onto the last flight back and drive the rest of the way to Aiken. My next event will be the Nationwide Tour event in Knoxville next Monday.
