if you are like me, and there are probably two of you, then you watched the pga championship. if you didn't watch the championship & you watch some sports highlight show then you had to have heard that dustin johnson incurred a two stroke penalty on the last hole to miss out on the playoff for the championship title. problem was that he didn't realize he was in a bunker & treated it like any other shot.
being a seasoned golfer for some 20 years now i am okay with the end result. call it out dated, but as golfer there is some pride & honor in self governing. it is the self governing that has me baffled that no one has mentioned.
you had a number of people responsible for the scoring of the player in that group: the player, playing partner, caddie, rules official, and probably a couple of other odd folks associated with tournament pagentry. as i have heard this story unfold it seems none of these folks made a penalty call and it wasn't until the end when the rules official got word from "replay" officials that something was possibly wrong.
so, where does "replay" come into play in golf? in baseball they have some replay, but we've seen over this summer and summers past that regular game play is riddled with bad calls we see over replay, but stand as calls a result of some human error which is 'part of the game.'
could this have been considered a human error of the team of people walking down the 18th and let go because there is no official "replay" in golf?
I too have played (and coached) competitive golf. The same thing made me mad. It’s one thing if a player calls it on himself, it’s another if his playing partner calls it, a scorer would be stupid to call it unless it was flagrant. (like dropped an extra ball and didn’t count it)
But… for a rules official to step in like that? Lame. Bad for the game. I’ve been a scorer for a ton of different things… and you never ever want to decide the match. The way I read the rules of the game, it should be between the players to decide. To come after the hole was complete and call a penalty isn’t right.
What would have happened if the rules official had waited until Johnson had reported his score? Then the poor guy would have been DQed!
I too have played (and coached) competitive golf. The same thing made me mad. It’s one thing if a player calls it on himself, it’s another if his playing partner calls it, a scorer would be stupid to call it unless it was flagrant. (like dropped an extra ball and didn’t count it)
But… for a rules official to step in like that? Lame. Bad for the game. I’ve been a scorer for a ton of different things… and you never ever want to decide the match. The way I read the rules of the game, it should be between the players to decide. To come after the hole was complete and call a penalty isn’t right.
What would have happened if the rules official had waited until Johnson had reported his score? Then the poor guy would have been DQed!