All games
need some kind of rules and that is the reason
there is a need for officials to assist with
making sure that everyone is playing by the
same ones.
These officials sometimes have to hand out penalties
when rules are broken, but they also can assist
players sometimes.
Do rules officials make mistakes? Yes, I recall
how a USGA official, who later would become
president of the organization, gave a player
relief in the U.S. Open when the player really
was not entitled to it There’s no penalty
if a player gets such a wrong ruling.
In the U.S. Senior Amateur this summer, a USGA
rules official also erred when one of the players
discovered an extra club in his bag as he prepared
to chip to the first green. He told the player
he had lost the hole. So the player picked up
his ball and conceded the hole. In match play,
the lost. of hole penalty is applied to the
status of the match at the time of the discovery.
The players should have finished that hole and
then the penalty should have been applied. Since
he conceded the hole, he was two down. That
was the final ruling of the USGA although it
took an extra day for the final decision after
rain delayed the match.
On the major tours, players have the right
for a second opinion. Serving as a rules official
at the Ben Hogan Tour (now the Nationwide Tour)
Permian Basin
Open, I ruled that a player was not entitled
to relief when he was buried in the lip of a
fairway bunker just because there was an ant
bed nearby. The ants were not fire ants and
I did not feel it was a dangerous situation.
However, the rules official from the PGA Tour
overruled me and gave him relief. “We
have to be out here all the time with these
players,” he commented, making me wonder
if perhaps these regular tour officials might
be a little too lenient at times.
So what happens when members of your rules
committee use a different set of rules than
the ones on the rules sheet?
This is what happened in a recent men’s
club championship. I went out to check on the
possibility that some players had more than
14 clubs in their bags and was amazed to find
that the two members of my committee were picking
up “gimmes” instead of holing out
all putts.
That might be OK for your regular game with
your buddies, but even this tournament had to
be played by the rules and exceptions listed
on the rules sheet.
So I figured my best course of action was to
just step down as a rules official and let them
play by whatever rules they wanted. Otherwise,
I might have had to disqualify a few people
or hand out four-stroke penalties for violating
the 14-club rule.
Is reading the rules sheet fool proof? No,
I played in a tournament where there were local
rules not listed that we did not find out about
until the second day when we played with a local
team.
Rules official aren’t always bad guys.
I can recall how I assisted a young player once
who was in the running for a final spot in a
qualifying event. He hit his drive into a lateral
hazard on No. 18. Needing a par to qualify,
initially his situation looked grim since was
faced with trees blocking his path to the green
if he took his drop within two-club lengths
of where his ball last crossed into the hazard.
Going back to the tee, one of his other options
would make par impossible unless he holed out
after doing so. He was about to drop and chip
back to the fairway when I suggested that he
consider all his options, pointing to the red
stakes to indicate that the hazard was lateral.
That’s when he remembered that he could
go to the other side of the lateral water hazard,
equidistant from the hole, and take his drop.
This option gave him a clear shot to the green
and he got on and made his par-saving putt to
qualify.
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