Rule 18-2/.05 - Making Your Brain Hurt

"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." - Karl Marx

Lord knows, the USGA has been down this path before, and always seems ill-equipped to the task... Let's let Ewan Murray of The Guardian take a shot at the blazers:

To the watching world the scene was ludicrous. To recap, a rules official informed

Johnson that he would not be assessed for a penalty stroke after the ball moved when he addressed a putt on the 5th green. On the 12th tee, Johnson was told a decision would be made at the end of his round, forcing the player to complete the final six holes not knowing whether the assessment would take place or not. When the round was completed, Johnson was penalised a stroke and signed for a one-under-par 69, to win by three shots. 

A sport seeking to emerge from dark age prejudice had once again taken an AK-47 to its foot, proving itself petty and unfathomable. Johnson arrived at the final holes of the biggest round of his life not knowing what his score was. Nobody watching on, including fellow competitors, knew for sure either.

 The AK-47 imagery is pretty good, though that "dark age" reference seems a bit of a cheap shot....  That'll show those troglodyte Muirfield members, though it's relevance here is hard to grasp.

To his credit, Mike Davis has been out and about to discuss the USGA's application of the rules, so let's see what he thinks in hindsight:

"When you look back at the whole issue, you can break it down into two parts. It's a rules of golf issue, of trying to make sure that you apply the rules correctly the way they're written. And we do believe we did that," Davis said. "But there's another part of it in terms of the conduct of the championship itself, and that's where we'd really like a mulligan because clearly we made a big bogey."

Egads, Mike, did you just use the "M" word?  Mike is arguing for the strictest interpretation of Rule 18-2, but then wants a mulligan, a term that of course doesn't exist in the rules of golf.... just being folksy here.

Shall we let him continue to violate the first rule of holes?

"That really gets down to putting in essence the championship on the final day almost in limbo to where the players, and in this case Dustin, didn't know where he stood in terms of a score," he said. "That's where, if we could do it again, we should have just applied the penalty once we looked at the video."

Almost?  That's what the kids would call a #humble brag....

So, we've learned a few things to this point.  As we'd all suspected, by the time DJ was informed  on the 12th tee of the potential penalty, the penalty had, in fact, been decided upon.  It's common practice in such matters to speak with the player before rendering such a decision, but it's equally obvious that there was nothing that DJ could have said that would have changed the outcome.

But before you start throwing things at the monitor, I'll remind you of Tiger's famous drop at the Masters (which Murray also cites), in which the critical mistake of Fred Ridley was to not speak with Tiger before making a determination.  Yes, a drop is different because the player is making a decision as opposed to taking physical actions, but still....

And let's briefly note the delicious irony of the USGA invoking the penalty to protect the field, while said field was flooding Twitter with statements to the effect of "Not in our name".  Again, these crazy kids....

So, where does this leave us?  In a pretty fine mess, I believe.... Rule 18-2 (actually, we're in fact dealing with Rule 18-2/.05) is a recent change to in theory allow that the player some flexibility to determine whether he caused the movement of the ball.  In the good old days it was binary decision, if the player had addressed the ball, i.e., had grounded his putter behind the ball, he was guilty.  

But with the change in the rule, ambiguity rules.  Shack tried to explicate for us here:

From Rule 18-2/0.5, titled “Weight of Evidence Standard for Determining Whether Player Caused His Ball To Move.”

If the weight of the evidence indicates that it is more likely than not that the player caused the ball to move, even though that conclusion is not free from doubt, the player incurs a one-stroke penalty under Rule 18-2 and the ball must be replaced. Otherwise, the player incurs no penalty and the ball is played as it lies unless some other rule applies (e.g. Re 18-1).

With reference to the considerations above, here is the key example the USGA relied on: 

-A player’s ball lies on a flat portion of the putting green on a day with light winds. The player addresses the ball and the ball immediately moves. Under these circumstances, it is more likely than not that the act of addressing the ball caused the ball to move. 

The USGA officials involved decided that the immediacy of the ball moving was enough to convince them that the weight of evidence standard had been met. 

Let the bickering begin!

This is the guidance provided by the USGA in conjunction with the R&A....  Particularly helpful since DJ didn't actually address the ball.  And I'll remind that we're not talking about your home club greens... Here was Ewan Murray's lede from the linked piece above:

Let us briefly visit a land where common sense prevails. There, a significant sporting occasion would not be thrown into utter confusion in front of a worldwide audience at its key phase. There, a golf ball placed on a surface closely resembling a marble fireplace in texture may well move. There, the glaring evidence of no advantage either being sought or claimed would never result in a penalty.

I'll also encourage you to read this Bradley Klein piece on green speeds, in which he dtails the effects of multiple cutting and rolling of greens in a give day: 

The real problem is that while an athlete as gifted as Johnson is held accountable for

what happens to his golf ball, there are moments dictated by science, gravity and friction (or its virtual absence) when it’s not clear whether anyone could be in control. 

That’s what happens when green speeds reach 15 on the Stimpmeter and putting surfaces slope at 4 percent. The combination leads to a moving violation. Increasingly, we’re seeing an escalation in what superintendents can achieve. In 1977, the year before Oakmont hosted the PGA Championship, the course’s lightning-quick greens averaged 9.81 feet on the then-prototype Stimpmeter being tested by the U.S. Golf Association’s Green Section.

But go back to that italicized portion of the excerpt of the decision language, and think about its implications and implementation in the context of the "absence of friction" described by Klein.  The USGA dodged a huge bullet when DJ's margin of victory rendered the one-stroke penalty moot, but it was a bullet of their own creation.

So, let me suggest where this needs to go, assuming of course that distance gains will not be addressed and championship golf will continue to be played on greens that resemble marble fireplaces.  This will make heads explode in Far Hills, NJ, but that's a price I'm willing to pay.  If yo speak to a non-golfer, they will first ask an incredibly naive question, does the player gain and advantage when the ball moves?  Think about that for a moment... why are we doing this to ourselves?

I'd like to see the rule change, but that's not even necessary since the vast majority of us play on greens where this isn't an issue.  The pros could implement a local rule to the effect that unless the player physically touches the ball, if it moves it's deemed to be by outside agencies and the ball should be replaced with no penalty.

Lastly, while we all understand that the USGA officials are in good faith interpreting the rules of our game, all of the discussion of 18-2/.05 quite possibly ignores or is in conflict with another section of the rule book:

Oy!  So that rules official with Dustin on the 5th green?  His decision was final... at least until it wasn't.