Mostly we use our first post of the week to summarize the golf action from the weekend.... though occasionally the golf is the least of that which occurs over a weekend. Such is the case in the present moment....
Where to begin this tale of fine intentions gone horribly wrong.....When last we met, Touring professionals were making a hash of the rewritten rulebook, specifically Mr. Rickie Fowler and Mr. Justin Thomas.
We'll spend a moment covering that ground. First, Mr. Thomas:
“I think they’re terrible,” Justin Thomas said.
That’s what he told media the day before the Honda Classic began. His opinions onlyhardened in the first round, when he bent the shaft of his 9-iron, hitting a tree with a shot at the 10th hole. The new rules wouldn’t allow him to replace the club, the way the old rules would have.
Unable to repair the club, as new rules allow, he played the final eight holes with 13 clubs.
Thomas said he probably couldn’t have replaced the 9-iron in a timely fashion anyway, with his backup at his Jupiter home down the road, but it’s the principle.
“You can just add that one to the list of rules that don't make any sense,” Thomas said.
Would you mind terribly giving us that list, because this seems fairly minor....As for the guy on the left in that above photo, you'll recall that he got zapped for dropping from shoulder height, whereupon he initiated a good-faith experiment with drop positions. The apotheosis of said experimentation was this yoga position that Shack has labelled The Deuce Drop:
I like a good meme as much as the next gu:
That linked item above has a header that sums up the current state of play:
Randall's Rant: Tour pros figuratively crapping all over new rules
The weekend brought us another bizarre penalty for a caddie being behind a player, this time from a bunker.... Of course, it was Adam Schenk, not exactly a household name, so teeth remained ungnashed and garments unrendered.
Andrew Landry, barely more of a household name than the aforementioned Schenk, felt it incumbent to suggest an immediate move to Defcon-5:
Sigh! I'm glad that Andrew Landry feels qualified to opine about the new rules of golf, though limited to 280 characters he still can't control himself sufficiently to avoid that digression to a qualification issue from years ago... Rules, Andrew, that's the subject for today.
Last up is this seriously strange tweet from the USGA, trolling JT:
Quite the mess, eh? OK, shall we parse this nonsense and see what we think of it all? As we often do at the beginning of the week, let's drop in on the Tour Confidential panel, on which the gavel has just dropped:
1. Justin Thomas has been among the most outspoken critics of the new Rules of Golf, joining the likes of Rickie Fowler, Adam Scott and Billy Horschel. On Saturday, the USGA fired back, responding to a Thomas tweet by saying, “Justin, we need to talk. You’ve cancelled every meeting we’ve planned with you, but we are reaching out again … We’d love nothing more than to give you a seat. Call us.” (On Sunday, Thomas called the response “upsetting” and “inaccurate.”) Are players overreacting to the changes, or is their carping warranted?
First, a couple of votes for the former:
Sean Zak: Right now, they’re overreacting, because they’ve had years to react appropriately and are just now doing so. I listened to a 20-month-old podcast of ours Sunday morning. It had a note from the USGA in it regarding the proposed rules changes and how they’re looking for feedback. I don’t pity the players for just now really getting involved.Alan Shipnuck: Good points from our man inside the ropes but I’m honestly tired of the Tour players’ constant carping. Drop the ball from knee-height and don’t let your caddie stand behind you while you’re getting into the shot – is it really that hard?!
Shippy seems to be going overboard to prove that he's not one pf those "leg-humping sycophants", no?
This guy who's actually in the trenches has a quite different perspective:
John Wood: Players are reacting to penalties that have absolutely nothing to do with the competition or a player gaining a competitive advantage. The penalties being handed out are like giving a student an F for a typo on a term paper. They’re bureaucratic in nature. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of golf can see that none of the penalties handed out for a caddie supposedly lining up a player are, in fact, a caddie lining up a player, including the one this week with Adam Schenk. Rickie taking a drop from shoulder height in Mexico, while technically wrong, had absolutely nothing to do with the competition or what score he was going to make on the hole. I’ve been to two of the meetings the USGA had for Tour players and caddies, once in Hawaii and once in Phoenix. To be frank, there were many answers the USGA officials either didn’t know the answer to, or responded with something like “we didn’t foresee that.” One example: I can still line my player up on, say, a 5-foot putt by standing on the opposite side of the hole and saying “a touch left, a little more, perfect,” and then walk out of his line and watch him make the putt. Here, we are gaining a competitive advantage by my lining him up, but we aren’t going to incur a penalty because I wasn’t standing behind him. There were others. What Justin meant was that maybe a thoughtful ex-Tour player and Tour caddie (Peter Jacobsen and Jim Mackay come to mind) should have been in the room WHILE these rules were being discussed, before they were implemented. Maybe they would have been able to address these questions we are having issues with now, then. In the NFL, when a pass interference penalty is called, and then rescinded when a referee deems the ball uncatchable, they are in effect saying “Yes, it was technically pass interference, but the ball was 30 feet over his head anyway, and it didn’t affect the competition, so no penalty.” Golf needs something like this to overturn a penalty that by letter of the law may be a penalty, but in fact has nothing with gaining a competitive advantage.
Setting aside Rickie and his deuce, I can sympathize with the players and their caddies about these alignment penalties. To the best of my knowledge, this has been an issue only on the LPGA, and never on any men's tour. The USGA has drafted an unwieldy rule based upon the nebulous concept of when a player assumes his stance, and the Tour has selectively enforced it in the early-season events.
But the most curious aspect relates the presence of the PGA Tour at the table. They are charged with understanding the effect of a rule on their unique version of the game, and advocating for their players. It would appear that they didn't understand the potential impact, and accordingly failed to warn their players accordingly.
As for that USGA tweet, no issue finding common ground there:
2. Was it inappropriate for the USGA to admonish Thomas so publicly, or was it about time the governing body stuck up for itself?
Zak: I think both of those things can be true. It’s not exactly proper form for a governing body to do it in a tweet reply, but then again, how many times do you want to just let Thomas call you out publicly, especially if you feel he’s doing so unjustly? Props to the USGA for sticking up for itself, but perhaps next time it’ll use a more official platform than the one with a limited character count.
Wood: No. Is it possible that Justin Thomas knows more about tournament golf at the highest level than its governing body? In my opinion, yes.
Bamberger: Totally agree. Sophomoric in tone, ridiculous in intent.
Although there was this contrarian:
Shipnuck: Per my comment above, the USGA is clearly tired of the whining, too. It was inappropriate…and awesome. One of the organization’s problems is that it is so remote. Mixing it up on social media will help the blue coats understand and engage better with players, fans and scribes, and it will also help from a PR standpoint, too.
Alan. would please stop humping Mike Davis leg..... Really, don't you think a governing organization should act like adults?
This reminds me of the Ted Bishop firing... I was perfect fine with the PGA of America firing Ted under the theory that the head of an important organization shouldn't be trolling players on Twitter, though I thought the sexism bit was small beer. Same point here, try to live up to your role in the game.
Mike Bamberger has penned the most important piece on this issue, and he sees a crisis at hand:
There is so much blame to go around right now that eight fingers (the normalcomplement) is not enough. A short list in no particular order: Woods, Fred Ridley and Augusta National; Dustin Johnson and Lexi Thompson; Mike Davis and the USGA; Jay Monahan and the PGA Tour; Justin Thomas; various card-carrying members of the GWAA, including your correspondent; some of your favorite Golf Channel commentators.To get on this list all you need to do is fail to convince the public of the underpinning that makes all serious competitive golf possible:
Golf’s rulebook, and strict, self-policed adherence to it (with help as needed), is the necessary starting point to all serious golf competitions.
That means you, the serious golfer, have to know, understand and respect the rules and those who make them.
Does that mean you abdicate your right to challenge the rules, or any rule? To question their logic and application? Of course not. But it’s how you do it, and when you do it.
Mike offers this simple rule for all involved:
Just ask yourself, before you open your mouth or Twitter account: Are you about to make the game better? Are you putting the game first, or yourself? Fowler failed on Thursday. The USGA failed on Saturday. It was all so inane it makes you want to scream.
When you put it that way..... Still, not always the easiest rule to live by. Now, Mike isn't dome with the tough love:
There’s been a great deal of attention to a new rule this year about how to drop. There was a year-long review period before the new procedure, and the other rules changes, became golf law. Here’s a message to anybody with his or her name on a golf bag: Just learn the new rule and abide by it.
Does the new drop look ridiculous? It does now, because it’s new. A decade from now it won’t. Was this a rule that really needed to be changed, from the old shoulder-height drop? Probably not, but the USGA and the R&A had sound reasons for making the change, and also a long review period where you or I or Rickie Fowler could have tried to convince them not to make it. So we failed.
I agree that we all had the chance to affect the rule, and the USGA did change it from an inch high to knee-height. However, as to the USGA/R&A having sound reasons? Well, let's hold that thought...
But even Mike has his strange digressions, such as this:
Once golf had Joe Dey and Sandy Tatum (obscure names today) and Bobby Jones. They were giants of the USGA and their golfing values could be found all through the game. You can see their examples in the life and times of Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, Mickey Wright and Nancy Lopez. Tom Watson, Curtis Strange, Davis Love — and thousands of others who could honestly say they put the game ahead of themselves. Can you imagine Karrie Webb ever playing hockey on a U.S. Open green as Phil Mickelson did last year? Mickelson, in time, owned that moment of passing craziness. Yes, his action demeaned the game. But, tellingly, it had no impact on him.
He just leaves us hanging on this one, as he seems strangely reticent to assign blame... But this one is more significant:
Woods, at the 2013 Masters, when he made that bad drop on 15, did not own that moment. Woods made an innocent mistake, but it was a mistake nonetheless. He could have done so much for the game right then and there by saying I am responsible for this mess and I will clean it up. All he had to do was withdraw. Woods felt he was entitled to keep playing because his error paved the way for another one.
You might remember it. Fred Ridley, then a Masters tournament official and now the club’s chairman, should have asked Woods about the drop after the round and before he signed his card. Ridley had a moment where he could have stepped in and taken over, been the adult in the room, but he didn’t and the residual effects are in evidence. Ever since, the us-against-them mentality has escalated.
It's not that Mike won't direct his criticism to the USGA and other governing bodies, but I think he fails to appreciate the effect on the players of the ongoing lack of actual leadership and foresight from our governing bodies. In the example above, Fred Ridley failed to carry out his obligations because of a personal gripe against a fellow official, yet in his mind the player should pay the price.
Mike also mentions the DJ fiasco, that revealed a USGA completely unequipped to handle the issue, after having already redrafted that rule. Mike's take on that is equally strange:
Dustin Johnson, at the 2016 U.S. Open at Oakmont, could have said that he could not be 100 percent sure he did not cause that ball to move. He could have owned that moment and bent over backwards to be fair to others. He didn’t. That ball moved and Johnson said he was not responsible for it.
Likewise, Mike Davis and various USGA officials could have said to Johnson, We take you at your word and you should play on, without penalty. In other words, be decisive and say the matter is over. They could have owned that moment, too. They didn’t.
(How the public has lost faith in the USGA, by taking on anchored putting and going overboard on its U.S. Open course set-ups, is another discussion.)
Huh? The guy is trying to win an Open and he should take one for the team? When he genuinely doesn't think he did anything wrong? With a ball sitting on friction-less greens where the tides of the Pacific Ocean could set a ball in motion?
there has always been friction between the USGA and the players, friction that in most regards is healthy. Though I can't imagine the players responding favorably to Mike Davis' repeated pleas for mulligans, as they don't have that luxury.
As for my comment about good reasons, color me skeptical on that front. So many of the rules changed were rationalized by the effect upon pace of play. Now I do wish that Tour players could get around a course in less than five hours, though that's a subject for another day. But so many of these changes, such as the drop and reduced time to search for a lost ball, seem trivial at best. Yet the factors that drive pace of play, longer courses and associated walks to back tees, are the result of not controlling the technology of the game.
As an aside, Mike had this prediction:
A real rules debacle is coming, courtesy of the new three-minute search rule. Nobody is ready for that. It may not come up at the Players or the Masters, but it almost surely will at Bethpage (PGA Championship) and Pebble Beach (U.S. Open) and Portrush (British Open). In other words, courses with rough.
Oh goody!
But maybe the strangest bit of all is Mike's candidate to lead us from the wilderness:
Golf needs a grownup who can step up and protect the game from its baser instincts. By far the best person for that role is Tiger Woods, even though he has contributed to the poor state of affairs. Still, tomorrow presents a new chance. What’s clear is that golf needs a leader, a person who will reliably and persuasively put the game ahead of himself or herself.
Passing strange, given Tiger's tenuous relationship with said rules over the years.... And The Masters drop was by far the least of it.
I think Mike's call for civility is timely, in fact it was echoed by Jay Monahan. And it does have the feel of a crossroads of sorts, though I think Mike underestimates the effect of the governing bodies' incompetence.
As the kids like to say, Developing....
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