Rickie
Fowler will go down in history as the player to begin the 2013 PGA Tour Season –
3 times. That record may never be broken
(unless of course the Tour neglects to move the date of the Hyundai TOC), and thanks
to Slugger White I have wonderful Rules
issues to discuss on Week 1 of 2013.
Cancelling a Round
The PGA
Tour was forced to start and cancel two rounds that had started and some were
questioning the fairness of that action.
Decision 33-2d/1 gives us guidelines on whether or not a round should be
cancelled. The first sentence of the
answer says it all, “There is no hard-and-fast rule.” Really, there is no way to make a
hard-and-fast rule though because the conditions that could warrant cancelling
a round can vary so much from course to course.
At Kapalua, the wind is the major factor. Here on the Monterey Peninsula, fog could be
the factor. In Abu Dhabi, sand storms
could be the factor.
The
guideline that the Decision gives is “a round should be canceled only in a case
where it would be grossly unfair not to cancel it. The example given is exactly what occurred at
Kapalua, where some players begin play in extremely adverse conditions and others
do not have to play in those conditions.
For those who had to play 5-9 holes in terrible wind, they would be at a
5-9 hole disadvantage to those who never had to tee the ball up. By the book, Slugger White and his crew got
this one right – twice.
Ball Falling Off Tee
Yesterday’s
non-existent round began (or did it?) ominously for Matt Kuchar as the wind
blew his ball off of the tee on his first hole.
He called in a Rules Official.
Fortunately, there is a specific Rule that covers this situation, Rule
11-3 (Ball Falling Off Tee). When a ball
is not in play, a ball that falls off a tee or is knocked off the tee when not
making a stroke, it may be re-teed, without penalty. So for all of you who tease your buddies when
the nervously tap the ball off the tee at the start of a hole, there’s no
penalty and it isn’t, “One!”
If the
ball falls off the tee while you’re making a stroke at it and you whiff, well,
then you don’t have a penalty but you have made a stroke. That could have caused some issues at Kapalua
over the last few days. I, for one,
would cherish the opportunity to see professionals whiff like the rest of
us. It only takes 50 MPH gusts to even
the field…
Just to
change the facts a little… if you manage to whiff a teed ball and it stays put,
and then you accidentally knock it off the tee, you would then be liable to a
one-stroke penalty under 18-2a or 18-2b (depending on whether you had addressed
the ball) and the ball must be replaced (See Decision 11-3/1).
Ball Moving on the
Putting Green
Now we
can finally get this right. The Kapalua
wind is exactly what the new Exception to 18-2b was written for in 2012. If you address a ball (it need not be on the
putting green, it could be anywhere) and the wind causes it to move, you are
not penalized and you must play the ball from where it comes to rest. Gusts of 50 MPH are enough to say with
certainty that the wind did in fact, cause the ball to move. You still need to be careful, however,
because if the wind blows the ball back into your putter, you would still be
responsible for a one-stroke penalty under Rule 19-2 (Ball in Motion Deflected
or Stopped by Player, partner, Caddie or Equipment).
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