Long before the light bulb and indoor plumbing, one golf rule was paramount: play the ball as it lies.
Even in those silly days when bunkers were full of footprints and no one had thought to put a rake out, you took your hickory and whapped away without improving your situation. If you did, the hole was lost.
Enter stroke play, better 2019’s new rules chipped away at the principle, despite the best efforts of the USGA and R&A to protect this all-important clause. Allowing players to move rocks in bunkers, tap spike marks and graze the ground in areas where they once could not, was bound to have some impact.
More specifically, it was bound to encourage some to bend the spirit of the rules (Matt Kuchar), and a previous rule-bender to blatantly break the rules (Patrick Reed).
These two are hopefully outliers. Most players still are very careful around their ball and when placing their club down. But an increasing number seem to have no issue placing a club down behind the ball to push down rough or sand or even tightly cut grass. The old days of gingerly addressing the ball out of fear of being seen as improving your lie, may be out.
And the new simplified rules still address this vital notion of not altering the area around the ball.
4. Remove or press down sand or loose soil.
But in Reed’s case, the Hero World Challenge two-stroke penalty and blatant improvement of his situation (twice), was not improved by the sheer audacity of the act, and the odd statements after his round. From Brian Wacker’s story quoting Reed, who blamed the camera angle and insisted he could not detect his club moving the sand until seeing the replay.
“I wish [the cameras] were actually directly on the side of me,” Reed said afterward, “because it was in a pretty good footprint … and I felt like my club was that far behind the ball when I was actually taking the practice stroke, which I felt like I was taking it up. And it was … obviously, it was hitting a little sand. I didn’t feel it drag. But … whenever you do that, if it does hit the sand, just like if you’re in a hazard area and you take a practice swing and it brushes grass and the grass breaks, it’s a penalty. Whenever they brought it up to me and I saw it, it definitely did drag some of the sand. Because of that, it’s considered a two-stroke penalty.”
And there was a fascinating assessment from PGA Tour rules official Slugger White, who some might expect to be incredulous given that the player, when confronted with overwhelming evidence, blamed the camera angle and insisted he did nothing wrong.
From Dylan Dethier’s extensive look at the incident for Golf.com.
“He could not have been more of a gentleman,” White said. “He was unbelievable. He said — he had a different look at it. The angle that we had was behind and he’s looking from on top, so he may not have — I don’t know if he could have seen it as clearly as we did, but he could not have been a better gentleman.”
I’m not sure that bodes well for future incidents of this kind, where the fundamental rules of the sport are so blatantly broken and the player is praised for not admitting what can be seen by most.
Ultimately, however, the timing is awful given Captain Tiger Woods’ effort to help Reed reclaim his place as a top American player by selecting him for the Presidents Cup team. Heading to Australia, where the Fanatics await and will be armed with some loud one-liners, meaning the heckling could get ugly.
But there is also the simple matter of how Reed’s peers and teammates view him. The blatant nature of his violation may have been best summed up by Rickie Fowler after seeing the tape. From Dethier’s story:
“I mean, I don’t even know what you have to review,” he said.
