Oscillategate Moves To The Forensic Analysis Stage

/

Before we get to the photos of Tiger's BMW ball move sent in by a reader, we have more analysis from a variety of corners.

Ewan Murray in The Guardian:

There are those who remain quick to denigrate both the game of golf and Woods himself at any available opportunity. Golf is treated as a chummy closed shop by its' critics and Woods's public profile will never recover from the misdemeanours which wrecked both his marriage and place in American sporting hearts. Yet even through that, his integrity when at his place of work was never subject to question.

Woods famously insisted he didn't "get to play by different rules" in 2010 in relation to his personal life. In the context of his golfing life, it is safe to say 2013 has now been overshadowed by a clutch of instances in which the finest player of a golfing generation should have known better.

Jim Furyk and Steve Stricker were more sympathetic, reports Ryan Lavner who quotes Furyk as saying he "didn’t realize that ball moved" and this from Stricker:

“The rules are tough,” Steve Stricker said, “and there’s always a fine line between oscillating and moving. A player can see it as one thing and the camera is going to obviously pick it up differently. … It’s unfortunate that he’s been at the center of this about three times this year. I don’t know why, if it’s just because all the TV is on him or what.”

And while many of us struggled to see the move in the first version, the zoom-in by Golf Channel was more clear and this screen grab by a reader who asked to remain anonymous does show the ball moving, not oscillating. The reader writes:

Even in this pixillated version from the original video you posted the ball clearly settled relative to the stick in front of it from this perspective, by at least one dimple in both the full-screen and blow-ups after Tiger moved piece of leaf litter or whatever he touched..  That is well within the visual resolution of any golfer and is why Tiger stopped.  He had to see it.  Had the ball oscillated, the left and center pieces of mud on the ball would have moved or rocked back up.  They didn’t.

Click on the image to enlarge:

 

PGA Tour Bifurcation Alive & Well! Oberholser Glove Edition

/

Tim Rosaforte's Golf World Monday column looks at Arron Oberholser playing the Web.com Tour Finals on a medical exemption after years of struggle with his left hand (four surgeries).

And as reader DTF notes, if this isn't bifurcation, what is?

It took a special glove, approved by the PGA Tour (after the USGA deemed it non-conforming), to make a comeback possible. Even with that accommodation, he was still icing down the hand and taking Advil to reduce the swelling and pain.

"The glove isn't the cure-all by any stretch of the imagination," he said. "That's why if it doesn't hold up over the next three weeks, then I'll probably see a lot more of you in the studio."

Forensics: The R&A's Rules Summary From The 2013 Open

/

One of the nice annual touches from the R&A is their forensic analysis of rulings at The Open Championship, now posted on their website.

Right off the bat there was this stark reminder about the difference between the '12 and '13 Opens.

There were 234 rulings at the 2013 Open, which compares with 339 in 2012 at Lytham where a large number of rulings were given due to casual water on the course caused by the very wet summer.

Rulings recounted from 2013 include Thomas Bjorn hitting a camera with his shot from the rough (with nice clear video!), Charl Schwartzel breaking his club (no video, but that's why we have archives!) and Hideki Matsuyama's slow play penalty.

Matsuyama was then given a second bad time for his second shot to the 17th hole.  Given his tee shot had gone in to the crowd and considering the difficulty of the shot, Matsuyama was given additional time to deal with the crowd and to go forward to assess his shot.  The timing for the shot therefore only started when the player had returned to his ball; however he then took a further 2 minutes 12 seconds to play the shot. That second bad time resulted in a one shot penalty being applied to Matsuyama’s score on the 17th hole which became 6.

Solheim Madness! 25 Minutes To Take An Incorrect Drop!

/

Julie Williams with a nice wrap of Friday's day one Solheim Cup brouhaha over an incorrect drop taken by Carlota Ciganda.

Ciganda hit her fourth shot onto the fringe and made the par putt to secure an unexpected halve with Lewis and Thompson.

“Obviously I’m not happy about it,” Mallon said. “The thing I’m most unhappy about is that it took ... about 25 minutes for this to happen. And from our perspective, the momentum, which was coming in our favor at that point in time, obviously had stopped.”

Questions were posed at the time of the drop, Mallon said, but perhaps not the right ones. Play proceeded, and Pettersen birdied the next hole to take the Europeans 1 up. They won by that margin at the 18th, when Pettersen made a clutch two-putt par.

Golf Central has the video and also the Captains talking about what ended up being an incorrect drop.

Blayne Barber DQ's Himself Again

/

And while (maybe) not as dramatic as his second stage Q-School penalty from 2012, the Web.com player could not have picked a worse time as he vies for a PGA Tour card.

Jeff Shain reports on the 66 that would have put him in second place.

As it turned out, Barber realized the error as he was discussing the aftermath of last year’s DQ with reporters. He returned to the scoring area after finishing, asked for his card and saw the discrepancy.

Once a player leaves the scoring area, his card is deemed official.

“I looked [the card] over and didn’t see it,” Barber said, noting that he’d confirmed the proper total with his walking scorer but didn’t compare the hole-by-hole scores. “Somehow I missed that one on 16.”