Referee Of Sergio-Fowler Match Elaborates

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Thanks to reader Patrick for sending in Dale Jackson's excellent roundup of his referree duties during last week's WGC Match Play match between Rickie Fowler and Sergio Garcia.

He explains the situation with the bees in which Garcia was well-within his right to ask for relief, and then tries to make sense of the strange concession by Sergio. Jackson comes away impressed by both players:

It quickly became clear that both Sergio and Ricky had made use of Rule 2-4, which sets, in part, “A player may concede his opponent’s next stroke at any time, provided the opponent’s ball is at rest.”  In language most golfers are used to, they had agreed their putts were “good for good”.  It was a very unusual move by Sergio to concede Ricky’s lengthy putt but he stated afterword he felt the bee incident on the previous hole had not been fair to Ricky who had a makable birdie putt that he missed.  The concessions by both players was sportsmanship of the highest level and it was consistent with how they conducted themselves throughout the match.  They were complementary of each other’s shots, seemed to enjoy each other’s company but played a hard fought and well played  match.