Chella Choi Disagrees With Penalty, WD's Instead

In the annals of HD replay rules reviews, Chella Choi's penalty and subsequent WD before the penalty could be assessed has to be one of the strangest of many strange incidents.

Especially since while it may be apparent she violated the rule upon closer inspection, the speed with which this happened and the lack of any apparent reason to not replace her marked ball in the same spot suggest it was just carelessness. The WD, however, makes the whole thing strange.

Randall Mell lays out the story quite well in this report.

The two-stroke penalty would ultimately have caused Choi to miss the cut by a shot.

“The player did not agree and decided to withdraw from the competition,” LPGA rules official Dan Maselli told GolfChannel.com in an email response to a request for an explanation of the violation. “She gave no reason for the withdrawal.”

A review of the television broadcast showed that when cleaning up a short putt at the 10th hole, Choi placed down her mark so that her ball was resting on the right side of the mark. After briefly picking up her ball, Choi puts her ball down on the left side of the mark, moving it over an inch or so.

In the video Judy Rankin's comments about Choi are worth noting.