When Asking For A Mark Might Have Saved Xander Schauffele A Shot (Or Two)
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As a connoisseur of backstopping gone bad I so rarely get to enjoy the spoils of the nefarious practice now that players seem to have gotten the message that ball marks are their friends.
Full enjoyment of this Farmers Insurance Open round one incident is not possible since we don’t know if Jordan Spieth was desperate to mark his ball, only to have Xander Schauffele prioritizing fast play.
But as Christopher Powers writes for GolfDigest.com, the doozy of a bad break led to a Schauffele bogey and Phil Mickelson quickly asking Spieth to mark the same ball that sent Xander’s pellet running.
The setup from Powers:
The hole is only 322 yards, and Schauffele had blasted his drive just left of the green, leaving him with a difficult sidehill lie to a tucked left pin. Up on the green, Jordan Spieth, one of Schauffele’s playing partners, had not yet marked his ball. Schauffele went ahead and hit anyway, and would you believe it, his ball hit Spieth’s and ricocheted all the way off the other side of the green. Take a look:
Again, there are two ways of looking at this: a very bad break, or he had it coming since he didn’t ask Spieth to mark his ball. Protect the field, as they say. Something tells us the fine folks on Golf Twitter will be leaning toward the “karma” argument, but we can’t be too sure.
I looked and found two Tweets from the Schauffele Legion. This either speaks to my searching skills or the audience size for round one of the Farmers.
Somewhere a gambler was happy as Spieth ended up beating Schauffele in a group match bet by just a a stroke for those where sports betting is legal.
Someone else wasn’t so happy though they have yet to blame the backstop gone bad for their financial suffering.
The offending shot in a small embed (go to GolfDigest.com to see it in a larger version):
