Flashback: How The Game Has Changed Files, Tiger Asks Trey Holland For Embedded Ball Relief Edition

A week after Patrick Reed’s remarkable request, approval and endorsed embedded ball relief saga at Torrey Pines, it’s still the talk of 19th hole banter (at a safe distance). Playing it as it lies remains under assault on the PGA Tour. I’ve yet to hear from anyone who liked what they saw.

Then we added Wednesday word of a volunteer confessing to having accidentally stepped on Rory McIlroy’s ball. If true, it solidifies key differences between Reed and McIlroy’s situation on top of one other key point: McIlroy’s next lie was essentially no better than the first one.

It’s all pretty strange and was made otherword-bizarre when the rules community could not find one thing wrong wtih Reed’s actions.

It wasn’t always that way.

Thanks to reader E for sending in this gem from the Sports Illustrated when players were not bigger than the game.

Former USGA President Trey Holland wrote this guest piece for SI on Tiger Woods. It’s a fun read but best on the ruling part after Woods hit it some deep Pebble Beach rough:

"Then on the 3rd hole he hits his second shot short of the hole,
near a bunker. The ball sinks in the grass. He says to me, 'I
 think my ball is embedded.' If it's embedded, he gets a free
drop. There's an intensity in his voice. He knows how he wants 
this to come out.

"I say, 'Mark your ball, lift it and test the dirt with a finger.
 If the plane of the dirt--not the grass, but the dirt--is broken,
 it's embedded.'

"He tests it. He says, 'I think it is.' I say, 'Let me have a look.' I put my finger down there. I say, 'It's not.' He doesn't say a word. Replaces his ball. Hacks it out. Makes a triple

bogey.

"On Sunday we're back on the 1st tee. He says hi. Doesn't say anything about the ruling. He does his two-minute stare again, plays his final round, wins the U.S. Open. I congratulate him, and he says, 'Thanks, that means a lot. But I sure would have liked to have gotten that drop yesterday on 3.' Twenty-eight hours later and after winning the Open by 15 shots, he was still thinking about it. I was under the clear impression that he wanted to win by 18."