The news conference transcript is on the website of the Springfield State Journal-Register.
There I found the answer to my first question: The scoring tent is run by volunteers. And it appears LPGA staffers don't see the scorecards (or they missed it too). An excerpt:
Q. Can a volunteer or have volunteers looked at a card and said, hey, you forgot to sign your card? Are they authorized to do that kind of thing?
SUE WITTERS: Yes, they're encouraged, actually, to do that to try to save a player.
What happens is the players go over their card, sign and return them. Then the committee scoring committee sits in there and basically checks the additions. So the players are just responsible for the hole by hole scores, not the addition of them. So we ask the volunteers to go ahead and check the addition. Also on top put previous total, this total and the new total.
They are instructed if they do find a card without a signature, to go ahead and say to the player, hey, you didn't sign your card.
Now players leave the scoring area with different, you know some get up and rocket out. Some hang out, talk, give gloves, balls and then they leave. There's no set way to say they're in there for 10 seconds or 30 seconds or a minute. Everybody's different. Some hang out and talk to the volunteers, some just left.
Had it been caught before Michelle physically left the roped area, she could have signed it and handed it back. That's another reason we don't like to use the box method which would be to put the card in the box, because then it's considered returned. Once you put it in the box, you get up, you can't go back to that card.
We try to give them as much time as we can, but we have to have an area that is considered the scoring area or when would the card be returned? Could they go have dinner and come back and give us the card? That's the reason for defining a scoring area.
Q. Also, a rule is a rule. But this was Michelle Wie in a big tournament. I guess what I'm asking, how did it feel personally to have to tell somebody that there is no Santa Claus?
SUE WITTERS: Rotten. I think that's about the best word to describe it. It was really hard. She's gone through a lot. She's finally making her way back. She's taken her knocks by everybody, and she's finally proving once again what a good golfer she is.
To have this happen, I mean, I can't even imagine what's going through her head right now.
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Ryan Farrows, Ms. Witters seems all right by me. She used an apt analogy.
Wie, incidentally, didn't answer questions. She gave her statement and left before the LPGA officials spoke. Had I been there, this is my question to her: "Do you think this was fair?"