To blame a person for signing an incorrect card when the ruling wasn't made for another 20ish hours after the card was signed is not only harsh, it is wholly unreasonable.
This is where you get it wrong: the scorecard was wrong when she signed it. She breached the rule, and incurred the penalty then. It is HER RESPONSIBILITY right then and there to add the penalty. Her card was never correct.
Your misunderstanding really almost starts and ends there. Until you can accept the logic and rationale behind that, you cannot really engage in a productive conversation here.
However, I also understand that people are fallible and therefore rules made by people are fallible.
Nobody's going to claim that the rules are perfect… but they exist for a reason, and the logic and rationale behind everything that occurred with Lexi makes sense.
There is no doubt at all that this is one of those times when the rules failed to provide a fair and reasonable result.
Two years ago it would have been a DQ. One of the principles is that the advantage gained should never be larger than the penalty given. Was her playing from the wrong place a two-stroke advantage, or even a 1.1-stroke advantage? No. But you can't make rules like that, with checklists to see how much of an advantage is gained. There are times when playing from a wrong place is worth 1.5 or 1.9 strokes or something, so the penalty is two strokes.
Then her second infraction is worth two strokes, and she's only not DQed because we give her a little benefit of the doubt that she had a brain fart and didn't notice that she breached the rules.
That penalty cannot really be reduced without basically telling everyone who plays golf "so long as it's believable that you didn't know… go ahead and don't include possible penalties on your card, because there's no downside to being caught later."
I do believe at least one of two things will occur in the near future.
1. Rulings will be made much more expediently so as to mitigate the chaos factor.
They made the ruling within an hour of being notified of the possible breach. How much more quickly could they do it?
2. Unless intent can be a reasonable dedution of the actions resulting in a penalty, the 2 shot penalty for signing an incorrect card after a very late ruling will be waived or perhaps eliminated from the rules. Its quite obvious what occurs now is completely unacceptable to a huge percentage of golfers.
Fortunately, the Rules of Golf are not written based on popular vote!The rules consider intent already. Again, two years ago, whether you meant it or not, you were DQed. They softened it to two strokes, but you can still be DQed if they believe you intended to cheat.
I'd be very, very disappointed in the rules committees at the USGA/R&A if they removed the penalty for signing an incorrect scorecard. I don't think it'll happen. The players are responsible for knowing and following the rules. Remove the two-stroke penalty or DQ and what's the incentive to try to put in an accurate score?
If tournaments are indeed 72 hole events, why can't a competitor sign one time after 72 holes? It is inconsistent to treat each round as a separate game for scoring, but not for calling penalties.
That's not practical. Your markers may have missed the cut and gone home, and scores need to be vouched for in order to MAKE cut lines and so on.
You're drastically over-reacting to something that doesn't happen very often.
If there is no need for rulings why have rules officials? Once again, it can't be both ways. Once decisions are taken out of the hands of players then the rulings must be done in a timely fashion which recently existed.
When did it "recently exist"?
And what are you talking about, "both ways." When the player fails to enforce the rules themselves, the rules officials have to step in. The rest of the time, rules officials are there to assist and inform. They're not there to watch players like hawks.
The questions are
1. What should the penalty be
2. How should penalties be detected
3. Should a player be penalized for signing a wrong card when the ruling which made her score inaccurate was delivered hoplessly late.
We have answers to all of those questions right now. They're good answers, and answers that have been arrived at after decades of these or similar rules.
1. I think the penalties we have now are good. There's logic behind them. The 2019 proposed rules mostly make sense, too.
2. By the players. It's their responsibility to police themselves. Sometimes, though, they fail, and thus in order to conduct the most accurate truthful competition, the rules committee must consider information from any available source.
3.
The scorecard was wrong when she signed it.Mark my words, the rules will continue to be changed because of tv and the nutty concept of signing a card which is accurate one day, but not the next
The scorecard was wrong when she signed it.And there have been call-in rules infractions since 1957. Or 1987 with Craig Stadler. Only recently was the two-stroke penalty for penalties you didn't "know" you incurred added. What makes you think they're going to change them again?
And again, what's the incentive to police yourself if you can't be penalized more than the initial penalty you incurred?
If a signature is required every day, then rulings should be made on the day the card is signed.
And if they're not… you'd rather see someone win a tournament despite video evidence of a clear breach of the rules? The winner probably wouldn't even want that.
It cannot be fair game to require a daily signature for accuracy, yet that accuracy can be challenged for a 72 hole window. It makes no sense, doesn't actually serve a purpose and actually causes unnecessary problems with tournament adminstration.
It can. It does make sense. The reasons and logic have been shared and explained several times before.