Harrington DQ'd at Abu Dhabi

[JMEvensky]

I would like to be a fly on the wall in Ponte Vedra.

IMO,it's not "golf" with a PR problem so much as the Pro's.They're the ones who look like they don't know their own rules.

[Sean_A]

George

Okay, yer a syco.  

My issue with "dems the rules so help me god" is when we get a situation (extreme I know) where DeVicenzo has earned a playoff spot with Ford, but he signed to a score higher than what he had and was forced to keep it.  EVERYBODY knew he wasn't cheating to take a higher score and EVERYBODY knew DiVicenzo desrved to go the 19th.  Instead, a dems the rules situation occurred and we get losers all round.  I believe that the Rules Comm should have the ability to over rule a rule (in effect, have the rule removed until it can be further reviewed).  I am not saying Harrington's situation warranted Comm intervention, but I believe the power to do so should exist.

Ciao

Well, we'll have to agree to disagree, then. To me, a syco, adding subjectivity will only further complicate an already complicated situation. I see simple beauty in treating like situations alike, I don't see where adding subjectivity will do anything but add stress to an already difficult situation.

Would you like to see a whole list of decisions where committees ruled one way in one instance, and another way in another? I sure wouldn't. That's how you end up with a 20,000 page tax code, btw.

Hey, maybe it will create a whole new industry and stimulate the economy... Yippee!

George

IMO, just as a player's card can be re-visited when an infraction is discovered (and rightfully so) which can add shots, I think a card should be revisted if a player has made a mistake which gives him a higher score than he earned.  Call it the DiVincenzo Rule if you like.  I don't see the positive in two guys feeling awful and the world knowing the real winner lost because he signed for a higher score than he had.  I used to feel as you do about it (dems the rules by god), but sometimes there are issues at stake which are more important than the rules. 

Ciao 

[Craig Sweet]

Villagas...the hill was littered with divots and other debris...it was the second time he had tried to chip his ball up and over the lip of the hill...when it became apparent that this attempt was not going to make the green either, out of frustration he swiped at a divot sitting by his feet...the ball was  meandering back down the hill and there was no telling where it would stop....I immediately thought this was not a good thing, but it did not appear to me that his ball came to rest anywhere near where the divot he swatted had been.

Harrington said he did not think his ball moved...what more can you ask from the guy?  Like I said, I think golf is screwing itself when it allows someone at home to call in...the spirit of the game is we call our own infractions...not someone at home with TIVO and slow mo.

[JESII]

Craig,

Are you willing to go with the "call your own infractions" plan 100%?

I am, but do not see it as less problematic than the current situation.

[Craig Sweet]

Jim...there's at last one other competitor, and a rules official, and at least two caddies, and dozens of fans following each and every golfer on the PGA Tour...so I dont think we need a million eyes sitting at home calling infractions. I know of NO OTHER sport that allows people to call infractions into the TV studio. And change the outcome of a shot or play.

[Doug Siebert]

By ignoring TV evidence, you are penalizing the rest of the field, plain and simple. Period. How is it going to look the first time someone wins an event and he clearly broke a rule?

The same as it looks when a non-reviewable call such as interference that affects a football game is proven wrong on replays after the game, or what is shown on replays clearly would have been the third strike that ends the game is called a ball and the next swing is a game winning HR in a baseball game?  Fans of the disadvantaged team whine about it for days (or years if it is a big game) and the rest of us shrug knowing humans aren't infallible and get on with our lives.

How is it any different than if I witnessed a player breaking the rules quite clearly but it wasn't on camera and I told people?  I guess you might think my word isn't good enough....but what if I was both a former USGA official and current Supreme Court justice, with vision measured as better than 20/20 and I was 10 feet away with a perfect view of the infraction?  Undoubtedly you will still maintain that without proof my word isn't good enough.  But if I was 10 feet away and saw you shoot someone dead, you would be convicted of murder.  But I guess murder is just murder, but the rules of golf are IMPORTANT to some people!

Whatever is getting seen/recorded now and called in has ALWAYS been happening in golf, only now people are able to prove it to the satisfaction of those who think golf should be held to a standard above all other sports.  Even when that standard is occasionally blantantly unfair to participants who can get DQed for an infraction that (other than the assessed penalty) would have had no effect on their score.  Even when if the penalty was assessed they still would have won!

It is bad enough that the USGA ignores technology's effect on the game WRT equipment.  But worse, while other sports adjust to the presence of technology by adjusting their rules to implement instant replay and baseball is looking into using computers for determining balls and strikes, golf maintains the status quo and makes itself look more and more backward to all but its defenders and apologists (probably mostly the same who think that the USGA doing nothing about equipment the past 20 years is not a problem)

[JESII]

Doug,

Your last paragraph is baffling...all the other sports are finding ways through the use pf technology to make as sure as possible (not 100%) that the rules are followed, and applied correctly. And you see this as a reason golf is backwards? The problem with the argument against the call-in problems is that you have to agree to not impart a penalty that is due and the ruling bodies/tournament organizers are not ready to do that...and I don't blame them. Is it perfect? Nope! BUt why is everybody else moving in this direction? Because it's better than saying to hell with the rules we've laid out.




Craig,

Stop making up excuses for the players, they don't want or need them.

The sport that covers the second most acreage and includes the most players is either cricket or baseball I guess, football (US and Traditional) and rugby probably have the most players on the field at once, and on slightly smaller fields. Of these, a cricket pitch is probably the largest at 4 or 5 acres and American Football may have the most players on the field at one time with 22...and most importantly, ONE BALL!

A typical US PGA Tour or European Tour event feature 72 players, each with their own ball spread out over 150 acres or more.

How many officials per ball are watching any other televised sport? What would be second behind golf?

[Doug Siebert]

Jim,

My point is that golf is not adapting at all to the technology, they are sticking with the same rules/decisions even in the face of technology that is making a mockery of their application, and in a way that is blatantly unfair insofar as every player is covered to a different amount by TV.  It depends not only on the player, but on his position relative to the lead and his starting time.  If Tiger starts during the coverage window and is leading a major, his every shot will be shown.  If he barely makes the cut and is first group out on Sunday, they'll have a few quick cut shots of him putting, along with him walking up the 18th to show the fans appreciate him even while he's losing.  If he's a nobody starting out in the first group, he won't even have a single shot shown.

People seem to think the rules are the equivalent of the monkeys covering their eyes, ears and mouth.  If a rules violation is recorded on TV, the rule must be enforced whether an official witnessed it at the time or not.  If an official witnesses a violation, the player is told and he's able to add in strokes to his card.  If I notice a player I dislike violating an obscure rule, I could hold off calling until 10 minutes after I see him putting out on 18, hoping that no one else calls it in so I can see him DQ'ed.  If I like him, maybe I hurry up and call it in, just in case no one else does other than the jackass who dislikes him and hopes to see him DQ'ed   Do the rules of golf really envision giving up that type of control (even in theory) to someone thousands of miles of away?  Talk about your outside agency!

The rules of golf like to talk about "equity".  Well, in equity, if the violation on camera was called in immediately and word got to the player by the time he walked off 18, he'd add those strokes and would not be DQ'ed.  So just add the strokes automatically and if necessary to assauge people's sense of tradition, have him re-sign the modified scorecard.

Maybe it'll take a violation by the winner that's not discovered until after the trophy presentation, and the rules of golf say nothing can be done.  You watch the reaction of the average fan who thinks things like Harrington's DQ really stinks and thinks how stuffy and lawyerly golf is wonder WTF is up that they'll DQ a player when the ability exists to add strokes to his score and then see all the rules-obsessed types sit on their hands and say nothing can be done about a violation discovered after the final round, but DQ is totally the right call after the 1st, 2nd or 3rd rounds...

[George Pazin]

Lots going on in that post - seems you're assuming the players always act with integrity, yet the call-ins won't necessarily, sometimes we should follow video, sometimes we shouldn't, etc.

No one that I can see is saying it isn't infinitely preferable to catch the error prior to the player signing his scorecard. But you are not always going to catch everything in a timely fashion. How do you handle it then? I still say the current system works best - accept all evidence, let the chips fall where they may. I'd rather see a few call-in DQs every year than ignore evidence right in front of your eyes.

The analogies to other sports just don't work for me. The only thing that seems to be a common theme is that almost every sport tries hard to get things correct; is availing oneself of video evidence helping golf in that respect? I'd argue yes. Soccer is one notable holdout, as far as I can see with my incredibly limited experience (a handful of games every few years) - the result is there's a bunch of bitter fans out there that see plain evidence ignored. Is that better? Don't know, doesn't seem to be to me.

Is the DQ harsh? Sure. I think it has to be, for many different reasons.

It's agree to disagree time to me. I can't think of any other way to discuss this, so please don't ask me any other questions or quote me to drag me back in...

[Jay Cox]

A question for anyone who sees no problem with how the Harrington situation turned out:
If Harrington had called an official over, what should the result have been? 
I don't think there is a good answer to that question.

(1) Harrington says "I think the ball occilated and ended up back where it started, but I'm not 100% sure."   The official says "I obviously didn't see it either, but if that's what happened, play away with no penalty."  Harrington plays away, and later a TV viewer calls in and says "but the ball didn't end up back where it started."  Then one of two things happens:
-- (a) There is no penalty because calling in the official somehow gives Harrington cover.  I don't understand the theoretical justification for this view, but even if it is justified, as call-in penalties proliferate, this will just encourage players to call officials over all the bloody time, making tournament golf even slower and harder to watch than it already is.
-- (b) There is still a penalty.  I think this is the only coherent answer for a rules absolutist to give - whatever the official says, the official knows he didn't see what happened and the ball still moved - but it leaves open the question, what the hell could Harrington have done?  He did not know that the ball had not ended up back where it started.  I suppose the best thing for him to do would be to assume that the ball moved and that he failed to replace it (because he couldn't replace it, not knowing whether it had moved), assume that he incurred a penatly, count the penalty in his score, and sign for a number which might be too high.  But I doubt anyone really wants to defend that outcome, especially because I imagine that a movement of a few dimples on the green happens far more often than we would guess.

(2) Same as above, except the official instead goes to the TV replay booth to determine whether the ball moved.  Now I at least see a principled basis to say that whatever the official decides should be final, even if a TV viewer sees something different and the official turns out to have been wrong.  But do we really want tournaments to stop for fifteen minutes or more to check something like this?  Isn't slow play a bigger problem for both the success and the integrity of professional tournaments?

On the other hand, I agree with George and others who have said that banning use of video isn't the right way to go.  If the video shows a player violating a rule either without knowing the rule or intentionally with the hope that no one will notice, handing out a penalty after the fact seems like the right way to go -- though I'm still not sure that the DQ rule shouldn't be softened.  The biggest problem for me is when the player does not know the facts about what happened and therefore can't know whether he broke a rule, even if he does know the rule, and where no one else on the scene knows the facts either and so cannot without unreasonable delay confirm for the player what happened.  I just don't think a solution that says "yes, even if it takes an hour, get the video to make sure you get it right, or else risk DQ" is in the game's best interest.

 

[JESII]

I think the idea of calling the official over to "bless" the situation is that they are in fact there to provide a final judgement, of sorts, when rulings are needed. Our rules officials will need to correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe if Harrington had called over his playing partner and an official and explained his side of the story and they both said ok, good enough, play away (regardless of looking at the video) then he wouldn't have had a problem later. I believe that's just a fact.

[Jerry Kluger]

Jim: I thought I was done with this thread but your last post has brought me back.  The facts are the same concerning whether the ball moved or not and whether Harrington was acting in good faith but somehow that's not enough and it must be that some other parties are informed of his good faith belief which somehow makes it okay that he was wrong.  So more than one person has to be wrong in order for the situation to be okay and the player is not DQ'd.  Come on now, you cannot possibly believe that somehow makes sense.  What does the official say to the player for this to work - Do you have any doubt as to whether the ball moved, is it possible that the ball moved, what makes you convinced that the ball didn't move. Give me a break! He didn't believe the ball moved - he was wrong, assess the penalty and move on.

[Mark Pearce]

Jerry,

Your logic is all over the show.  You now want penalties to be assessed where a player has done all he can to comply with the rules  because he isn't able to tell that his ball moves a millimetre?  Sounds like heaven for the TV rules bozos.  Seems to me that in the Harrington situation, if he explains the question to a rules official and that gives him the all clear, that's exactly what you, as a defender of equity, want.  But now you tell us that you positively want even the slightest movement, even if it needs slo-mo to spot it, to be penalised?  I guess I really don't understand where you are coming from.

[Jerry Kluger]

Mark: My point was so long as Harrington acted in good faith the worst that happens is he is assessed the penalty but no DQ and it should not matter if did or did not call over his playing partner or an official. My problem isn't assessing the penalty, even if it is a result of TV, rather it is the DQ after the player did not intentionally violate a rule.

[George Pazin]

Mark: My point was so long as Harrington acted in good faith the worst that happens is he is assessed the penalty but no DQ and it should not matter if did or did not call over his playing partner or an official. My problem isn't assessing the penalty, even if it is a result of TV, rather it is the DQ after the player did not intentionally violate a rule.

And how do you determine he acted in good faith?

If he simply re-marked his ball, that probably would have been evidence enough that he was at least aware that he moved his ball. If he simply called over his playing partner, that probably would have been evidence that he believed the ball had not moved, simply oscillated. If he had called over the official, that probably would have been enough to indicate he was following the rule, in that he believed it was in the same place. No one would likely have even called or emailed if he had done any one of those simple things. Instead, it would seem you would prefer officials become mind readers (how else would someone determine if someone intentionally violated a rule?)

I could live with the additional penalty instead of the DQ - though I prefer the current setup - but really, it seems you want to complete revamp a system that functions effectively the vast vast vast majority of the time.

Sorry I dragged myself back in, I will try to bow out now.

[Jerry Kluger]

George:  We are both trying to get out of this thread but are being drawn back in.  I really don't understand why you can't live with the presumption of honesty on the part of the players. Golf after all is the only sport where there is no referee watching the competitors so how can you begin with a presumption that they are going to cheat if they think they can get away with it?

[George Pazin]

I am presuming neither. I am saying the ruling is based on what happened, as best anyone can determine. There is no implied statement one way or the other regarding player intent. That is equity, not presuming innocence and going from there.

Hopefully we can both bow out soon. I will let you have the last word, if you choose - as long as you don't say something I feel compelled to respond to! Have a nice weekend.

[Jerry Kluger]

George: Harrington came on the broadcast from Dubai last weekend and he was really good - quite candid about the game and even doing a critique of Kaymer's swing.  He's a good guy and I hope he has a good year.  Have a nice weekend.

[JESII]

Jerry,

I would equate the official in golf to the judge and jury in legal matters. Once they've made their decision, that's it...including a modified appeals process.

[Doug Siebert]

George,

Where am I saying to ignore it???  I thought I was clear that someone calls in and its shown he violated a rule add the penalty.  If he's already signed his card, add the penalty rather than DQ.

I don't buy the argument that the lack of DQ hanging over players will encourage cheating as some have suggested.  Today if you deliberately cheat and no one sees it you get off scot free.  If it is seen when it happens the penalty is assessed, if it is seen on TV too late to add to your card you are DQed.  With my rule change its the same except in the last case where the strokes are added rather than being DQed.  I fail to see where this provides a big incentive (or even a small incentive) for anyone to think cheating is worth it.

[Jerry Kluger]

Doug: Brilliant minds think alike - I agree with you 100%.

[Craig Sweet]

Hmmm...isnt it ironic that the same people that argue that technology is ruining the game...and is contrary to the "spirit of the game" ( range finders, carts, modern balls and clubs) are now arguing that the technology that allows someone sitting at home watching on TV to call a penelty on a player 1000 miles away, is good for the game and keeping with the "spirit of the game".

[Matt Schmidt]

A player's judgment as to the facts of what has occurred is used in many rules situations.  I don't see why this situation should be any different.

With that said, I'm not comfortable ignoring solid evidence of what actually happened.  I think doing so would cast doubt over the tournament (and maybe the player and the game a bit).  So if it subsequently is proven that a player is wrong as to a fact, assess him a penalty but no DQ.  A simple penalty whenever an error of fact is demonstrated - no need to try and determine the severity of the breach, or the player's intentions, or if any advantage was gained, and no need to be too harsh over an error of fact. 

Harrington was wrong as to the fact of whether his ball moved.  We don't need to examine his intentions or anything else (if he intended to move the ball but did not in fact move it, there would be no penalty - a player's intent is not relevant to this rule).  Only his understanding of the facts is needed.  Now if Harrington had known his ball moved but thought that he didn't have to replace it, then a DQ is fine.  In that case, he would be correct as to the facts, but not the rule.  I'm not willing to excuse or encourage ignorance of the rules, however convoluted they may be. 

As another example, Villegas was not wrong on any facts - he knew he moved the divot, he didn't realize he violated a rule.  Again, I think the DQ is fine.

For those that think players will just lie as to the facts, I say you might be right in some instances.  But I don't think that will happen in many instances - being labeled a cheat is like a death sentence to these guys.  And judgment in the court of public opinion is a pretty powerful deterrent.

[Padraig Dooley]

I don't really want to comment on this thread again. However a couple of pieces of information from the past week.

Grant Moir who is in the R&A Rules Department has said the R&A are looking at this case and they are considering amending the DQ in cases like this one, where the 2 shot penalty for playing the from the wrong position could be applied after the card has been signed and an additional 2 shot penalty for signing for a lower score, giving a 4 shot penalty in total. This could work, obviously the R&A will look at it in much more detail to see if any complications might arise.

Secondly, I couldn't fully understand why Harrington didn't point out the infraction to his marker or an official, so I asked a couple of guys who were over in Abu Dhabi, one of whom was involved. Harrington uses a line on the ball to line up his putts. In his experience when a ball is placed it's normally in a small depression, when a ball is disturbed and moves, it normally returns to the depression and the line on the ball seemed to not have moved from where he placed it. So he didn't call anybody over, but he had no problem accepting the ruling when the evidence was shown to him.

[JESII]

Hmmm...isnt it ironic that the same people that argue that technology is ruining the game...and is contrary to the "spirit of the game" ( range finders, carts, modern balls and clubs) are now arguing that the technology that allows someone sitting at home watching on TV to call a penelty on a player 1000 miles away, is good for the game and keeping with the "spirit of the game".

Who?