Hi RM and all...
Thank god for that unanimity... I rarely subscribe to the mob majority's justice on social media, but it was the equivalent of a chorus of "Shame" ringing on in the House of Parliament. Hope the USGA understands the larger issue...
I'll nutshell it here as opposed to any of the several other threads...
1. To me, USGA had their day in court when the official was called over on the 5th green. As we can plainly see, DJ had no reason to believe he caused the ball to move...official affirmed his version...made him play from "new" spot, un-"replaced."
2. Once that ruling is made, and he doesn't play from a replaced spot, their day in court is over. To later say he may have "caused" it, means that he didn't in fact play from the corrected spot, and with the same technical ferocity with which the whole matter was conjured up by them, the competition is compromised, as we would then have one competitor who did not play under the rules the others had.
3. In the same spirit I am dissapointed that the USGA didn't rule - one way or the other - on the 12th tee. I can understand an hour and 45 to notice, it, determine it, decide how they will handle it. But the only way they should have gone to the 12th tee is to announce a penalty. Otherwise, keep your mouth shut...the case was judged already on the green. If they had a stated mechanism for handling it on the 5th green (..."OK Dustin, you feel you didn't cause it to move...we must look at it on video...and may determine you DID cause it...so play from the "new" spot, but realize there could be an additional shot)... Without such a mechanism, they are all done with the official's on-site review...
4. I'm less critical of the "How do we tell the field?" part, because they did not operate out malice, but of missteps from the original theater. There may be future un-experienced events which may come up, whereby this communication procedure would be deemed reasonable on many of our parts.
5. Lastly, the issue in the modern experience and recent revision of the applicable rule:
Under which discretion and what conditions can a player - beyond his say-so - be deemed to have caused/not caused a ball to move, when he did visibly did not touch the ball?
There was some snickering about shadow-casts, but that's actually the one I think about most; if one's shadow is across the ball at address, under these razor-edge, lo-fiction surface-environments, the micro-area under/around the ball can certainly move enough to cause a 1/8th revolution turn...If the mere address of a ball can cause this, what should a player do...take an unplayable lie?
And of course there are these conditions...it's gotten ridiculous now.
cheers
vk