The Bobcat Nation

2 stroke penalty for an illegal drop. I am with Faldo on this one. He should take himself out of the tournament, do the manly thing.
He signed an incorrect scorecard. Let the debate begin.

What do the rules say?

So far it looks like the Masters tournament is making it's own rules.

Whatever happens I am pulling for Boom Boom, go Fred!

they adjusted the rules two years ago for situations like this and faldo apparently doesn't understand. rules commitee is allowed to alter scores after the round without the player being disqualified for signing an incorrect card. they simply have to do this now because in the tv era...it's too easy for fans to call in and impact the game. the rule was correct and tiger should have been assessed a penalty. but they did away with the automatic DQ for these circumstances a couple summers ago.

tiger should take his 2 stroke penalty and try to win this damn thing. that would be a story!

Faldo understands the rules, he was stating his opinion, which I agree with. Woods has been assesed a two stroke penalty. Woods gets to keep his starting tee time, even though he is now 5 strokes back, not three. Moving day at the Woodsmasters tournament should be interesting to say the least.

Bobcatsinmso wrote:Faldo understands the rules, he was stating his opinion, which I agree with. Woods has been assesed a two stroke penalty. Woods gets to keep his starting tee time, even though he is now 5 strokes back, not three. Moving day at the Woodsmasters tournament should be interesting to say the least.

i'm just saying there is no reason to WD because they changed the rule two years ago. in situations like these you ar not DQ'd for signing an incorrect card. that rule was always ridiculous so they changed it. he was assessed a two stroke penalty which was the right call but there is no reason for him to quit playing. otherwise they shouldn't have changed the rule.

i'm way more annoyed about fans being able to call in an impact the game. can you imagine if other sports did that?! you see a guy get fouled in the final four so you can make a phone call and he gets awarded free throws that win the game?! it's a joke. frankly, there needs to be a rules official with every single group and they need to know the rules top to bottom and assess penalties when they happen. if the rules officials didn't catch it....the experts didn't catch it...the player didn't catch it...then move on.

and how about this. after the initial call from the first fan the rules commitee actually looked at the tape and STILL determined no infraction occured. then a second call came in and they looked at it again and this time decided an infraction DID occur. fair enough. right call. but you are no longer DQ'd for signing a wrong card every time so there is no reason whatsoever for him to just withdraw.

and my comment about faldo wasn't meant to be snotty. it's just the truth. if he really knew all of the rules than he would have noticed as soon as tiger dropped. if he saw it, knew the rules, knew the infraction, and didn't tell anybody than he is just as guilty. my guess is he didn't know an infraction happened because he doesn't know every single one of the thousands of petty rules in the game of golf.

this whole thing is stupid. sorry for the venting. i just love golf and crap like this drives me crazy about an otherwise flawless game.

Two stroke penalty is plenty. Why should he withdraw?? It's not like he has some advantage now due to the penalty!

I saw the replay, but haven't followed much of the commentary on this. Was Tiger intentionally breaking a rule to gain an advantage? Did his caddy screw up? Did the announcers notice the rule infraction right away? Did the rules officials not notice immediately?

I'm not fired up one way or the other, but it makes for some nice drama.

wbtfg wrote:I saw the replay, but haven't followed much of the commentary on this. Was Tiger intentionally breaking a rule to gain an advantage? Did his caddy screw up? Did the announcers notice the rule infraction right away? Did the rules officials not notice immediately?

I'm not fired up one way or the other, but it makes for some nice drama.

ya he said he dropped further behind intentionally. in many areas on the course you can do that. he definitely broke a rule and obviously he wouldn't have done that intentionally had he known it was a 2 stroke penalty. the only real drama is if he should be DQ'd for signing an incorrect card but as i pointed out...they changed parts of that rule two summers ago. now if the rules committee looks over tape and determines a stroke should be added or subtracted a player is no longer automatically DQ'd. in this case tiger was correctly assessed a penalty, correctly wasn't DQ'd due to a new rule change, and correctly didn't just stop playing.

another thing that drives me crazy about crap like this is tiger is at a HUGE disadvantage than anyone else. every move he makes is on tv. how many shots do you see of tigers compared to how many shots you've seen of freddie jacobson. they need to eliminate people being able to call in with rules infractions and they need to do what every other major does and put a rules official with every single group. and then they need to accept that this will slow down the game because players are going to be asking these officials a ton of questions before every questionable decision in order to make sure this nonsense doesn't keep happening. just silly

Who are these fans that call in? Can anyone call in and they would listen to them? Plus, like Bubba said, how do they even known what number to call? Man some people have a lot of time on their hands


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wbtfg wrote:I saw the replay, but haven't followed much of the commentary on this. Was Tiger intentionally breaking a rule to gain an advantage? Did his caddy screw up? Did the announcers notice the rule infraction right away? Did the rules officials not notice immediately?

I'm not fired up one way or the other, but it makes for some nice drama.

I think he was ignorant of this particular rule, but not intentionally trying to cheat. These guys are so dialed in that he doesn't have to stand over an 86-yard shot and try to "feel" how hard to hit it, which is what an amateur would do. He knows exactly to the yard how far the ball will go with a 3/4 swing, or 1/2 swing depending on how far he follows through. These guys have tables set up for each of their wedges based on how much they're choking up, how far they take it back, and how far they follow through. He knows to the yard how far a 3/4 wedge choked up one inch will carry. He can make his pitching wedge the equivalent of about nine different clubs. Seriously.

He incriminated himself during his interview when he said he needed a few more feet of distance, which was why he dropped his ball not in the exact same spot. What happened when he did that? His distance wound up being a few feet off like he knew it would.

Again, I don't think he was trying to cheat but his interview was tantamount to an admission of an advantage. I expected him to know this rule.

I read it was a friend of a PGA official who started the whole thing with a text message.

I've seen photos that seem to show he was almost in the same place. And video to counter that.

A lesser-known player wouldn't have been noticed because they wouldn't have been on some guy's DVR replay.

How would dropping behind his first lie be an advantage?

I am glad the leaders didn't come in at -7 or this would have been a mess.

Now, can the PGA do something about those silly long putters?

webdav wrote:I read it was a friend of a PGA official who started the whole thing with a text message.

I've seen photos that seem to show he was almost in the same place. And video to counter that.

A lesser-known player wouldn't have been noticed because they wouldn't have been on some guy's DVR replay.

How would dropping behind his first lie be an advantage?

I am glad the leaders didn't come in at -7 or this would have been a mess.
Now, can the PGA do something about those silly long putters?

Talk about a game of inches. He hit an almost perfect shot (you might even say that it was too perfect), that if it was a franction of an inch off line, it likely would have led to a birdie, rather than the bogie that he actually took on that hole. Then you add on the subsequent 2-stroke penalty, and that one "too perfect" shot probably cost hime four strokes, which is precisely how far he finished behind Scott and Cabrera.

webdav wrote: How would dropping behind his first lie be an advantage?

Watch the next shot he hit and you will see the advantange. He hit the flagstick about halfway up on the first one. He openly admitted in the interview he dropped about two yards back so that it would be just right, and distance wise it was. You know that PGA slogan "These guys are good?" That isn't just marketing speak. For 99.9% of the golfing world dropping two yards back wouldn't make a lick of difference, for those guys as seen here it can mean everything.

webdav wrote:Now, can the PGA do something about those silly long putters?

The USGA is trying to, kind of anyway, though it is meeting with a lot of opposition particularly from the PGA. The USGA and the R&A in Europe are the bodies that make the rules of golf that the PGA and all golfers follow. There is a proposed ban on "anchored" putting that would potentially go into effect in 2016 if they follow through. It wouldn't limit the length of the putter, but it would make illegal the anchoring of the end of the putter against any part of the body, i.e. the stomach or chest. Adam Scott could continue using the long putter, but he would have to quit putting the end of it against his chest. For the most part if this went through it would kill off the longer putters, both belly and long putters, as the anchoring is the major draw to try and keep the putter more steady throughout the swing. Some players have used the long putters without the anchoring portion so they won't completely disappear but the number of them you saw, especially on tour, would be very minimal. You would probably still see some on the Senior Tour, as that method has more of a history with golfers that are getting older.

Cledus wrote:

wbtfg wrote:I saw the replay, but haven't followed much of the commentary on this. Was Tiger intentionally breaking a rule to gain an advantage? Did his caddy screw up? Did the announcers notice the rule infraction right away? Did the rules officials not notice immediately?

I'm not fired up one way or the other, but it makes for some nice drama.

I think he was ignorant of this particular rule, but not intentionally trying to cheat. These guys are so dialed in that he doesn't have to stand over an 86-yard shot and try to "feel" how hard to hit it, which is what an amateur would do. He knows exactly to the yard how far the ball will go with a 3/4 swing, or 1/2 swing depending on how far he follows through. These guys have tables set up for each of their wedges based on how much they're choking up, how far they take it back, and how far they follow through. He knows to the yard how far a 3/4 wedge choked up one inch will carry. He can make his pitching wedge the equivalent of about nine different clubs. Seriously.

He incriminated himself during his interview when he said he needed a few more feet of distance, which was why he dropped his ball not in the exact same spot. What happened when he did that? His distance wound up being a few feet off like he knew it would.

Again, I don't think he was trying to cheat but his interview was tantamount to an admission of an advantage. I expected him to know this rule.

Of course he wasn't intentionally trying to cheat. Why would Tiger, or any other sane person, admit to what he did, if he knew it was a violation of the rules? Whether or not he should have known the rule may be open to debate, but not his intentions.

well it seems like this is news again. new tourney...same situation. tiger unknowingly breaks a rule. it's called in and relayed through about 5 people before he finds out about it just before signing his card. he gets pissed. punches a wall. everyone talks about it all week.

here's my take for what it's worth. tiger gets absolutely screwed in these situations. everyone in the golf world knows he didn't do anything to intentionally cheat. no players do that. but it's not even close to being fair when one guy has every single second of his round being filmed and there are other players in the field that you didn't even know were playing cause they're not on tv once.

think about the thousands of golf shots and other situations that take place in one weekend tourney. hundreds of shots being played off the fairway, in between trees, terrible lies etc. do you really think tiger is just the only unlucky player that this stuff happens to? not a chance!

in my opinion they simply need to do away with fans being able to call in penalties from home after watching on tv. this way guys who are on tv every second have the same chances as those who rarely get filmed at all. it's ridiculous.

So you are saying its because he black that he get treated this way?

AlphaGriz1 wrote:So you are saying its because he black that he get treated this way?

yes

I thought so.