OBSERVATIONS ON THE 2013 MASTERS AND GOLF RULES

The 2013 Masters at Augusta was marred on Friday when, Tiger Woods' approach shot to the 15th hit the pin hard, rattled it, ricocheted backward and bounced off the green into a water hazard. Tiger had the right to retrieve his ball, take a penalty-stroke and move back along the line of where the ball entered the water (as far back as he wanted) to take his drop. But as he stated on TV, he looked over the area near the water hazard and decided "it was too wet". Tiger chose instead to go back to the fairway and (Rule 26-1) take a drop from where he hit the errant approach shot. He did, hitting a fine shot up to within three feet of the pin and sunk the hole for a bogey.

An astute observer watching the events at home on TV noted that Tiger had not dropped his ball as close to his "original stroke position as possible", as the Rules of Golf require and texted that information to the Rules Committee. After the game that day, Tiger, still unaware of the text message and the brewing controversy, was interviewed on TV and admitted over the air that he "moved the ball back two yards to take a few yards off the ball". It tells one how Tiger's mind works. Tiger realized it was to his advantage to take his drop and the "replay approach" shot from a position where he knew exactly how far the shot would go, rather than the spot near the water hazard. In fact, he calculated he had to "take a few yards off the shot" to get it up close. Too bad, but that's not exactly how the game is played.

The event seem to underscore that it now unfortunately appears to many fans that there two sets of rules. Tiger's rules and those for the rest of the field. Tiger, must have ( or should have) clearly known he was taking unfair advantage when he decided to "take some yardage off that shot" and took his drop two yards behind his divot (more than the "several feet" the New York Times politely reports). The speed which Tiger's first ball hit the pin (about 1/3 way up from the ground) indicated that had it not hit the pin, it would have flown well over the back side of the green. There must have been a host of players that day who would have been overjoyed to have an opportunity to take a replay shot after they sent "air mail" over the pin. Tiger, the big draw and No 1 player, signed his card that day and got away without a "DQ" or disqualification. But the 14 year old Chinese youngster, Tianlang Guan, "a nobody" to the Rules Committee, was penalized with a penalty stroke, when he took too much time wringing out his golf glove and changing clubs in the rain. Taking too much time and making a concertina out of the foursomes who follow is a common problem at the Masters, but young Mister Guan was the first ever to be assessed a penalty stroke. The Rules Committee has to do better than this. It's main objective should be to maintain the integrity of the world's greatest game, and must at a minimum, sustain the public perception that the deck is not stacked in favor of the big guys who draw the crowds, money and TV cameras like Tiger. Admittedly, it would have been difficult to DQ Tiger, but that's what the rules are for are they not? But letting Tiger slip by and slapping young Guan was too much for some of us to swallow without comment. Some seem to suggest that the Rules Committee members may need a belly putter stuck up their collective backsides to give them some semblance of a spine.

This is one of the many historic events in a Masters, the kind of things fans remember. It may well hang around to haunt Tiger in the future. What I was hoping to see from him was a self-imposed DQ. It would have been the elegant thing to do and would have changed the public"s perception of this great golfer and perhaps even give him a career lift. Remember Bobby Jones who called a penalty on himself in the 1925 match against Walter Hagen? But then, again Bobby was an amateur, and that was a long, long time ago, and far, far away.

Get the picture?

rjk