Li Haotong is first victim of new rules

GOLF’S new rules introduced on January 1 have already claimed their first victim with China’s Li Haotong handed a two-stroke penalty for a breach of Rule 10.2b (4) at the recent Dubai Desert Classic.

The rule states that when a player begins taking a stance for the stroke and until the stroke is made, the player’s caddie must not deliberately stand in a location on or close to an extension of the line of play behind the ball for any reason and if the player takes a stance in breach of this Rule, he or she cannot avoid penalty by backing away. The exception being, when the player’s ball is on the putting green, there is no penalty under this Rule if the player backs away from the stance and does not begin to take the stance again until after the caddie has moved out of that location.

Li’s caddie was in a direct line behind the ball when he began to take his stance on the 18th green and the player was penalised two strokes, as he fell from tied third to tied 12th costing him in the region of €100,000.

There were protests on social media from several well-known names in golf including our own Paul McGinley and Graeme McDowell, while European Tour CEO Keith Pelley had his say as well.

However, at the end of the day, Li broke the rules and was penalised, end of, and I find it hard to feel sorry for him because rules are rules and there are there for everyone, including the professionals.

McGinley called for players to be given the benefit of the doubt over something while McDowell said he could see “no evidence” of an attempt to line up the player.

Pelley’s stated that while decision made by the referee was correct, under the strict wording of the rules,, he also felt that the problem is with the wording of the rule, which leaves tour rules officials with no wriggle room when a caddie is behind a player as he begins to take his stance, leaving him liable to a penalty.

I’m going to claim the high moral ground here and say that there is no benefit of the doubt, the rules are black and white and when they’re broken a player must be penalised.

Golf is littered with stories about players losing out on titles because of breaches of the rules and arguably one of the most famous is Ian Woosnam at the 2001 Open championship at Royal Lytham St Annes.

Welshman “Woosie” was tied for the lead after three rounds and following an opening birdie at the first hole in round four he maintained that lead, but his Irish caddie Miles Byrne, came bearing bad news at the second tee after discovering that there were two drivers in the bag which exceed the fourteen club limit and incurred a two shot penalty that effectively ended Woosnam’s challenge and the title was won by David Duval.

We’ll never know if Woosnam would have gone on to win the title that year had he not mistakenly had fifteen clubs in his bag but at the end of the day he broke the rules and paid for it.

Bob Goalby is name that might not be familiar to many of our younger readers but he played Christy O’Connor in a head to head at Ballybunion as part of Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf TV series in 1970, and was probably one of the first American golfers I had ever heard of.

Two years earlier Goalby became Masters Champion because of a breach of rules by fellow player Roberto DeVincenzo from Argentina.

The pair were tied for the lead after 72 holes of regulation play, which would have resulted in a playoff were it not for the fact that there was a mistake on the Argentinian’s scorecard.

DeVicenzo’s playing part- ner Tommy Aaron marked down a par-4 on the 17th hole, when DeVicenzo had in fact made a birdie-3 and DeVicenzo failed to spot the mistake and signed the scorecard.

The rules of golf stated that the higher written score signed by a golfer on his card must stand and as such, the error gave Goalby the title.

Although he was not personally at fault for the incident, Goalby’s title was not well received by some and he actually received several death threats in the following week. DeVincenzo accepted his fate without question and he and Goalby remained firm firms for the rest of their lives.

You would like to think that with communications networks and television refereeing, that such an incident would not happen in today’s world, but at the end of the day, the rules are the rules and must be obeyed, no matter what hard luck story is told.