RULES Starting times

When they say that timing is everything in golf, usually people are talking about things like swing tempo. But during round two of the Valspar Championship in late April, Jimmy Walker found out the hard way that not paying close enough attention to the actual time can also be quite costly, as Chris Wallace, Rules manager at The R&A, explains.

Walker was due to tee off on the 1st at 7.39am on Friday morning, but only minutes before his start time was still nowhere to be seen. A Rules official finally tracked him down still hitting balls on the range and informed him that he had only one minute to get to the tee.

Exactly why Walker was running late wasn’t made clear, but despite a quick sprint to the teeing area, he was still unable to make it for his 7.39am start time.

As a result of arriving at the tee late for his official time, he was assessed a two-shot penalty under Rule 5.3a, which states that a player must start at (and not before) his or her starting time. This means that the player must be ready to play at the starting time and starting point which is set by the Committee.

The official starting time set by the Committee is treated as an exact time, so, in this case, a 7.39am starting time meant 7.39:00am, not any time until 7.40am.

Under Rule 5.3a, if a player fails to arrive at the tee on time, they are potentially subject to a penalty of disqualification, with some exceptions. If a player arrives at their starting point, ready to play, no more than five minutes late for their tee time, they simply get the general penalty (two strokes) applied to their first hole, as was the case with Walker. Similarly, if a player starts no more than five minutes early, the same general penalty is applied to his or her first hole.

The only exception which does not result in a penalty is where the committee decides that exceptional circumstances have prevented a player from starting on time (such as a player being present at the scene of a traffic accident). In such situations, there is no breach of this Rule and no penalty if a player misses his or her tee time. However, the term ‘exceptional circumstances’ does not simply mean unfortunate or unexpected events that are outside a player’s control.

For Walker, whose late arrival wasn’t deemed exceptional, the two-stroke penalty resulted in his opening par becoming a double bogey, fortunately just enough for him to still make the cut on the number.