USA TODAY International Edition
Backstopping’s rise drives at golf’s integrity
Golf has an integrity problem and doesn’t even know it.
Look at the blissful ignorance of fistbumpers Amy Olson and Ariya Jutanugarn after colluding at the Honda LPGA Thailand. Jutanugarn pitched close to the hole from just off the 18th green, prepared to go mark or tap in, but looked at Olson. The world No. 1 put on the brakes upon getting a signal of some sort from Olson that she was ready to play with Jutanugarn’s ball resting by the hole and she agreed to leave it there.
You know, because it’s the last green and Olson has things to do and places to be.
The balls collided and Olson’s lousy chip went from 15-20 feet by to 3 feet from the hole. Birdie.
As past backstopping incidents have all made clear, pro golfers are rarely in a hurry except when one of their peers leaves a shiny white ball somewhere around the hole.
Then they turn into Lanny Wadkins. After all, they’re just trying to grow the game by playing faster. When it suits their needs.
Olson’s birdie off the back of Jutanugarn’s ball allowed her to move within two strokes of the lead.
The incident is a breach of rule 15.3/1, where beefed-up language in golf ’s new rules addressed backstopping with a two-stroke penalty option.
The key language appears written for just the LPGA duo:
In stroke play, under Rule 15.3a, if two or more players agree to leave a ball in place on the putting green to help any player, and the stroke is made with the helping ball left in place, each player who made the agreement gets two penalty strokes. A breach of Rule 15.3a does not depend on whether the players know that such an agreement is not allowed. There is also a clause for disqualification if the players knew this was a nono,
something any pro golfer should know by now.
(The LPGA in a statement late Friday said the two would not be penalized: “There was no agreement by either player to leave Jutanugarn’s ball in place to help Olson’s next stroke. An LPGA Rules Official was approaching the 18th green at the time and agreed that no breach had occurred.”)
Backstopping exemplifies the most subtle and peculiar of efforts by professional golfers to circumvent the Rules of Golf and to be part of a mysterious club. Those who don’t comply are outsiders.
The governing bodies have refused to make an example of a backstopper but at least provided the beefed-up new rules language.
Why have the United States Golf Association and R&A, sensing the views of the tours that this is not a big deal, refused to call out this bro-culture behavior. Perhaps they don’t want to be seen as uptight? Or maybe their leadership, made up of country club, old boys network types, quietly relate to the clubby collusion seen in backstopping?
Backstopping started years ago at Riviera Country Club’s par-4 10th hole. The tiny green had its fringes lowered and players found themselves playing from greenside bunker to bunker. Out of empathy or time concerns, PGA Tour players started leaving balls in the vicinity of, but never in front of the hole.
The practice eventually started happening on other holes with a few highprofile examples, most notably Tony Finau rushing to hit a buried lie bunker shot that successfully hit a ball, stopped closer to the hole and saved him a stroke that cost Chesson Hadley and Phil Mickelson six figures in the 2017 Safeway Open. The practice should have come to an end in June 2018 when 2017 PGA champion Jimmy Walker admitted to leaving his ball down as a backstop for players he likes and thinking nothing was untoward about that.
Sponsors have long been attracted to professional golfers because they are seen as the sporting world’s most honorable athletes.
They called penalties on themselves and act horrified if there was even a sense they escaped penalty for a violation. Professional athletes in other sports are expected to lie and whine when questioning a call. We snicker when they do. But in golf, backstopping is the first practice that brings golf below other sports because it’s an actual form of collusion with the competition greeted with a “mind your own business” attitude.
With legalized gambling around the corner, the willingness of tour executives to allow the behavior to continue has been mystifying.
The day even a minority of fans think the fix is in and the players are working together instead of competing, they’ll change the dial. The corporate dollars will go elsewhere if the competition seems perversely rigged. And all because a few people once refused to tell some pro golfers to cut it out and go mark their ball.