Time to limit armchair officials
Thompson fiasco is a lesson learned
RANCHO MIRAGE, CALIF. Once again, golf looked silly on Sunday at a major championship. What do the rules fiascoes of Oakmont, CordeValle and Mission Hills have in common? Terrible timing. Yes, Lexi Thompson broke Rule 20-7c and Rule 6-6d in the ANA Inspiration. Yes, the LPGA carried out the necessary penalty strokes according to USGA rules and tour regulations.
But changes must be made going forward.
The rules-makers of this ancient game could not have foreseen a time when HD television and a DVR would enable someone to rewind and dissect a splitsecond of action from his or her living room hours, even days, after the incident occurred.
Two-time major winner Stacy Lewis offered a solution: Restrict the amount of time viewers can call or email concerns.
“Once the next round starts, the previous round should be ‘closed,’ ” Lewis said in a text.
Those who want to weigh in with rules questions need to do so while the action is live.
Under the current rules, had someone emailed about Thompson’s Saturday infraction Monday, it would have been too late. The competition would have been considered closed.
The LPGA should take that same concept and apply it to each round. That would eliminate the kind of four-stroke fiasco Thompson experienced for a 1-inch mistake on a 1-foot putt.
LPGA veteran Angela Stanford agrees with Lewis. “It’s the only sport that this is allowed,” she said. “Needs to be changed.”
LPGA Hall of Famer Karrie Webb called for the USGA to eliminate call-ins altogether. “We have policed ourselves for 200+ years,” she tweeted. “No need for call ins!”
Thomas Pagel, senior director of Rules of Golf and Amateur Status for the USGA, told Golfweek the organization is not considering such a ban.
“The Rules of Golf are issued based on facts and evidence presented to the committee,” Pagel wrote in an email. “They review all sources. To not address evidence presented through video would mean the Rules would not be applied in full.”
There is a bit of good news, however, going forward. Under the rules modernization initiative there would be a new standard in 2019 for the committee to apply in a situation like this.
Pagel said the USGA and R&A have been discussing the use of video evidence and have developed a new standard to limit its use when a player is estimating or measuring a spot, point, line, area or distance.
While that might have helped Thompson’s cause, it still doesn’t address the issue of timing.
Gary Player likened it to a football game.
“Could you imagine somebody calling in after the second quarter and saying, you know, I saw something in the first quarter,” Player said. “They’d laugh at them …
“In golf, this is the crux of the matter. Out of a field of 70 that qualify (for the weekend), how many are being scrutinized by television. Maybe 12? Fifteen? So 15 are in this category, and all the rest are not. Is that equity? No, there’s no equity, and we’re always trying to have equity. That should be scrapped.”
Common sense, he said, did not prevail here.
Bad calls happen in sports. Golf is a game, not a perfect science. If players, caddies, tour officials and armchair officials watching a live round miss an infraction, the integrity of the game is not lost. It’s simply played by imperfect humans.
“I cannot think of anything more sad that what happened to her,” Player said.
Which is why it shouldn’t happen again.