Duffy's raw deal

It's a shame nitpicking had to ruin Waldorf's final round

POTOMAC, Md. -- The holy rules of golf were applied Sunday at the FBR Capital Open. But what about justice? What about equity? What about fairness?

Sorry, those are moot points. Anyone who plays the game already knows that golf isn’t fair and wasn’t meant to be. Still, the two-shot penalty that was handed down to Duffy Waldorf in Monday’s final round -- another one of those annoying call-ins from a TV viewer, by the way -- didn’t go down well. Just about anyone who saw what happened reacted the same way: “Duffy got a penalty for that?”

Mark Russell and a committee of PGA Tour rules officials viewed videotape of Waldorf’s actions at the 12th hole, where he tamped down a ballmark in the fairway, about three feet away from his ball (according to the Duffster), before he played his second shot. Rule 13-2 was invoked, which involves a player eliminating a surface irregularity deemed to be in his line of play.

“Once I looked at it, I couldn’t think of a way to get him out of it,” said a sympathetic Russell. “Duffy just made a mistake.”

Waldorf, after watching the video, disagreed. The mark was well to the right of his intended line of play to the green (he was 210 yards out), he said.

“After I saw it on tape, I don’t think I did something wrong,” Waldorf said. “They didn’t agree. We don’t have a rules lawyer out here who can defend us. Maybe we need one.”

While it would be difficult to say that a controversial penalty cost Waldorf the tournament, since Rory Sabbatini bogeyed the final two holes and still won by two strokes, there is no disputing that it was a factor down the stretch. After Waldorf was informed of a possible two-shot infraction as he walked off the 16th tee trailing by two, he played a poor second shot and made a quick bogey that ended his chances.

Waldorf bogeyed the 18th also and finished in a three-way tie for second, winning $336,000 -- $150,000 less than he would have earned for finishing second by himself without the penalty. It also cost him a small handful of Ryder Cup and President’s Cup points, but probably not enough to matter if he’s lucky. And if Monday is any indication, he isn’t.

Waldorf didn’t get a bad ruling; he got a harsh interpretation. The gray area of this rule is the part about the line of play and whether it's within a reasonable distance on either side of the intended line of play. What’s a reasonable distance? Russell couldn’t answer that, but he said the committee ruled that Waldorf’s tamp-down was within a reasonable distance.

There was the out that Russell and the rules guys didn’t take. If you watched Curtis Strange draw a telestrator line on the screen showing where Waldorf’s line of play to the green was, the mark Waldorf fixed was well to the right.

Exactly how was that spot, which Waldorf absentmindedly fixed after a cart drove by and interrupted his routine, going to have any effect on his next shot? It wasn’t. Therefore, it wasn’t within a reasonable distance of Waldorf’s line, in my opinion. To add to the absurdity, the heavy rains that washed out Saturday’s play and forced this unhappy Monday finish meant the players were using the lift-clean-and-place rule. So Waldorf had already lifted, cleaned and placed his ball, getting as good a lie as he was going to get.

The rule isn’t about intent. Waldorf clearly had no intention of improving his lie or his shot. He likened his action to a baseball player stepping out of the box between pitches and knocking the dirt off his spikes with the bat. Had the cart not gone by and disturbed him, he would’ve played the shot without fixing the ball mark. It’s too bad a dose of common sense couldn’t be applied.

This all comes down to one simple thing: What is within a reasonable distance of a player’s intended line? Six inches? A foot? Two feet? Where do you draw the line? Where I draw it and where Duffy draws it are a lot closer to the intended line, apparently, than where the rules committee draws it. If Waldorf were going to putt over the mark, that would be a different story.

The incident draws two other questions into play, too. When do you tell a player he may have committed a rules infraction? Waldorf’s bogey at the 16th was an obvious reaction to his being blindsided by a potential penalty that, at the time, ended his chances of winning, leaving him four back with three holes left. Should the officials have waited until after it was over to inform Waldorf, go to the ABC truck and watch the replays? In this case, with the tournament’s outcome on the line, officials rightly decided to tell Waldorf as soon as they were aware of the problem. Knowing he might be four behind instead of two certainly could alter his strategy on the last few holes. “It’s not any fun,” said Russell about having to inform Waldorf. “It’s a horrible situation.”

The second question is why golf fans watching on TV are allowed to affect play by calling in possible penalties. This first became a hot topic in the early '90s, when Paul Azinger was seen kicking a rock away while he assumed his stance in a hazard at Doral. The ensuing controversy led the tour to experiment with an instant-replay official, which just made things worse when Tom Kite had a disagreement with a replay official about where his errant shot crossed the hazard.

There is also inequity in the TV thing. Marquee players draw more TV time and thus are under more scrutiny. The same is true of players in contention. And then there’s the final-round cutoff. Once the last scorecard is signed in a tournament, all scores are official. A player can be DQ’d Sunday morning for a mistake from Thursday's round, but five minutes after the tourney is over, he’s safe.

It added up to a weird ending for a wet and wild tournament. I asked Russell about the last time he recalled having to make a similar ruling. He couldn’t come up with one, although he did remember a penalty on Tom Weiskopf for, as we remember, walking through a greenside bunker to get a look at the green before he played a pitch shot over it, and his caddie raking the bunker before Weiskopf played the shot.

Is there a moral to this story? No, other than know the rules, even the obscure ones. And when in doubt, don’t touch anything before playing a shot. Maybe, from a purist’s standpoint, Waldorf got what he deserved. But did he get justice? I don’t think so.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Gary Van Sickle writes for the magazine's Golf Plus section and is a regular contributor to SI.com.

 

Related information

Stories

Gary Van Sickle's Underground Golfer: Top 10 contenders for U.S. Open Sabbatini holds off Waldorf to win Capital Open Gary Van Sickle's Underground Golfer Archive Capital Open cumulative course statistics

Multimedia

Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video