Should players be DQ'd for penalties assessed after they sign their scorecard?

I don't like the idea that a player is disqualified for any penalty assessed to them after they've turned in their scorecard. Players are responsible for enforcing their own penalties, but then they're [i]audited[/i] and, if they fail an audit that could cover any of their steps on the entire golf course, they're disqualified. That seems half-hearted to me. If there is a rules-governing body that takes responsibility for auditing the players, they should not lay the entire weight of the enforcing rules on the players' shoulders and then punish them with disqualification for not doing so properly. I agree that penalties should be considered and added post-round. I agree that obviously fraudulent scorecards should result in disqualification. But if a mistake is made and NOT addressed with the player prior to signing his scorecard, IMO, the player should be confronted with it later. If it is open-season for others to spot mistakes and penalize a player, then it should be open-season for the player to do so as well. If he's responsible for his score, he shouldn't have a smaller window of opportunity to address potential mistakes than everyone else does. If he can be consulted with before turning in his scorecard (like DJ at Whistling Straits), he should be consulted after he's turned it in. What it comes down to is a player making one mistake that has a pre-defined penalty, not catching it, and being disqualified from the entire tournament. That has nothing to do with their ability to score a game of golf and it doesn't benefit the tournament in any way. Perhaps it should result in a steeper penalty (eg, an extra two strokes for a penalty assessed after the scorecard was turned in), but not disqualification. (This has nothing to do with whether fans should be allowed to influence rules decisions post-round. Don't bring that up.)

[quote=iacas]There's no rules governing body taking responsibility for auditing players.[/quote] If a player can have his scorecard disqualified for being inaccurate, then someone is in the position of the auditor. They may be a passive auditor, but they're an auditor nonetheless. [quote=iacas]The players are responsible for playing under the Rules of Golf. It's right there in Rule 1-1 and elsewhere: Golf is played, for the most part, without the supervision of a referee or umpire. The game relies on the integrity of the individual to show consideration for other players and to abide by the Rules. All players should conduct themselves in a disciplined manner, demonstrating courtesy and sportsmanship at all times, irrespective of how competitive they may be. This is the spirit of the game of golf.[/quote] I agree, but rules are frequently broken and there are penalties for doing so. Merely breaking a rule is usually not grounds for disqualification. [quote=iacas]And what's an "obviously fraudulent" scorecard, anyway? One in which the pro claims ignorance? Cuz if that's the case, we'd see a lot more ignorant pros than we do now if it's that easy to try to get away with anything.[/quote] The rules already allow for the intention of a player to be brought into account. If you can look at a video and see that a player was clearly violating a rule he could not have not been aware of, then he's worth the benefit of the doubt. Someone swiping away a chunk of grass from where he just hit looks like a mistake, not an intentional rules violation that he's trying to cover up. [quote=iacas]In other words, if you shoot 71 because of two penalty strokes but write down 70 (say your ball moved on the putting green after you'd addressed it and you put it back), why not try? Surely you can claim ignorance and say "I didn't think it was a penalty if I put my ball back" and the committee would, what, have to prove "fraud"? The fraud is the guy wrote down 4 instead of 5.[/quote] In that specific example you can DQ the player for making an absurd claim. No one goes on Tour and doesn't know that rule. He's either a liar or the most rules ignorance player to ever play. I think most scenarios would be fairly straight forward; if the player violated a "DUH!" rule then there's no way he was unaware of it, if the player violated a rule in a perfectly normal course of action that requires further review, maybe he should just recieve the penalty plus X strokes for not catching it himself (to continue to discourage such behavior). I'm not against the penalties, just the DQ. [quote=iacas]Call me a rules doink if you want (whatever a doink is), but rules are rules. It's a big part of what makes golf special. I don't think we can talk about the integrity and honor of the game and support changing the basic tenets of the game that make it a game of honor and integrity.[/quote] I'm not insisting that the basic principle of golf be changed, I'm saying that an innocent rule violation discovered after the game should not result in disqualification from the game if the violation itself was not grounds for disqualification. In the other sports I can think of that have post-game rules assessment, rule violations are penalized after the event, but they don't result in disqualification if the breach of the rule itself was not grounds for it. I just think the DQ is too easy to earn. [quote=iacas]Players are responsible for knowing the rules and recording the correct, truthful score. Failure to do so may result in a DQ. It really just comes down to that.[/quote] That's what bugs me. If the players were responsible for verifying each others scores, that would be one thing. But when a central authority (per round, per tournament, per league, whatever) takes the responsibility of DQing players via post-game analysis, that makes me uneasy. The players are charged with enforcing the rules, but someone else enforces that they enforce the rules, and they do so after the fact. It doesn't seem consistent to me. I know that the current rules call for a DQ. If they're going to be that way, I wish it wasn't enforced by someone after the fact who has, arguably, more information and time than the player themselves. Perhaps I think that assessing a player's intentions is too easy. It certainly seems like for any situation that can be reviewed, the player's intentions would be easy to assess. If that's not true, then DQ or a massive stroke penalty almost equivalent to a DQ is really the only way to discourage cheating.

i know what youre on about Iacas but i kinda agree with B-Con, Camilo was hardly intentionally trying to 'kid' everyone and purposefully give himself a better score and nobody was aware of what happened, i do think it would be better if penalties given after the signing of the scorecard would not result in a DQ

This has nothing to do with the enforcement of the existing rules. That's what the other thread is about. This thread is about how the rules should handle this sort of situation. (Edit: Although, I can see how I was confusing. I apologize for being vague from the beginning.) My main concern is that a player was kicked out of a tournament for failing to realize that he'd moved some grass that was later considered by others to be in the path of the ball. He moved grass that was a result of his divot, a very common action to do. The ball NEVER passed through that path, and if you watch the video it was right of that area and unlikely to pass through that path. From when he put his head down to walk toward the ball to when the ball came to rest it was never in danger of moving through that exact spot. The only reason it ended so close to where it started was a break to the left in the last several feet. The fact that he removed the grass from the "path" of the ball was a judgment call made later, after he was done playing. That ruling was a judgment call. (Above when I referred to "Duh" rules, that what I meant. I didn't explain that well, but my thesis is that judgment rules should be handled differently than non-judgment rules.) Maybe there's a general rule for the path of a rolling ball, but when I watched that video I never once thought it was going to pass through the area he moved the grass from. I think that's a reasonable assessment, and thinking differently shouldn't DQ someone. If the player is the referee, why are rule violations that are based on judgment not addressed to the player? Why is an overarching body put in control of the judgment? Touching sand with a club is not a judgment call, but the path of a ball as it rolls down a hill can be. A pgatour.com article quotes Villegas as saying it was obvious, but that's from a camera's point of view. He probably knew that there was no way he could convince them it wasn't, even if in the moment it seemed obvious to him that he wasn't in danger. He did not affect the path of the ball, it was headed a few feet right of his original divot when he moved it and it broke left in the last few feet. He had almost no way, in the moment, of guessing that someone else would look at that and claim his divot was in the ball's path. In retrospect, or from a third person's point of view through a camera, his actions probably looked different. But from his? He's the referee, and I can't blame him for not seeing that other perspective. (That's what I mean above when I say that they have "more information". I'm talking about the perspective, not the rules.) I think the rules are not as granular as they should be and could be improved. If the rules [i]can't[/i] be made better, then we have to accept that some punishments can't be made to relatively fit the crime, and so be it. I just think that situations like this can be handled better. I see it as a judgment disagreement. Just to be clear, I'm all for enforcing existing rules. I just think the existing rules shouldn't make judgment calls so tough for the referee/player.

I feel your pain Erik.  Some people just have their own  notions about the rules written indelibly into their psyche and nothing you or I can say is going to sway them.  Unless they choose to actually study the rules, and really learn the history of them and the principles that they are based on, that is never going to change.  You and I will always appear to lose these battles simply because they lack the foundation to understand the logic which both the rules and our arguments are based on.

Regarding the recent Camilo incident at Kapalua…

I saw his brief interview after he was called to view the infraction and subsequently disqualified; and he said something to the effect that, “There are a million rules and it’s impossible to know them all.” I object to this kind of ignorance as a defense – especially if you play golf as a professional and The Rules of Golf are the imperative playing principles by which you make a living.

It is possible the history of the rules comes into effect for this argument, in which case I am completely open to hearing such reasoning, but your statement suggests you don't understand my point. Read my above post, where I clarify (somewhat poorly-presented) ideas in the one previous to it. I believe neither you nor iacas directly address my central thesis. This is not about conformance to the rules, it's 100% about judgment calls being levied on a player after the player has any ability to address the judgment call. I accept that it's possible that the situation may not be able to be dealt with perfectly, but I think it can be dealt with better than it currently is.

It wasn't a judgment call.  It was called correctly as required by the rules.

Rule 1-2:

Rule 23-1:

Note the term "might".  That means that if there is a chance that your action could change the movement of the ball, then the penalty applies.  If that chance exists, then you don't take any action.  If you take action, then you leave yourself open to a penalty.  It doesn't matter if it doesn't look like the ball will pass near the object at the time the loose impediment is moved, only that the ball ultimately ends up passing near that spot.  The ball doesn't even have to hit that spot exactly - it only must appear that such is possible.

I suppose that with a loose interpretation you could say it's a judgment call, but in reality it seems pretty clear cut to me.  If the ball has a chance to pass anywhere near an object which is not allowed to be moved (a flagstick or equipment lying on the green can be moved), then you don't touch it until the ball has either stopped or it has passed that point and there is no longer any possibility of a collision.  As long as there is a possibility of a collision, whether or not it seems to be remote to you, then you don't take any action which you may come to regret later.

I don't think you guys are getting the OP's point. He's just saying it sucked that camillo was dq'ed for not knowing he broke a rule and no one telling him he did so prior to signing his card. In other words, imagine if no one on the course knew DJ was in a bunker at the us open. He would've gone to the playoff, maybe even won. then later, a fan would've tweeted in that he was actually in the bunker. Rather than a 3rd place finish which is what he ended up with, he would've been completely dq'ed. It's not so much a matter of "why do they need to know all the rules," but more of can u let the guy know prior to him signing the card as in DJ's case. As for the history of golf. I'd bet a lot that there have been tourney winners in the past, prior to tv, that unwittingly committed a very minor rules violation. He & everyone else was completely unaware and it didn't have a real impact on the shot. Overall, I don't think it really matters. Camillo wasn't going to win the tourney anyway, and. I'm not arguing that he didn't break the rule or that it's a dumb rule. I'm just looking at the DJ situation in comparison to camillo's, and if camillo was dq'ed then they should've waited and dq'ed DJ.

I don't know what video you saw but in the video I saw Camilo moved grass just in front of his divot and the ball almost rolled back into his divot so that tells me it rolled within inches of the loose impediments.

The rules of golf contain very few "judgment calls" and this isn't one of them.

Camilo signed for a wrong score because he didn't know the rule or "brain farted" on it or whatever and the rule was applied properly . If this thread exists because you think a judgment call was made then this thread doesn't belong here because there was no judgment call. Camilo was DQified because he signed for a score lower than the one he legitimately earned.

The Dustin analogy has no place here. Both players were alerted as soon as officials knew. For them to wait would be stupid. They want to prevent DQs, and in Camilo's case, were unable to. In the end the golfer is ultimately responsible.

Maybe I'm taking an overly literal interpretation of that phraseology, but whenever I hear "might" I interpret it as "a human being could not, given information available, rule it out". In Newtonian physics, there is no "might", once the ball was rolling there was absolutely no uncertainty to the universe (baring human intervention) as to what path it would take. The paths we say the ball "might" take depend entirely on the ability of the person using the word "might" to assess the situation and form their best guess. It is entirely an issue of judgment. I'm using [url=http://www.pgatour.com/2011/r/01/08/villegas-ruling.ap/index.html]this video[/url] as my reference. I took a series of screenshots of the video exactly .5 seconds apart and compiled them into a single image sequence. You can [url=http://i.imgur.com/0QpaA.jpg]view that sequence here[/url] (not embedded because of its height). I then used that sequence to compile a single image with a good approximation of the ball's path overlayed on an image of Villega moving the grass: [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/7Q04a.png[/IMG] As he moves the grass, the ball is 15-ish feet away (based on picture, it's just a few strides away; also it only took a few seconds to trickle down to his foot level). From that point the ball starts obviously to the right of the moved grass and trickles down that line, staying right of the grass. (Note that the camera angle is to the right of the ball, minimizing the distance between them, using his foot as a reference point you can see that gap is larger than it appears). At the end, just above the horizontal line where the grass had been (blue line in the image marks the horizontal line, to compensate for the side camera angle against the incline), the ball hits the second noticeable break in its decent (it had started breaking right) and banks left. It misses the grass's former location by nearly the full length of Villega's foot (for a 5'9" male, his shoe is probably about 10, maybe even 11, inches long) and the closest the ball comes to the grass spot is when the ball is [i]beneath[/i] the spot. That spot never came into play during the ball's decent and it never came close to the ball. What's more, even from the camera's angled view, it's obvious that the slope wouldn't allow for it to be in the ball's path. Considering that Villega was standing directly over the spot watching the ball come dead at him, he probably never considered -- neither during the action nor after the action -- that the ball would pass through the grass spot he'd just affected. And rightfully so. The intention of this rule (seems to be) to prevent players from moving a loose impediment from what they fear is the ball's path and then claiming that it was not in the ball's path once the ball had reached the impediments former location. However, it is [i]obvious[/i] that the ball didn't come close. Ten inches is a LOT of distance in golf. From the camera's point of view, it's easier to see the big picture of "ball rolling down hill, player moving grass in front of it", but that shouldn't constitute the entire post-round analysis. It is most certainly a ruling of judgment. And the person that the rules of golf give the responsibility of making that initial judgment to was disqualified because someone else disagreed with him about whether or not something could've have happened, when analysis shows that it is clear that it didn't happen and couldn't have happened. Player's have to be given the benefit of the doubt with camera analysis like this. If the only call made were by another player from atop the hill, or something, that would be an issue of trust. But we have facts, and the detailed analysis doesn't support any notion "might have happened" as being the only valid judgment call. Villega's judgment call was also valid.

I wonder if the USGA, and the R&A; have had some of these same discussions? Also, why has this become such an issue lately? Where were all the armchair referees in all the years since the US open was first televised in 1947 to now?

I blame reality TV for this age of narcissim and the very term "reality TV" is as Orwelian as anything I have encountered but that is another subject altogether. The bottom line for me is the player puts food on the table for mother and baby based on his performance on the course. If they can't be bothered to take seriously enough the knowledge of the rules then they lose out on their share of the purse. There is no excuse for professional golfers not to follow to the letter the rules of the game. I can't think of a single example of anyone being DQ'd that didn't understand why. It can always be traced back to a lapse in attention or lack of knowledge both of which are within the control of the player. I always hear announcers say "so and so" worked on their "such and such" for weeks and look at the improvement. That's great but perhaps throwing in a few hours here and there on rules and decisions would pay off in the form on NOT getting DQ'd.

How can we exempt golfers playing at the highest level from knowing the rules of their game and from codified penalties for violations?

Since golf does not have a rules official imbedded in every group, it will necessarily the case that some violations become known after a player has signed his scorecard.

There's nothing in the rules covering DQs after signing for unwitting violations. Nor should there be, to answer the OP. (This is the value judgment that divides the debate. You either agree or don't. I don't know if it can be bridged.)

I tried to google it without success and I don't have access to any historical reference to the rules. However I am interested. Where are you getting your historical rules research material ? What is the history of this rule ? When was it implemented into the official book ? What event caused it to be adopted ? Was there controversy ? Since this rule has been getting so much attention perhaps you can share some interesting history of this rule with those of us who are interested. Sorry for all the questions, I am a general history buff so am always eager to listen when people are willing to share interesting history.