LPGA blows it with Morgan Pressel slow play penalty - Page 10

Yes, it's my best guess, and it might be wrong.

 

You're making this more complicated than it needs to be. They play the hole on the clock. After the hole is over, one of the players was over on time. She is assessed a loss-of-hole penalty. It's pretty straightforward. To be honest, I'm not sure what they'd do in the case of both players being over---it could be they both lose the hole and it is effectively a split. (I think that is more likely than my earlier interpretation, but I'm obviously not a pro rules official).

 

 

I'm not sure what would have happened had Munoz incurred a loss-of-hole penalty after Pressel had holed out over time. These don't strike me as insoluble problems, and the fact that I don't personally know for certain how they'd be resolved doesn't seem all that damning for the rule.

 

I'm not damning the rule. I'm thinking it either has some issues/major flaws or it was handled in error. You can bet this rule will be seen more than it has been in the past. The PGA will be under pressure to follow the LPGA's lead and start cracking down. And the implementation details will matter. Players make mistakes all the time that would cost them the hole. Drop in the wrong place. Touch the line of a putt. All kinds of things. Do you alert the players when the penalty has occurred? Now in most cases, the stoke penalty will not change the other players strategy. And match-play is rare on all tours. But, it can and should become a factor more if theses kinds of rules are going to exist.

 

Pressel could have lost the hole after her tee shot if she'd taken even a few seconds more. The GC timer showed her getting it in just under 60 seconds -- if she would have changed clubs again it would have been enough to cost her the hole because of that shot alone. It is very reasonable to wonder if they would have played out the hole, thus giving Munoz chances to make a loss of hole error herself. Or, did the official mess up by not calling the hole over when it was over. Can't be a bit of both.

 

I disagree.

 

And I'm fairly confident that I'm right because we almost never see rules infractions on the major professional tours.

Actually, he didn't even have to do that. In an admirable display of foresight, the LPGA chose to spare its officials from the rigors of third grade arithmetic, and the policy explicitly gives the total number of seconds that will result in a penalty for 3, 4, 5, or 6 shots. No division required; you just have to be able to count to 101. (As you might expect, whoever wrote that clause forgot about the "few additional seconds" the first player to hit is supposed to get for each shot.)

And speaking of counting, I've lost count of the number of people defending the LPGA policy who admit that they're not sure what it means. Nobody seems to know what would have happened if Munoz had taken 61 seconds to hit her putt.

But I do --- nothing would have happened. She conceded the hole to Pressel, and the LPGA says her concession doesn't count.

But the rules of golf (as opposed to the LPGA policy) are clear: a concession cannot be withdrawn. The only time a concession is not valid is if it turns out that your opponent lost the hole before you conceded. And if that is the LPGA's position, i.e. that the hole was over as soon as one of the players exceeded the time limits in the policy, then Munoz could have taken five minutes to hit her putt, and it wouldn't have mattered. How's that for fair?

A corollary is that it must indeed be true that if a player takes 61 seconds to hit her tee shot on a par five, and then aces it, the other player automatically wins the hole, and doesn't even have to hit a shot. Note that the ten-second cushion only applies to the total time for the hole, and not to the 60-second maximum for individual shots.

Of course, the policy only says the penalty for acing a par five "may" be assessed. Then again, it may not. Who knows?

And I don't know whether anyone was able to measure how far from the hole Munoz's ball was when she picked it up. Was it within two feet? Then it falls under the tap-in clause. What does the tap-in clause mean? Who knows? But I'll repeat it here, for those who enjoy puzzles:

"Note: Putts of approximately two (2) feet or less that can be hit within ten (10) seconds or less may be deemed tap-ins and, therefore, do not adversely affect a player’s average time for that hole."

I can't believe that people are defending this policy.

"all the time" may have been a bit off. But it does and will continue to happen. Wie drops in the wrong place. Zach Johnson is questioned and released from having touched the line of his putt. Somebody lays a towel down to avoid getting pants dirty. Sergio hits his club in a bunker when his ball is in the same bunker on the other side of the green. A caddy rakes a huge bunker before the rule change. Wrong scorecards are signed. Bad stuff happens even if it nowhere near all the time. Not all the bad stuff would be a lost hole in match play, but some of it would.

 

Letting/making Munoz keep playing without her knowing she'd won the hole, gave her the chance to screw up. Is that the way the rule is written? Or was the hole over and the extra strokes were just extra strokes that were not allowed earlier in the week but, Munoz had no way to know that the hole was over. If she had asked, would the rules official have told her that Pressel had gone over time? "Seemed like she took a lot of time on that drive. Have I already won this hole or do I need to make this putt for the half? By the way, where do you have my time on this hole?"

 

Reminds me a bit of extra time in soccer. No one knows when the game is really going to be over and then suddenly it is over.

Discretion can be applied fairly, but by definition it's; the power or right to decide or act according to one's own judgment; freedom of judgment or choice

 

What that says to me is one official may penalize a player while another official doesn't.  If you want to put players on a clock, then have the stop watch in full display of the player and gallery so they know when the clock stops and starts and how much time is left like they do in football and basketball.  I'm all for speeding up play, but the timing of the enforcement and the way it was handled was questionable at best IMO. 

Breaking news: On Golf Central today, they revealed that the PGA times every shot by every player, and has the averages:

Tee shot: 43 s
2nd shot par five: 47 s
Going for green: 47 s
Lay up: 43 s
Approach: 45 s
Around the green: 50s
On the green: 33 s
Average for all shots: 38 s (my note: the fact that players typically hit two or three putts per hole obviously lowers the all-shot average)

Player with lowest average for all shots : 23 s
Player with highest average for all shots: 53 s

Just to review, people in this thread have asserted that Pressel "CLEARLY took WAY too long" by totaling 129 seconds for a tee shot, a shot around the green, and a shot on the green. The PGA average is 43 + 50 + 33 = 126 seconds for those three shots.

TGC, typically, didn't say whether the numbers above were medians or means. Either way, three seconds over the PGA average --- one second per shot --- is not outrageously slow, particularly when hitting first in gusting winds.

And IMO the PGA average of well over 40 seconds for all shots but putts supports my assertion that the LPGA's allowance of only 30 seconds per shot is arbitrary, and needlessly so. It also refutes the assertions made by some that the PGA time limit of 40 seconds (when on the clock) is way too generous.

The very fastest player on the PGA tour would only beat the LPGA clock by an average of seven seconds per shot. I only wish I had the time for the fastest player on a windy day during the semis of match play.
Edited by brocks - 5/23/12 at 8:08pm

Uh, not exactly. This was an absolute silver platter for Tim Finchem. It's been quite hilarious to sample various sites, with proponents of slow play penalization positively giddy at the LPGA incident. Classic case of no clue what you're looking at, situational impact flying over heads like Tiger's yanked second shot at Wells Fargo a few weeks ago.

 

The LPGA incident remarkably combined four aspects that the PGA wants no part of, and manages to avoid with its quiet after-the-fact policy...fines only:

 

* Questionable on the spot interpretation, considering the variables at hand

* Grandstanding rules official

* Penalized player who is not considered a slow play problem

* Altered outcome in a marquee event

 

It's like Finchem ordered up a case of softener,  and the trucks didn't stop pulling up to his house for a week. For one thing, just look at this thread. The word "if" must appear 1000 times.

 

Among the four aspects, I'll start with the last. It's comical to propose Pressel was never three ahead. Of all the sites I've sampled, only here does that desperate claim show up. At the end of the hole, the official scorer called out the score for Pressel and Munoz, followed by "Pressel 3 Up." Identical to every hole of the entire tournament. To propose that she was never 3 up is every bit as absurd as insisting a horse never crossed the line first in a race in which he was subsequently disqualified. It requires stewards' judgment to make that call, similar to Doug Brecht's input here. The horse's number is atop the tote board until the subjective verdict, just like "Pressel 3 Up" stood on the placard until the next tee. Granted, some fragile LSU fans never granted USC's share of 2003, let along the full 2004 title, and were delirious once the NCAA intervened and declared the 55-19 victory over Oklahoma essentially never happened.

 

It's also lame to suggest we don't know who would have won. As someone who deals with applied probability and sporting events literally every day, i think I have a good idea. Pressel was 10/13 (-130) favorite entering the match. With a 3 hole lead and 6 to play, the edge explodes to nearly 1/20 (-2000). I realize the media was too dense to explain it in those terms, just like they were still trying to pretend the GOP nomination was a horse race when Romney's trading price was above 95%. With a 1 hole lead and 6 remaining, Pressel was roughly 4/9 (-225), which is a nice edge but basically the same thing as a 5 point favorite in a football game.

 

The math would not have veered nearly as dramatically if the call had flopped the situation from 1 up to 1 down, or All Square from 2 Up.

 

Toward #3, Pressel is never mentioned among the most deliberate players on tour. It's like an NFL personal foul with the second guy caught, the less offensive action. According to LPGA blogger Tony Jesselli, who attended Sybase and briefly appeared on camera at the end, Azahara Munoz is now considered the slowest player on tour. Previously it was Sandra Gal, who was publicly ripped by several players, including Christina Kim, but Gal's higher profile status apparently pushed her to pick up the pace.

 

Fining after the fact allows Finchem to avoid any danger of Ben Crane starting the clock and Bubba Watson caught in the speed trap. Extreme example, but a week ago I wouldn't have believed Pressel.

 

Regarding #2 -- grandstanding official -- notice how the PGA handled the Dustin Johnson case, briefly calling him aside on the 18th green, then dealing with the specifics inside the trailer. That's the same private approach the tour has always taken, dating to DiVicenzo if not earlier. The LPGA has no problem making a spectacle of the Michelle Wie hazard incident, already cited in this thread, so naturally Doug Brecht decides it's ideal to wait until the next tee box -- and plenty of cameras -- to confront Pressel with his loud pronouncement. Then Brecht readily accepts TV interviews and spews nonsense, like "rules of the game." Finchem has to love the contrast at every turn. He knows darn well if he penalizes strokes during a round it's inevitably going to lead to reaction from the player in a public setting, attitude from the gallery, scrutiny toward the rules official, and focus on everything other than the golf and the result.

 

On #1 -- questionable interpretation -- golf simply doesn't mesh with shot clock conformity. Too many unforeseen variables as an outdoor climate influenced sport on uneven terrain. Jerry Foltz somehow is summoned as the ultimate authority in this thread. Strange, because I don't remember him on LPGA telecasts prior to 2011. He's unquestionably a recent expert following Yani Tseng's group. Judy Rankin hardly applauded the ruling although she always steers toward the company line. Phil Parkin's version is ignored even though he was on site and reporting for Golf Channel also, with a deeper history covering LPGA events than (Nationwide) Foltz, including Solheim Cup match play dating to 2009 if not earlier. Parkin thought the penalty was unjust, emphasizing the gust that suddenly confronted Pressel on the 12th tee. She went to the bag and changed clubs herself, minus any type of discussion with her caddie, let alone what we've come to view as the norm within the PGA. On her second shot, relatively short (5-5) Morgan was left with a severely uphill nearly blind shot out of heavy rough. That type of shot suggests more practice swings than typical to gauge the required weight, and you can't see the target, a fairly significant variable. It was hardly a Michael Breed pitch into the net from a perfect lie in controlled conditions.

 

Eight minutes behind pace. Gad. Twenty-nine seconds tardy. To borrow from Monty Python -- Burn the witch! Burn her! Burn her!

 

IMO, it was a 100% gutless move by the LPGA, buffered by the recent conniption toward slow play. Brecht sensed he could call any penalty under that theme and be applauded by the masses. The LPGA earns no benefit of a doubt, from those of use who actually follow it event to event instead of inheriting something to scream about. The scrutiny toward slow play is indeed arbitrary and imbalanced, by any definition. During Sybase two other players drew fines, according to tour spokesman Heather Daly-Donofrio, but only Pressel was penalized during play. Very frequently when the stroke penalties, or slow play in general, are mentioned on the specialized LPGA blogs you get a sense how inequitable the process can be. Somebody else correctly pointed out in this thread that the tour officials don't monitor every group. On the blog Life on Tour, run by an LPGA caddie, the thread from May 19th includes a comment from an LPGA caddie who posts regularly to that site under the name bocajr. He posted that he was in the group in Phoenix earlier this year when a player was saddled with a 2 shot penalty. In his view it was improper, a bad time. Bocajr emphasized that the player has no recourse to challenge the ruling unless two separate times are recorded, and they conflict. He wrote that different officials start the clock at different times, no matter what they want you to believe.

 

Imagine if Candie Kung were on the clock when her ball hit the sprinkler head and bounded into knee high mush in front of the electrical box? 30 seconds, ma'am. Golf Channel cameramen committed a far more heinous act than anything Pressel managed when they brilliantly positioned themselves smack across the green from Kung's swipe, with the ball smacking into a portable camera on the ground, prevented from tumbling into the bunker. Yet not a peep. Altered shot on the 17th hole of the match play final yet we're stressed over 29 seconds, and in an event in which slow play hadn't even been an issue. Read any of the articles prior to Pressel/Munoz, or watch the Golf Channel coverage of days one through three. Nobody was fretting the pace of play. It was whine, and penalty, in search of a problem.

 

BTW, I seldom debate back and forth on message boards. That leads to all the juvenile loss of temper and unfortunate words. The exchanges read pathetic from afar. But in this case I've seldom witnessed greater domination on a topic than brocks' input. It reached the point I couldn't believe anyone else continued to flail.

Edited by Awsi Dooger - 5/23/12 at 9:18pm

Do you know how unfair I think it would be for someone to lose a hole after taking a full minute to make their shot after it's their turn and the landing area is clear? Not very. The LPGA brass seem to agree, since the rule is pretty clear about that.

 

I don't know for sure what the full details of the rule are and whether it's intended to be called during play of the hole or assessed at the end. I can see arguments for either choice. In any case, I think the chances that we've thought of these sorts of issues and the powers that be are blind to them are pretty much zero.

 

 

 

 

Actually, I think those "few additional seconds" are accounted for before starting the clock. So, as I hve grown to expect, you're zealously criticizing a rule that you don't seem to have read very carefully.

 

 

Dude, as far as I can tell, there is no official, public-facing copy of the rule text in its full context available. I'm running by a fairly legitimate-looking (but badly formatted) blog post.

 

 

Right. Got it.

 

 

A concession cannot be withdrawn or rejected, but that's irrelevant because this is not invalidating a concession. In fact, it's employing exactly the exception you cite.

 

 

Your corollary, which I presume is to be shocking, is no different from any number of rules that a golfer could violate that would result in a loss of hole without the other player holing out, incidentally.

 

 

Grasp a little harder, I'm sure you can catch those straws!

 

 

 

I found a similar but not identical copy of an LPGA pace-of-play rule earlier today. It was, I believe, for an assessment tournament. In its text, this section was a bit clearer and simply said that tap-ins are not counted toward the time allotment.

 

So remember that the text we're criticizing is some blog and not authoritative. I think it's unwise to get hung up on particulars without a better source.

Thanks for the ad hominem snark.

I don't understand why you think it's wrong for me for to point out ambiguities in the policy, when even after your very careful reading you only "think" you know what it says, and you completely missed the point about the concession, but I don't care any more. The fellow a couple posts up (and in case anybody is wondering, he is not my brother, my best friend, my employee, or someone who owes me money), unlike me, actually follows the LPGA, and is obviously better informed than anyone else that I've seen in this thread, so I'll leave it to him to carry on if he wants to.

But as he seems pretty smart, he probably won't want to. And I think that your assertion that we don't know what the *real* policy says is exactly what he means by "flailing."

I know you don't want to get entangled in this, but I did have one question for someone who follows the LPGA.

Some people here have cited the fact that the LPGA penalized five (or whatever) players last year for slow play, as evidence that Pressel's penalty should not have been unexpected. From the clips I saw on Golf Central, I thought it seemed VERY unexpected to both Pressel and Munoz, and opined that the LPGA should have given a stronger warning that they were going to have a zero-tolerance policy, even for the semis of match play.

So, was this an unusual crackdown, or not? Specifically, have there been other cases where holes were taken away from top contenders in a big match-play event?

 

Sorry for the snark. That wasn't needed. It's been a long day (in ways other than this thread, too).

 

I guess you're right that I missed the point on concession, because I still don't see what you're trying to say.

 

Pointing out ambiguities is fine, except that I think you're making far more of them than exist in a reasonable reading of the rule, or the approximation to it that we have. As I've said before, while the word "discretion" appears and there is the possibility of abuse, I don't think we have any actual evidence of such abuse, or that it in any way contributed toward causing this ruling.

 

As for what your new buddy said, if what he says about there being evidence that this is not being applied evenly, then there is a problem. I've been saying that since the beginning. Other than that, his four points aren't really relevant to whether this is a reasonable rule or was reasonably applied. If the rule is on the books, it needs to be enforced regardless of the situation, and it needs to be enforced fairly. So, if it's not, there's a problem.

 

As for the flailing, whatever.

To be fair those are not players on the clock ( and I am not sure what they are measuring. The number look like the ones golf digest did for a single tournament). If I was on the PGA tour, I might try and set my pace of play so that I don't spend 5 mins waiting to tee off every time.  Spending a few more seconds on each shot and adjusting my walking pace would lead to a slower time to take shots but a more evenly paced round.

 

That being said, yeah if every group on the PGA tour was timed under the LPGA rules  there would be a lot of violations. If every LPGA group was timed under those rules, there would also be a lot of violations. It doesn't happen because it is rare for someone to be on the clock.

Right, because in order to be on the clock you have to be behind your time par and be out of position.  Plus you would have already received a warning that you were out of position and given a chance to catch up before being timed.

 

And yet, she clearly took way too long as defined by the rules and policies.

 

The PGA Tour averages are:

a) PGA Tour, not LPGA

b) Players not out of position and thus on the clock

 

 

I've snipped down what was an impressively long post. Unfortunately, it was filled with lots of irrelevant bits and conjecture. The "tour" had no part of the DeVicenzo ruling, and the "tour" did the same thing with Dustin Johnson that an entirely different tour did with Morgan Pressel - they let him play out the hole (despite knowing that he'd violated a rule), then made him aware of the penalty later on but before some significant "next event." In his case, the next event would be signing his card (he'd have been DQed), and in Pressel's case, it's playing the next hole. It's more similar than it is different.

 

Same for Michelle Wie bit - they waited until before she teed off. They didn't interrupt play on the hole itself, but they informed the player relatively quickly and before the player could do something to DQ herself.

 

There were plenty of cameras beside the previous green. To suggest that he "waited until there were plenty of cameras" is silly. There were two matches going on, and arguably there are more cameras around a green than on the tee.

 

Who cares who the slowest player on the LPGA is? Its relevance is what, exactly? Who cares what the odds of her winning are? Morgan broke a rule. SHE lost the hole. It didn't "happen to her."

 

She was never 3up. The official scorer may have marked down a 5 in the Michelle Wie bit but that doesn't mean it was a 5. They may have marked down 4 for Dustin Johnson (or 5?) - he did on his card too, famously having to erase it later - but that doesn't mean he "had" a 4. The penalties affected the score for the hole.

 

 

 

 

I don't know why you continue to try to make this point.

 

A rule is a rule. A player picks their ball up without marking it, and immediately puts it back down. Should the player not be penalized because the LPGA didn't give a stronger warning that they were going to adhere strictly to the USGA Rules of Golf?

 

They were warned twice. The policy has existed for awhile now (at least all of this year, and variations if not the same policy in years prior). Sufficient notice.

 

Pressel didn't even argue, so I don't even agree that it seemed to strike them as unexpected.

Erik,

 

When was the hole over? Being match play, it matters. Did they need both need to finish before the hole is over? If so, Munoz could have messed up too while not knowing that a simple concession would have given her the hole.

 

There is a big difference between match play and medal play. I seem to recall that the Wie drop was not pointed out until that evening after someone called in because they thought they saw a violation on TV. I'm remembering Wie, her caddie, and an official going back to the spot and reenacting the event. And I think she was DQ'd for signing the wrong card. If it had been match play, and a loose of hole penalty, how could enforcing the penalty after the round have been remedied?

 

I really do wish to know. If Pressel had taken way too long on the first tee, would the hole be over before Munoz teed off or must she play the hole? Are players allowed to ask what their time is while playing the hole? Can they ask about another player's time?

 

You remember it improperly.

 

She was told on the tee a hole or a few holes later. She reviewed it before signing her card in the little production trailer. This is where she lost a lot of respect from people, as she kept insisting she was losing her balance.

 

She was DQed a long time ago in Hawaii (first event as a pro perhaps?) because Michael Bamberger is a douche. Then she was DQed at the State Farm (I think) when she had a chance to win (maybe even was leading?) because she'd left the scoring area without signing her card.

I was recalling the illegal drop that I think was her first event. Not really remain to my question other than to indicate that while not "all the time," pros do make errors that can/would be lose of hole penalties in match play. In medal play, timing of being told of the penalty is usually much less critical.

 

Back to my question: does anyone know when the hole is over in match play after a player takes too long and has incurred a loss of hole penalty? Should the players be told the status of the penalty as it happens?