Controversy – and a 30-minute discussion on the 18th hole – surrounded Annika Sorenstam’s tee shot on the 18th hole at the end of her first round in the ADT Championship today. After hitting the ball in a bunker inside a marked lateral water hazard, Sorenstam was given a drop near the back edge of the bunker and hit the green with her third shot. Paula Creamer, Sorenstam’s playing competitor and Kay Cockerill, on-course commentator for The Golf Channel, disagreed. They contended that the ball never crossed the hazard line. If that were true, Sorenstam would most likely return to the tee to hit her third shot.
Annika, using her 4+wood, immediately knew the shot was bad. The 18th hole at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, FL turns right just as the 18th at Pebble Beach turns left. Two bunkers left and one right form a “gate” of sorts, and the right-hand one butts right up against a lateral water hazard. Sorenstam and Creamer discussed whether to play a provisional or to look for the ball before leaving the tee. When they walked to the ball, the found it buried in the sand, inches from the water and a foot or so inside the lateral hazard line.
Sorenstam claims her ball traveled on the purple line, while Paula Creamer and Kay Cockeril stated that they never felt the ball crossed land until just before it buried in the bunker (and inside the hazard line).
Paula Creamer, then one shot behind Sorenstam and safely in the middle of the fairway, was visibly upset that her word was not being taken seriously. She appeared afraid to assert herself and near tears as Annika continued to assert that she had hit a “banana ball” that was sure to have crossed the hazard line before cutting back inside the hazard. Kay Cockerill agreed, saying “it never appeared to me to make landfall” and “it was a small cut, but I wouldn’t call it a banana ball. It was moving a little left to right.”
An elderly gentleman, the scorer for the group, was asked in the 30-minute discussion and told the rules official that he saw the ball bounce on grass and trickle into the bunker, a statement that both Sorenstam and Creamer (and film footage of the shot) refuted easily – the ball had clearly landed and plugged. Film footage of the shot was not at an angle that allowed us to see how much “banana” the ball’s flight had in it.
Because the shape of the hole bends in from the left so much, if Sorenstam’s ball did not cross the hazard near the bunker it would not have crossed it until quite a bit further back – far enough back that she’d have been better off hitting her third from the tee.
Eventually, and for reasons I still don’t quite understand, Sorenstam’s word was taken and Creamer’s and Cockerill’s was ignored. Sorenstam was allowed to drop in the drop area behind the bunker and played her third to the green, gaining a 220-yard advantage over having to re-tee the ball. She three-putted for a double-bogey to drop out of the lead and into a tie for third. Paula Creamer parred the 18th to remain one back of first-round leader Hee-Won Han.
1 Hee-Won Han -5 67 2 Paula Creamer -4 68 T3 Michele Redman -3 69 T3 Liselotte Neumann -3 69 T3 Soo-Yun Kang -3 69 T3 Annika Sorenstam -3 69 7 Catriona Matthew -2 70 T8 Heather Bowie -1 71 T8 Candie Kung -1 71 T10 Karrie Webb E 72 T10 Christina Kim E 72 T10 Lorie Kane E 72 T10 Birdie Kim E 72 T10 Meena Lee E 72
The second round will be played tomorrow.
Update: SI (via the AP) now has something on the story: Creamer calls out Sorenstam. It’ll be interesting to see where this takes us…
Sorenstam is always aggressive on rules interpretations, asking for relief even when she knows she is not entitled to it – as she confessed she did in the Solheim Cup. Maybe this episode will cause her to be more careful because her reputation is at stake. Good for Creamer for calling Sorenstam on a questionable act.
Leading pros set examples for junior golfers. Too many junior golfers think it’s okay to bend the rules. It’s way too common to see junior players claim their ball crossed a hazard line when it clearly didn’t. Junior golfers trying to impress turn in scorecards that don’t reflect what they really scored. They need to see better examples at the top than seeing the best players in the world bending the rules or making unsupportable observations to gain an advantage.
As CSI could confirm, there was a way to look at the exact position of the ball in the sand (or mud) and determine the angle of approach. Since the ball cannot land at an exact 90 degree angle from the sky and purely downward, it comes in and makes a mark that has to show more or less of an angle towards the green or towards the lake. Since it was very close to the hazard line, any angle to the right would have proven it crossed that line. To the contrary, any angle from the right of the line would have indicated it did not.
This can be observed whenever you get a buried lie in a humid sand trap.
I know this is irrelevant and will never be used, but …just for the sake of argument.
That is true jpcorbeil, but from what Kay Cockerill was saying, the crater faced just about parallel to the sand. In other words, the evidence was inconclusive – a degree one way or the other could have made the difference, and nobody can eye something up that accurately.