Cam Smith's Day-Later Penalty

[DaveP043]

1 hour ago, Club Rat said:

I have a quetion about the "Relief" ?

I may be old school, but I thought "when a player takes his drop, both the ball and the player must be 
completely outside a penalty area"?
An example: The players foot is standing on a painted line marking the penalty area while taking his stroke.
OR, the players foot is in the penalty area while taking his stroke.
Is this allowed?

For some reason I feel this situation was changed awhile back which allows a players stance to be in a penalty area?

That general principle has applied to relief from immovable obstructions for as long as I can remember, but never to hazards.  I'll try to check ruleshistory.com later to check.

[iacas]

1 hour ago, Club Rat said:

I have a quetion about the "Relief" ?

I may be old school, but I thought "when a player takes his drop, both the ball and the player must be 
completely outside a penalty area"?
An example: The players foot is standing on a painted line marking the penalty area while taking his stroke.
OR, the players foot is in the penalty area while taking his stroke.
Is this allowed?

For some reason I feel this situation was changed awhile back which allows a players stance to be in a penalty area?

Just the ball, as @billchao said. Basically, because the ball is what is in the penalty area (you're not penalized or allowed to take PA relief if your stance is in the PA), the ball is what matters coming out, too. You can get relief from a cart path if the ball OR your foot is on it, so you must take relief from both. (Plus the area of your swing.)

52 minutes ago, DaveP043 said:

That general principle has applied to relief from immovable obstructions for as long as I can remember, but never to hazards.  I'll try to check ruleshistory.com later to check.

And things like GUR.

[WillieT]

Read the article this morning as I missed the final round yesterday.  I agree it was the right call by the PGA as his drop ended with the ball on the line.  From what I read he “thought” as long as part of the ball was good he was okay.   Squirrel moment - when I first read the article, my personal bias was that he was being singled out in response to all the “potential defection” banter that had been circulating.  Thankfully he was a gentleman as his response was much more gracious than that of Mr Garcia’s earlier this year.  

[Friz]

I have no issue with how it was handled, and I think more importantly, Cam Smith himself had no issue with how it was handled.  The amount of outrage on social media over this instance is ridiculous, a bunch of people want to make it into something more than it is.  Conspiracy theorists can have their fun, everyone else can just move on

[DaveP043]

14 hours ago, WillieT said:

Thankfully he was a gentleman as his response was much more gracious than that of Mr Garcia’s earlier this year.

I think that Sergio may have actually gotten a bad ruling, the PGA Tour later confirmed that the Official had started the search clock too early.  That doesn't justify his childish reaction, but some level of unhappiness was reasonable.

[jshots]

Obvious penalty.

But to keep the convo interesting... who was the PGA Tour official watching all of Cam's shots?

[Golfingdad]

22 hours ago, DaveP043 said:

But then, to be consistent, the entire line would have to be in bounds, just as the painted Penalty Area line is in the Penalty Area, a painted GUR line is in the GUR.  That's not how the OB line is defined, the entire line is OB.  We may just have to remember that OB is different from the other "divisions" on the golf course.

Oh man, thank you @DaveP043 for responding.  I had to go back and re-read the descriptions and look more closely at the diagrams, as I was misunderstanding it.

 

[imsys0042]

18 hours ago, Friz said:

I have no issue with how it was handled, and I think more importantly, Cam Smith himself had no issue with how it was handled.  The amount of outrage on social media over this instance is ridiculous, a bunch of people want to make it into something more than it is.  Conspiracy theorists can have their fun, everyone else can just move on

I think a lot of the outrage or negativity associated with it is that people aren't putting enough thought into how this could be handled better.   It's hard to find a way because of a couple of different reasons.

My knee jerk reaction is similar to a lot of people, you sign your card and know your score and then come back the next day and it's different?!   Sounds awful on the surface of it.   Especially since in most cases the players are not trying to get away with anything or break the rules, it's more ignorance of the rule.  

However, who would want to see a rules violation caught before the tournament ended and not properly assessed because you couldn't apply it the next day?   That's a nightmare.   Yes, after the tournament is over and everything verified as best as possible, I don't think we would see anything change then.   The statute of limitations is over and there was enough time to review.  So really, catching rule violations while the tournament is active, even for all 4 days, is the best case scenario.

 

[WillieT]

7 hours ago, DaveP043 said:

I think that Sergio may have actually gotten a bad ruling, the PGA Tour later confirmed that the Official had started the search clock too early.  That doesn't justify his childish reaction, but some level of unhappiness was reasonable.

I agree on the bad ruling - was watching that one.  He, Sergio, had some bad stuff to navigate just to get to where they “thought” the ball to be.  Clock should have started when he finally got there.  Just hated that he made the comment.