Dustin Johnson Helped by USGA's Bungled Ruling

[newtogolf]

I got a form letter from the USGA today explaining their decision.  It was a lame attempt to do damage control.  Sadly they ruined their own tournament because all most fans will remember for some time is how they messed up the ruling on 5 and compounded the problem on 12.  

[natureboy]

10 hours ago, Golfingdad said:

We've seen enough shots from other angles to know that there can be several people behind that camera, but he was looking right at it.  So it seems it was either him or the person lugging around the cords/accessories you always see with the cameraman.

That's atrocious that it happened in the backswing on the last full shot of the tournament. Was it me or when he finally took the shot was the camera farther back than when the beep happened?

1 hour ago, newtogolf said:

I got a form letter from the USGA today explaining their decision.  It was a lame attempt to do damage control.  Sadly they ruined their own tournament because all most fans will remember for some time is how they messed up the ruling on 5 and compounded the problem on 12.  

I think it's actually worse than that.

The image of golf conveyed to the casual viewer is that of obsession over seeming minutia inconsequential to the actual playing of the game and arcane, legalistic rules.

[newtogolf]

7 hours ago, natureboy said:

I think it's actually worse than that.

The image of golf conveyed to the casual viewer is that of obsession over seeming minutia inconsequential to the actual playing of the game and arcane, legalistic rules.

It seemed so trivial and petty that I actually wondered if they decided to assign the penalty at 12 because he requested relief on 10 and then hit his ball right over the tower.  He was fully entitled to relief but I think the commentators were even a bit shocked he put the ball right over the top of the tower even though with relief he had other angles to the green.  

[mchepp]

4 hours ago, newtogolf said:

It seemed so trivial and petty that I actually wondered if they decided to assign the penalty at 12 because he requested relief on 10 and then hit his ball right over the tower.  He was fully entitled to relief but I think the commentators were even a bit shocked he put the ball right over the top of the tower even though with relief he had other angles to the green.  

Oakmont is the sight of the most famous drop because of the TV tower of all time. Ernie Els hit his opening drive in the 3 man playoff in the deep deep rough, claimed he couldn't hit the green because of a TV tower got a drop and when on to win the US Open. Thing is, right after they finished the first hole the tower which was one of those mobile towers drove off. They could have just asked the truck to move. 

I could see a scenario where in the deep rough he might not know where the ball was going to go. He might take a hack hit it fat and hit the tower. After the drop he knew he could get enough club on the ball to take it over the tower. So I have no issue with the drop. 

I know the idea is that the golfer should be punished for a bad drive, but watch the 2008 US Open Tiger drove it all over the damn place and because it was so bad he would often end up on the trampled down area where the spectators were walking. So in some sense he was better off missing really bad rather than just missing bad. I view the drop DJ got in the same manor. He should have been punished, but wasn't because of good luck.

[No Mulligans]

As I rethink this...

Dustin won so the penalty not being assessed until after the round by definition didn't hurt him.

Therefore win vs. not winning are the choices here.  Given a different set of circumstances, i.e. he was immediately informed of the penalty, he couldn't do better than he did, winning.  Therefore the possible outcomes would be some % (less than a 100%) of winning and some % of not winning.  Therefore in hind-site, I agree with:

 

On 6/20/2016 at 8:42 AM, david_wedzik said:

Hear me out.

...

In other words, DJ might have LOST the U.S. Open if he had been assessed a penalty at the 5th hole instead of after he'd won by 3/4.

 

[iacas]

14 hours ago, newtogolf said:

It seemed so trivial and petty that I actually wondered if they decided to assign the penalty at 12 because he requested relief on 10 and then hit his ball right over the tower.  He was fully entitled to relief but I think the commentators were even a bit shocked he put the ball right over the top of the tower even though with relief he had other angles to the green.  

Wow.

That's some record level cynicism or something there…

[boogielicious]

16 hours ago, mchepp said:

Oakmont is the sight of the most famous drop because of the TV tower of all time. Ernie Els hit his opening drive in the 3 man playoff in the deep deep rough, claimed he couldn't hit the green because of a TV tower got a drop and when on to win the US Open. Thing is, right after they finished the first hole the tower which was one of those mobile towers drove off. They could have just asked the truck to move. 

I could see a scenario where in the deep rough he might not know where the ball was going to go. He might take a hack hit it fat and hit the tower. After the drop he knew he could get enough club on the ball to take it over the tower. So I have no issue with the drop. 

I know the idea is that the golfer should be punished for a bad drive, but watch the 2008 US Open Tiger drove it all over the damn place and because it was so bad he would often end up on the trampled down area where the spectators were walking. So in some sense he was better off missing really bad rather than just missing bad. I view the drop DJ got in the same manor. He should have been punished, but wasn't because of good luck.

I wish that would happen to me sometimes? Seems like when I miss the fairway, it is always behind a tree of blocked off!

[newtogolf]

23 hours ago, iacas said:

Wow.

That's some record level cynicism or something there…

Maybe, but officials are always trying to even out bad calls in every sport.  We will just have to agree to disagree that the USGA messed up and shouldn't have penalized DJ after he was told to replace the ball and putt it by the RO.  

[iacas]

On June 22, 2016 at 11:07 PM, newtogolf said:

Maybe, but officials are always trying to even out bad calls in every sport.

No.

On June 22, 2016 at 11:07 PM, newtogolf said:

We will just have to agree to disagree that the USGA messed up and shouldn't have penalized DJ after he was told to replace the ball and putt it by the RO.  

It's quite literally a Decision. Look up 34-3/7.

Also, the original RO screwed up, big time. I've said this repeatedly.