Jason Day's Bad Drops at Firestone

[newtogolf]

4 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

Agree, but I think the better way to clean it up is to not worry about being so precise with the interpretation.  As far as I've heard, the players and the referee seemed to have no problem with it, only some people on this forum.

Heck, if we are going to be so pedantic and take things so literally, I can also point out that the rule does not specify whose shoulder is being talked about.  It just says "shoulder height" knowing full well that that means something different to every player.  But it doesn't say "your" shoulder height, or "your FC's shoulder height."  Additionally, there is also no clarification as to exactly which part of the shoulder we're talking about, and since most of us are not doctors or anatomy experts, we wouldn't be expected to know if they mean a certain part of the clavicle, or the trap muscle, or whatever.

I was going to point out the same thing that shoulder height isn't the same for everyone.  Does a taller or shorter golfer gain an advantage from the rule?  

[Asheville]

In my very first PGA/USGA Rules Workshop some years ago, one of the things said to us by John Vander Borght, now the USGA's Director of Rules Communication, during the first hour on the first morning was, "The Rules of Golf are verbally efficient and gramatically correct." 

[Gunther]

4 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

 

Also ...

I always knew that Tiger Woods fellow was a cheater!

[Asheville]

1 minute ago, Gunther said:

I always knew that Tiger Woods fellow was a cheater!

Your comment says way more about you than it does about the player. 

[Gunther]

33 minutes ago, Asheville said:

Your comment says way more about you than it does about the player. 

Lol.  It was a joke bud.

[Asheville]

27 minutes ago, Gunther said:

Lol.  It was a joke bud.

Fair enough. 

[natureboy]

1 hour ago, newtogolf said:

I was going to point out the same thing that shoulder height isn't the same for everyone.  Does a taller or shorter golfer gain an advantage from the rule?  

It probably depends on the lie and what surrounds it. I don't think the course conditions are universal enough to say whether taller / shorter has an advantage. Depends on what the most common drop scenario is. Would it be in deep rough? If so, is lower or higher an advantage for getting a perched lie?

If there's a slope and a potentially better lie or clearer shot in the direction the slope is angled then a higher arm than normal may help you get there, while if there's junk close to where the ball will hit the course a lower than normal arm may help you stay out of it.

It would seem the intention of the 'same' arm height is that by keeping that constant, the varying conditions / context for the drop will vary over time, but no situational advantage can be sought.

[Fourputt]

1 hour ago, newtogolf said:

I was going to point out the same thing that shoulder height isn't the same for everyone.  Does a taller or shorter golfer gain an advantage from the rule?  

That isn't the point.  The point is to establish consistency in dropping for any player from one occasion to the next.  It is intended to prevent a player from changing the potential result by dropping higher or lower depending on his perceived need at the time.  It doesn't matter if the player is 4 feet tall or 7 feet tall, his drops will fall from the same height every time if he follows the rule as it is written.  It's designed to minimize the player's opportunity to manipulate the outcome when dropping.

[iacas]

Oh my.

It's not even being pedantic to say that they should add "must" to each clause. It's wrong and needlessly lengthens things for no gain whatsoever. There's only one to correctly interpret the phrase: must applies to all items in the list, whether bulleted or separated with commas.

And Drew, as I said, players are given a range. JDay was well outside that range, per every rules instructor I've ever known. You don't need to specify a point on the shoulder because the entire shoulder is within the range.

Players are already given plenty of benefit of doubt. Just not so much that JDay shouldn't have gotten to do that without redropping.

[Golfingdad]

23 minutes ago, iacas said:

And Drew, as I said, players are given a range. JDay was well outside that range, per every rules instructor I've ever known. You don't need to specify a point on the shoulder because the entire shoulder is within the range.

Oh, I didn't realize that.  Where in the rule is the range listed?

Also, do Bubba, JB, and Tiger fall within that range, or are they beyond it as well?

[iacas]

25 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

Oh, I didn't realize that.  Where in the rule is the range listed?

It's not listed, and you know that. But Jason is well outside the allowable range.

As for the other players, Bubba hasn't dropped yet, and the other two players have already dropped, and their hand may have moved.

None of them appear to be as far from perfectly shoulder height (arms pretty much horizontal) as Jason Day.

On July 4, 2016 at 5:55 PM, iacas said:

There's no specific range, but examples of drops "too high" and "too low" were given. Jason's dropping from well above the "too high" example.

I bolded what I wrote up there before, too, because it apparently bears repeating.

Even if you use the yellow lines as a rough idea of "shoulder height" (different referees will be slightly different, but virtually all will be very close to those lines)… Jason Day is well, well outside of that zone. If he dropped from there, that's almost above his head.

I'd have made Jason Day re-drop, and do so properly. There's no penalty unless the player plays it, and there was no penalty for JD because the rules officially basically gave it the okay.

I would not have. I think PGA Tour officials are sometimes a bit lax, because ultimately they work for the players.

[Hardspoon]

He must stand erect, hold the ball at shoulder height and arm's length and drop it.

This entire thread would be much more entertaining if we were arguing about whether he was fully erect when he dropped.

 

[Golfingdad]

7 minutes ago, iacas said:

It's not listed,

I'm a little perplexed by this one.  How is it a rule if it's not in the rules?

7 minutes ago, iacas said:

As for the other players, Bubba hasn't dropped yet, and the other two players have already dropped, and their hand may have moved.

In the pictures on this thread, Day has already dropped as well - maybe his hand also moved up.

9 minutes ago, iacas said:

...(arms pretty much horizontal) ...

Hmmm, we have some pretty different definitions of what horizontal means then.

4 minutes ago, Hardspoon said:

He must stand erect, hold the ball at shoulder height and arm's length and drop it.

This entire thread would be much more entertaining if we were arguing about whether he was fully erect when he dropped.

 

LOL, that would be more entertaining.  Also, his fingers are slightly curled, so I don't know if that is technically "arms length?" 

[Fourputt]

24 minutes ago, iacas said:

I would not have. I think PGA Tour officials are sometimes a bit lax, because ultimately they work for the players.

Yep.  An obvious conflict of interest.

13 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

I'm a little perplexed by this one.  How is it a rule if it's not in the rules?

In the pictures on this thread, Day has already dropped as well - maybe his hand also moved up.

Hmmm, we have some pretty different definitions of what horizontal means then.

LOL, that would be more entertaining.  Also, his fingers are slightly curled, so I don't know if that is technically "arms length?" 

I don't know if you really don't know or if you are just being a smartass.  Logically, shoulder height would be from the top of the shoulder to the bottom of the shoulder blade.  What is basically being said is that the arm should be held straight out from the shoulder, parallel to the ground.  If the player does that, then he would be within the range that the rules specify.  Not one of the photos above is parallel.  

Since the Tour lets them get away with it, amateurs think that they should get to do it wrong too.  If I'm refereeing, it won't happen.

[iacas]

50 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

I'm a little perplexed by this one.  How is it a rule if it's not in the rules?

The rule says "shoulder height." The range isn't defined specifically because, like many things in golf, we don't need to bust out rulers and super carefully define everything. We get to use a little common sense and, because you can just re-drop without any penalty at all… just re-drop if it's close to being outside the range, this time with care taken to be closer to horizontal.

Jason Day is well outside the range.

50 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

In the pictures on this thread, Day has already dropped as well - maybe his hand also moved up.

Maybe. I didn't watch. I'm just saying that if his hand stayed in the same place, he didn't drop from "shoulder height." He's farther outside the range than the other players, at least one of whom hadn't dropped yet.

50 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

Hmmm, we have some pretty different definitions of what horizontal means then.

Huh?

I said horizontal was what I might call "exactly" shoulder height, and then said that Jason Day appears to be significantly farther from that than the other players. Rules officials allow a range above and below horizontal.

31 minutes ago, Fourputt said:

I don't know if you really don't know or if you are just being a smartass.  Logically, shoulder height would be from the top of the shoulder to the bottom of the shoulder blade.  What is basically being said is that the arm should be held straight out from the shoulder, parallel to the ground.  If the player does that, then he would be within the range that the rules specify.  Not one of the photos above is parallel.  

Since the Tour lets them get away with it, amateurs think that they should get to do it wrong too.  If I'm refereeing, it won't happen.

I feel similarly.

I'd have likely had the players re-drop. I would probably define the allowable range to be pretty small.

The examples of "unacceptable drops" given in my last workshop were not even as far off as JD's drop appears to be in the images posted.

[Missouri Swede]

59 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

In the pictures on this thread, Day has already dropped as well - maybe his hand also moved up.

I posted the screenshots of Day. Both pics are before he dropped the ball.