8 Shot Penalty for Ben Crane, Sabbatini Disqualified

[Vinsk]

http://www.pga.com/news/golf-buzz/stickers-two-clubs-lead-eight-shot-penalty-ben-crane

I find this pretty ridiculous.

 

[Lihu]

2 minutes ago, Vinsk said:

http://www.pga.com/news/golf-buzz/stickers-two-clubs-lead-eight-shot-penalty-ben-crane

I find this pretty ridiculous.

Agree, and ouch! But a rule is a rule. . .

[NM Golf]

So I looked up this rule:

The part I wonder about is were the stickers on there for the purpose of influencing the movement of the ball? If I read the rule correctly then you could have a sticker on the face as long as the purpose wasn't to influence the movement of the ball. I wonder what the sticker was exactly?

[Shindig]

Ouch.  Remember when Johnny Miller got penalized for having a 15th club -- a kid's iron he had forgotten to remove, it was buried in the bag.  But a club's a club... 

 

Anyway, leave it to Ben Crane to be penalized for a sticker and not for slow play. 

[Lihu]

6 minutes ago, NM Golf said:

So I looked up this rule:

The part I wonder about is were the stickers on there for the purpose of influencing the movement of the ball? If I read the rule correctly then you could have a sticker on the face as long as the purpose wasn't to influence the movement of the ball. I wonder what the sticker was exactly?

Guessing a bunch of tiny reflective dots for his GC2 system to measure club face characteristics. They are not in any way near where he strikes the ball.

However, they might think that he uses them as an aid?

Edited September 15, 2017 by Lihu

[iacas]

26 minutes ago, Vinsk said:

http://www.pga.com/news/golf-buzz/stickers-two-clubs-lead-eight-shot-penalty-ben-crane

I find this pretty ridiculous.

Why? Rule 4-2b says you can't put anything on the face for the purpose of altering the movement of the ball.

The rule could be worded better, but how it is interpreted by rules officials is that if the thing on the face is still there, it can alter the movement of the ball. You don't get to put vaseline on your clubface and just say "oh, the purpose is to reduce glare."

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/ben-crane-handled-an-eight-stroke-penalty-better-than-you-would-have

If Ben had stickers on the back of his iron, or the top of his driver, he'd be fine. That's why lead tape is legal.

[onthehunt526]

29 minutes ago, iacas said:

Why? Rule 4-2b says you can't put anything on the face for the purpose of altering the movement of the ball.

The rule could be worded better, but how it is interpreted by rules officials is that if the thing on the face is still there, it can alter the movement of the ball. You don't get to put vaseline on your clubface and just say "oh, the purpose is to reduce glare."

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/ben-crane-handled-an-eight-stroke-penalty-better-than-you-would-have

If Ben had stickers on the back of his iron, or the top of his driver, he'd be fine. That's why lead tape is legal.

Probably the HMT stickers for use with the GC Quad... 

So @iacas, if someone wanted to be a dick and you had a weighted training club in your bag, they could rule you have a non-conforming club in your bag?

[Vinsk]

 Ben stated he had the stickers for purposes of measuring with his TracMan data. How are the stickers altering the ball flight? He hadn't even used the clubs either. I get what you say @iacas but this is the kind of pettiness that turns people away from golf. 'Ben, take those stickers off your clubs.' Ok. Done. To receive 8 strokes pretty much finishing your hopes on the tournament because you had a sticker that cannot by any intelligence deem to alter the ball flight is asinine. Christ he hadn't even used either club. The stickers were by no means used to alter the ball flight as Ben said. Bernhard simply says 'I'm not anchoring' and all is done with. Well Ben stated they were not used to alter ball flight. Again, he should've been asked to remove them since they had (complete speculation) an assumption it altered the ball flight. And, he had not used either club. Remove stickers and play on. What advantage did he receive by having a micro gram sticker on 2 clubs he didn't use?

[onthehunt526]

The head-measuring technology stickers do not effect ball flight at all... As a matter of fact, they don't even go on the hitting area. Just the edges. 

[Vinsk]

My little boy put a gold star on my driver face for good luck. I used my 3W on the first tee. Come the second hole I pulled off my head cover, saw the sticker and knew who it came from. I peeled it off and put in my pocket....wow...what a disgrace to golf I am...I should've taken penalty strokes and informed my kid I breached the rules and ask that he never do it again. Boy will that get him in love with the game. 

Sorry, the rule decision is petty, asinine and bordering on insanity. Sometimes rules have to be viewed with some common sense and a human touch. 

[Grinde6]

I dont like this call at all.  For a guy that is trying to make a living, assessing him 8 shots worth of penalty strokes for something that isn't going to/didn't give him an advantage since he hadn't even used those 2 clubs is completely ridiculous.  From what I have read the dots are on the edges of the club, and in no way (even if he had used them) would affect his ball flight.  Let him take the damn stickers off, and play on.  In a time when we are trying to build

1 hour ago, iacas said:

Why? Rule 4-2b says you can't put anything on the face for the purpose of altering the movement of the ball.

The rule could be worded better, but how it is interpreted by rules officials is that if the thing on the face is still there, it can alter the movement of the ball. You don't get to put vaseline on your clubface and just say "oh, the purpose is to reduce glare."

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/ben-crane-handled-an-eight-stroke-penalty-better-than-you-would-have

If Ben had stickers on the back of his iron, or the top of his driver, he'd be fine. That's why lead tape is legal.

IMO the Vaseline argument isn't the same, because first off, we all know people use Vaseline to try to cheat to reduce spin...and it is applied directly to the hitting area of the club, these dots were nowhere near the hitting area of the club for a touring professional, or most golfers for that matter as they are applied on the outer edges of the club.  How would they alter the movement of the ball??

[NM Golf]

9 minutes ago, Vinsk said:

Sorry, the rule decision is petty, asinine and bordering on insanity. Sometimes rules have to be viewed with some common sense and a human touch. 

Well, while I have an issue with the wording of this particular rule in this case it is still a rule. Rules cannot all be grey area otherwise they aren't rules. I would like this ruling much better if it just said you can't have any foreign substance on the club face, and left it at that. Once you add "for the purpose of altering the movement of the ball." you open it up to more interpretation, which IMHO is a bad thing.

[onthehunt526]

If they were HMT stickers, they don't alter the movement of the ball, they measure where the club is.

[iacas]

1 hour ago, onthehunt526 said:

So @iacas, if someone wanted to be a dick and you had a weighted training club in your bag, they could rule you have a non-conforming club in your bag?

Yeah. That's exactly what it is.

1 hour ago, Vinsk said:

Ben stated he had the stickers for purposes of measuring with his TracMan data. How are the stickers altering the ball flight? He hadn't even used the clubs either.

@Vinsk the stickers could easily affect ball flight.

For the record, too, I think he's using "Trackman" to mean "a launch monitor." Trackman doesn't need stickers on the club.

1 hour ago, Vinsk said:

I get what you say @iacas but this is the kind of pettiness that turns people away from golf.

Bullshit. People reading about this are way too far into golf to be turned away by this.

1 hour ago, Vinsk said:

To receive 8 strokes pretty much finishing your hopes on the tournament because you had a sticker that cannot by any intelligence deem to alter the ball flight is asinine.

I don't agree. And you may note that the Proposed Rules carry this one through.

I could see them changing the rule (even for 2019) to say there's no penalty for carrying a non-conforming club or a club with stickers on it. For example, you buy a new driver and leave the plastic wrap on it until you get to the second hole because you hit a 3W on the first tee.

But if you put something on your clubface, that's a dangerous area, and the rules rightly IMO are strict here.

1 hour ago, Vinsk said:

The stickers were by no means used to alter the ball flight as Ben said. Bernhard simply says 'I'm not anchoring' and all is done with.

Dude you continue to be a douche about that. It's not just that he "simply says" anything, it's that there's NO PROOF AT ALL that he has anchored. Find something that impugns his integrity. Go ahead. Be my guest.

I filmed a video of @NCGolfer and it's pretty obvious having done so that you can appear to be anchoring but not anchoring at all.

1 hour ago, Vinsk said:

Well Ben stated they were not used to alter ball flight.

He doesn't get to make that determination. "This vaseline? Oh, it's intended to reduce glare, not change my ball flight."

1 hour ago, Vinsk said:

Again, he should've been asked to remove them since they had (complete speculation) an assumption it altered the ball flight.

No, he shouldn't have. That's not what the rule is.

Rules, as written, need to be enforced. You can't just make new shit up on the spot because something doesn't feel right.

You can propose, perhaps for 2019, that they allow you to correct such a situation prior to using the club, like you can if you notice your driver head is loose at the adjustable hosel (which can be done at any point, of course).

But the rules can't be made up on the fly.

1 hour ago, Vinsk said:

What advantage did he receive by having a micro gram sticker on 2 clubs he didn't use?

Why don't you ever seem to get that it's not about one particular case, and that the Rules would be thousands of pages long if they tried to classify "how much of a sticker" you could put on the club, how close to the hitting area it could be, the skill level of the golfer in question (because poorer golfers hit it all over the face), etc.?

The Rules have to apply generally, because to apply them super-specifically as you want would open up a TON of ****ing loopholes and lead to mass confusion, mis-application, different applications to similar (or even identical, since the ROs may be different) situations… It's be a ****ing wreck.

1 hour ago, onthehunt526 said:

The head-measuring technology stickers do not effect ball flight at all...

Yeah they do.

35 minutes ago, Vinsk said:

My little boy put a gold star on my driver face for good luck. I used my 3W on the first tee. Come the second hole I pulled off my head cover, saw the sticker and knew who it came from. I peeled it off and put in my pocket....wow...what a disgrace to golf I am...I should've taken penalty strokes and informed my kid I breached the rules and ask that he never do it again. Boy will that get him in love with the game.

Nobody's saying shit like that.

But you did violate the rules as written.

Like I said, I could see changing them to allow for removing the sticker or whatever before using that club. But that's not the rule as currently written, and as such, it has to be enforced.

35 minutes ago, Vinsk said:

Sorry, the rule decision is petty, asinine and bordering on insanity. Sometimes rules have to be viewed with some common sense and a human touch. 

Okay, so I should just be allowed to put sandpaper on the sides of my club, in the chrome area. And just say "oh, I don't intend to hit the ball there." But if I happen to, accidentally, when I'm short-sided and really want a lot of spin… well that's okay, right?

C'mon, @Vinsk.

23 minutes ago, Grinde6 said:

For a guy that is trying to make a living, assessing him 8 shots worth of penalty strokes for something that isn't going to/didn't give him an advantage since he hadn't even used those 2 clubs is completely ridiculous.

Then support changing the rule based on the fact that he hadn't used the club yet. Because eliminating the restriction from applying things to your clubface is not going to happen.

23 minutes ago, Grinde6 said:

From what I have read the dots are on the edges of the club, and in no way (even if he had used them) would affect his ball flight.

They do.

23 minutes ago, Grinde6 said:

Let him take the damn stickers off, and play on.

Can't. Not the way the rules are currently written.

23 minutes ago, Grinde6 said:

IMO the Vaseline argument isn't the same, because first off, we all know people use Vaseline to try to cheat to reduce spin...and it is applied directly to the hitting area of the club, these dots were nowhere near the hitting area of the club for a touring professional, or most golfers for that matter as they are applied on the outer edges of the club.  How would they alter the movement of the ball??

By affecting the performance characteristics of the golf ball.

Hey, pros never shank, right?

The vaseline argument is perfectly sound. It's the same exact rule, with the same consequences, and the same logic.

The rules cannot get into trying to assess the likelihood of a pro hitting a sticker on a clubface. Pros have whiffed. Pros have shanked, topped, and hit all sorts of horrible shots. Nor can you define clearly how good you have to be to have stickers, or define a three-dimensional system for determine what will and won't affect the performance of the club, with the factors being golfer skill, what material it is, and where it's placed on the clubface.

What people fail to understand about that I don't know. It's really freaking simple.

4 minutes ago, onthehunt526 said:

If they were HMT stickers, they don't alter the movement of the ball, they measure where the club is.

Incorrect. Stickers can affect the movement of the ball.

I understand what you're saying… but put a bunch of them over the center of the face and, well, guess what: the performance of the ball is going to be altered.

Put one there and the performance isn't altered much, no. Of course not.

But now you're trying to define how much of a performance change is acceptable. It makes a HELL of a lot more sense to just say "none" rather than to try to define how much is okay.

---

Two things, in summary:

• I'd be on board with changing the rule to say that if you haven't used the club, fine. You're allowed to spit on your club or even use soap to clean your club, but you have to wipe it away completley before you hit a shot with it.
• Too many people seemingly want to make up rules on the spot based on whether they think it's fair. That will never really work. Did Ben Crane get boned? Yeah. Does that mean the rule itself is bad? Absolutely not.

[Golfingdad]

1 hour ago, Vinsk said:

 Ben stated he had the stickers for purposes of measuring with his TracMan data. How are the stickers altering the ball flight? He hadn't even used the clubs either. I get what you say @iacas but this is the kind of pettiness that turns people away from golf. 'Ben, take those stickers off your clubs.' Ok. Done. To receive 8 strokes pretty much finishing your hopes on the tournament because you had a sticker that cannot by any intelligence deem to alter the ball flight is asinine. Christ he hadn't even used either club. The stickers were by no means used to alter the ball flight as Ben said. Bernhard simply says 'I'm not anchoring' and all is done with. Well Ben stated they were not used to alter ball flight. Again, he should've been asked to remove them since they had (complete speculation) an assumption it altered the ball flight. And, he had not used either club. Remove stickers and play on. What advantage did he receive by having a micro gram sticker on 2 clubs he didn't use?

I agree, mainly with the bold.  The application of this rule seems to fall more in line with carrying 15 clubs rather than using a bent club, but it should probably be the other way around.  If you're carrying 15 clubs, then it makes sense to penalize right off the bat because there's absolutely no way to discern which club was the "15th."  But if a club is accidentally altered prior to use then its easily correctable and shouldn't have to be a penalty.

However, that doesn't seem to be how the rule is currently written, so as it is, they really couldn't have done anything else about it other than apply the penalty and make a note to look into changing it in the future.

[Vinsk]

@iacas you repeatedly use examples that EVERYONE knows affect the ball flight. What is the purpose of putting stickers on your club face edges for ball monitoring if the stickers themselves affect the ball flight? 

Your anchoring experiment is worthless. You can also BE anchoring and appear not to be...it's only possibly detectable some of the time. Grey rule with zero accountability. Besides, the USGA didn't conduct an experiment..they simply 'talked' to Bernhard and you agreed that was enough for you.

The rule has the phrase "with the purpose of altering the ball flight." There is no common knowledge that those stickers outside the hitting face alter the ball flight. Sand paper and Vasoline are poor examples in this case period.

 

[Alx]

1 hour ago, Vinsk said:

My little boy put a gold star on my driver face for good luck. I used my 3W on the first tee. Come the second hole I pulled off my head cover, saw the sticker and knew who it came from. I peeled it off and put in my pocket....wow...what a disgrace to golf I am...I should've taken penalty strokes and informed my kid I breached the rules and ask that he never do it again. Boy will that get him in love with the game. 

Sorry, the rule decision is petty, asinine and bordering on insanity. Sometimes rules have to be viewed with some common sense and a human touch. 

+1.

Nonsense like this is the reason golf has an uptight and elitist image...

[Ernest Jones]

8 strokes is a stiff penalty, but at the end of the day, it's an Idiot Tax. Next time don't enter a tournament with stickers on your club face. Sucks for Ben, but the rules are the rules and you can't get wishy-washy with their application or it gets into being an endless debate as to when it applies - divots as GUR anyone?