New Rules for Video Call-Ins

[iacas]

I’m attending a PGA thing but I’m really sad to see that we continue to coddle professionals who should know and play by the Rules.

I have a lot more to say but it’ll have to wait. I’m likely in the minority, too, but I’m okay with that.

[Ty_Webb]

What are the new rules? I think if you're a professional golfer, you should know the rules and personally, if it came to light that I had broken the rules and should get a penalty, then I would want that to be enforced. I think it's ridiculous that you could get into a situation where a player broke the rules and wins a tournament they shouldn't have won. I think that would make a mockery of the game. If that's what this is about, which I infer is the case from what you said, that's ridiculous. Don't break the rules and you have nothing to worry about from video call-ins.

[iacas]

Just now, Ty_Webb said:

I think that would make a mockery of the game. If that's what this is about, which I infer is the case from what you said, that's ridiculous.

That's exactly what could happen here. In multiple ways.

They've also agreed to ditch the additional 2-stroke penalty for a penalty the player "didn't know about."

http://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/articles/2017/12/local-rule--new-video-review-protocols-introduced-for-2018.html

Quote

“We have concluded that whilst players should continue to be penalized for all breaches of the Rules during a competition, including any that come to light after the score card is returned, an additional penalty for the score card error is not required.”

What, then, is the incentive to get the scorecard right? Only recently this was a straight out DQ. Now there's not any penalty at all!

[saevel25]

I can see both sides of this. I am of the opinion that the PGA Tour players should be responsible for knowing the rules. I have no issue with the rules officials being tipped off by people who see a violation on their TV and report it.

[iacas]

3 minutes ago, saevel25 said:

I can see both sides of this. I am of the opinion that the PGA Tour players should be responsible for knowing the rules. I have no issue with the rules officials being tipped off by people who see a violation on their TV and report it.

Right. It's not like a rules infraction can be called only because someone calls in. They have to be able to say definitively "yeah, we were alerted to this infraction, which we then saw and verified actually occurred."

People couldn't call in and have a player penalized on their word.

[Ty_Webb]

8 minutes ago, iacas said:

What, then, is the incentive to get the scorecard right? Only recently this was a straight out DQ. Now there's not any penalty at all!

Exactly. If you're putting and you see the ball move a fraction, you can carry on as if it didn't happen, sign your card merrily and if someone notices it, you get the penalty you would have got if you called it out yourself. That's encouraging people to cheat IMO. 

[billchao]

12 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

Exactly. If you're putting and you see the ball move a fraction, you can carry on as if it didn't happen, sign your card merrily and if someone notices it, you get the penalty you would have got if you called it out yourself. That's encouraging people to cheat IMO. 

I agree. If there's no additional penalty, people will be incentivized to try and get away with infractions. They'll have nothing to lose.

[iacas]

24 minutes ago, billchao said:

I agree. If there's no additional penalty, people will be incentivized to try and get away with infractions. They'll have nothing to lose.

People will counter with "but their honor and integrity will stop them," to which I'd counter with all of the recent examples of people who don't know the rules or who say "I didn't intend to step on that divot" (though he clearly did), or whatever.

After all, too, if you're ignorant to the rules you it's not about your honesty or integrity.

[Jack Watson]

Great to see that the USGA and RA came to their senses!

 

[Groucho Valentine]

Allowing spectators to call in penalties on participants after the fact is the real mockery. That crap needs to end. I don't know if the solution the governing bodies came up with is going to be any better, but it doesn't appear to be.  The local rule thing about players being unaware of infractions isn't going to be a big deal. Unless people think it will result in a scourge of players moving their balls fractions of an inch or brushing grains of sand in hazards during their backswings... 

[iacas]

5 minutes ago, Groucho Valentine said:

Allowing spectators to call in penalties on participants after the fact is the real mockery. That crap needs to end.

Still disagree.

I don't care who sees an infraction; if a player breaches the rules, they should be penalized. Ignorance will now be rewarded and we may find ourselves in a situation where a player commits a breach, the world at large sees it, but they're not penalized. Maybe they even win the event… all while having breached the rules.

5 minutes ago, Groucho Valentine said:

The local rule thing about players being unaware of infractions isn't going to be a big deal. Unless people think it will result in a scourge of players moving their balls fractions of an inch or brushing grains of sand in hazards during their backswings... 

It's not about that, and that's an incredibly short-sighted view of this.

[Ty_Webb]

13 minutes ago, Groucho Valentine said:

Allowing spectators to call in penalties on participants after the fact is the real mockery. That crap needs to end. I don't know if the solution the governing bodies came up with is going to be any better, but it doesn't appear to be.  The local rule thing about players being unaware of infractions isn't going to be a big deal. Unless people think it will result in a scourge of players moving their balls fractions of an inch or brushing grains of sand in hazards during their backswings... 

Let's envisage a scenario. Player A is playing in the Masters. He hits his drive on 13 in round one to the right into the pine straw. He moves a clump of pine straw behind the ball and the ball moves a fraction. Not a lot. Not enough that it's obvious, but enough that if the player had been looking at the ball they would have seen it. But he wasn't looking and neither was anyone else. It's on camera though. They show it once on the broadcast and the ref who is watching the broadcast chooses that moment to sneeze, so he misses it too.

Player plays on and marks his card at the end of the day. Signs it and hands it in. Next day, someone has DVR'd the broadcast and they watch it. They see the ball move. They go on twitter and tweet to the golf channel that the ball moved. The golf channel runs with it and it's broadcast over and over again. They get a rules official to come in and take a look at it. Rules official says "well, that ball clearly moved and he should have been penalized, but because it was only discovered by someone at home, we're not going to apply the penalty".

Player A goes on to win the tournament by one. He shouldn't have because he broke the rules and should have been penalized for it.

Bottom line is the wrong person won the tournament. How is that a good thing?

[saevel25]

I don't get why people want to protect Tour players not knowing the rules. Shouldn't a prerequisite for being a PGA Tour player is knowing the rules of the game you are playing! There is no other sport that allows ignorance as a way to get out of a penalty being enforced.

[Groucho Valentine]

3 minutes ago, iacas said:

Still disagree.

I don't care who sees an infraction; if a player breaches the rules, they should be penalized. Ignorance will now be rewarded and we may find ourselves in a situation where a player commits a breach, the world at large sees it, but they're not penalized. Maybe they even win the event… all while having breached the rules.

It's not about that, and that's an incredibly short-sighted view of this.

I cant recall a situation of a video call in resulting in somebody that was outright cheating getting caught. Its always been somebody who had a ball move a dimple width while addressing it, or somebody brushing a leaf of grass or something in a hazard, stuff like that. All the while slowing it down and zooming in HD to a degree thats imperceptible to the human eye, then inferring the player is a cheater for not "calling it on himself". Bullshit. Pure bullshit. Rules officials do travel with most groups, and do a fine job 99% of the time. The onus should be on them, not spectators sitting on couches at home.  I think the other ruling is linked to the video thing, so players dont get thrown out of tournaments 24 hours after the fact. 

[Ty_Webb]

Just now, saevel25 said:

I don't get why people want to protect Tour players not knowing the rules. Shouldn't a prerequisite for being a PGA Tour player is knowing the rules of the game you are playing! There is no other sport that allows ignorance as a way to get out of a penalty being enforced.

There are plenty of other games that allow people to get away with infractions if they manage to carry them out without the referee noticing. Personally I don't want my game to be like those other games. Apparently that is not a universal opinion though.

[saevel25]

1 minute ago, Ty_Webb said:

There are plenty of other games that allow people to get away with infractions if they manage to carry them out without the referee noticing.

That isn't what I said. I said, golfers getting away with violating the rules by claiming ignorance.

[Ty_Webb]

3 minutes ago, saevel25 said:

That isn't what I said. I said, golfers getting away with violating the rules by claiming ignorance.

Oh I know - I was building off what you said, not contradicting it. I agree with you 100%.

[Groucho Valentine]

2 minutes ago, saevel25 said:

I don't get why people want to protect Tour players not knowing the rules. Shouldn't a prerequisite for being a PGA Tour player is knowing the rules of the game you are playing! There is no other sport that allows ignorance as a way to get out of a penalty being enforced.

No other professional sport has this puritanical belief that requires its participants to be fully versed on the minutia of its rules like golf does. The rules of golf reads like a legal document, not a guide on how to play. The players are there to play, not to be aware of rule 13-4 subsection 2. The basic rules of golf are probably followed 99.9%  of the time on tour like they are on any other competition level of golf. I never hear about somebody just outright cheating in a USGA qualifier, or amateur tourney or even a club level tournament.