New Rules for Video Call-Ins

[dennyjones]

On 12/15/2017 at 10:33 AM, NM Golf said:

For those of you who say her reaction was not that of a cheater, please remember she is a woman therefor by nature she is a skilled deceiver and master manipulator

I wouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole...my wife would beat me to death.   

[David in FL]

46 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

Bingo. I'm amazed how many people think this is good. This place is reasonably level-headed, but I've been having this conversation elsewhere and it's very much weighted towards this being a good thing. I don't get it.

 

For the same reason most people would agree if you said no puppies should ever be euthanized...

Because:

a)  It sounds reasonable, and

b)  They don't completely understand the issue and consequences.

[rehmwa]

1 hour ago, Hardluckster said:

where there is an attempt to find reasoning to excuse actions rather than to hold individuals accountable

the mirror to your note there is the knee jerk reaction to blame and villify individuals without thought - with a 2ndary problem resulting in whenever someone tries to understand an action they are immediately accused of being an apologist for that action - a really lazy strawman, frankly which appeals to emotion and attempts to avoid discussion by putting others on the defense rather than engage in debate.  Which I think is a much bigger problem than your statement - in general

We have a world where 'understanding' is wrongly considered to be 'agreeing' or 'advocating'.  One can understand another without automatically agreeing with them.  in fact, one can understand another and completely disagree.   Frankly, one should understand them else they are not qualified to judge them either.

I think the reasonable position is in the middle - attempt to find reasoning to 'understand' actions, 'while' holding individual accountable regardless.  So trying to understand another (sincerely from THEIR viewpoint), acknowledging that they have good intentions, and not strawmanning their arguments - even when you oppose them - is the basis for productive dialogue.  Sadly, we rarely meet one of these criteria today, let alone all three.  mainly because the goal has become 'win at any cost' instead of clarity of understanding.

I suspect we are going off topic here and getting more generalized to societal norms of today

Edited December 19, 2017 by rehmwa

[iacas]

Just now, rehmwa said:

I suspect we are going off topic here and getting more generalized to societal norms of today

Yep.

It felt too vague to mean much of anything, anyway.

[rehmwa]

Just now, iacas said:

It felt too vague to mean much of anything, anyway.

thanks so much

[iacas]

1 minute ago, rehmwa said:

thanks so much

You're welcome. Be more specific. That wall of words said very little and left plenty of room to just say "that's not what I was saying." I've not seen strawmanning. I've seen some lack of "understanding" but it's mostly been from the knee-jerk "Lexi shouldn't have been penalized! That's unfair!" crowd.

So, as always, if you have something to say here, say it. Be specific about it. Call out the ideas you're attacking, or disagreeing with, or commenting upon - directly. Explicitly.

There's no sense in trying to guess at what you're trying to actually say.

[Fourputt]

As an avid supporter of the Rules for 30 years now, I find this entire discussion disheartening.  One prime tenet of the rules has always put the responsibility for rules knowledge on the player.  In my opinion, any weakening of that stipulation weakens the fabric of the game itself.  To do so primarily because of the whining of a few players who are fortunate enough to have so much talent, and so much of the public's eye as a result of that talent, that they can dictate to the rules managers is a sad statement on the proliferation of entitlement in today's society.  They want the money, but they aren't willing to put out even the minuscule effort needed to learn the rules properly and to play the game as it is supposed to be played.  

In my opinion, the game is devolving, not evolving.

[arab_joe]

18 hours ago, iacas said:

It's not the same action. It's two actions in the case of the four-stroke penalty: playing from a wrong place, and an incorrect scorecard.

And HD isn't that important - if you can't see it with the naked eye, it doesn't matter.

I disagree that the signing of an incorrect scorecard is a "new action" - it is inextricably linked to the first.  I would prefer that if any two players in the tournament commit the same breach then, regardless of which hole it is on/what time of day the shots are hit/the player being someone who is on TV more or less (which is essentially down to pure luck and nothing to do with a difference in skill between the players), the penalty is the same.

Who determines what is/is not visible to the naked eye?  I'm assuming that, for example for Lexi Thompson, even though nobody on the ground saw it with their naked eye it was deemed a significant enough move that someone should have been able to see it with their naked eye?

I'm still on the fence - I think ambiguity in the rules is a poor move, but sympathise with people whose breaches were so slight (or were completely accidental) that the only person who noticed was watching slow-motion replays on a 6 foot TV...

[GolfLug]

At the end of the day, it is a choice between more accountability or less. As can be seen from all the discussion neither systems are perfect. But this is a marked shift towards a system of less accountability in the name of fairness to all.

To draw a parallel, IMO this move is equivalent of removing driving speed limits because law enforcement does not have a way to ticket every single offender.

It's like the guy who whines in traffic court as defense that the police officer picked on him and didn't ticket the other hundreds of drivers that passed in plain sight. That guy won - he doesn't have to even go to court anymore. 

Speed away. 

 

[iacas]

3 hours ago, arab_joe said:

I disagree that the signing of an incorrect scorecard is a "new action"

Disagree all you want. It is. This is a simple fact.

If you write down a 4 instead of a 5 or a 6 - for any reason, including that you just forgot that you three-putted that hole - it's a separate action and a separate penalty.

Lexi was penalized under two different rules.

3 hours ago, arab_joe said:

I would prefer that if any two players in the tournament commit the same breach then, regardless of which hole it is on/what time of day the shots are hit/the player being someone who is on TV more or less (which is essentially down to pure luck and nothing to do with a difference in skill between the players), the penalty is the same.

That's exactly how it works now.

Except that Lexi committed two breaches.

This wasn't a case of breaching two rules concurrently and only applying the general penalty to one, or invoking the "no additional penalty" clause found in some Rules.

Until you can understand the fact that Lexi broke TWO rules, at separate times, you will not understand this.

3 hours ago, arab_joe said:

Who determines what is/is not visible to the naked eye?

Kinda off topic for this discussion. Lexi's breach occurred both before the "HD Rule" was put into place (some mistakenly thought it was a reaction to her breach… I think it had WAY more to do with Anna Nordqvist the prior year): http://www.usga.org/articles/2017/04/new-rules-of-golf-decision-limits-use-of-video-review.html . It's 34-3/10.

3 hours ago, arab_joe said:

I'm assuming that, for example for Lexi Thompson, even though nobody on the ground saw it with their naked eye it was deemed a significant enough move that someone should have been able to see it with their naked eye?

Yep. She moved it over 3/4" in about a second. Clearly visible to the naked eye. This wasn't a movement that required zooming or HD or slow-mo. 34-3/10 would not have saved her had it been in place at the time of her infraction.

3 hours ago, arab_joe said:

I'm still on the fence - I think ambiguity in the rules is a poor move, but sympathise with people whose breaches were so slight (or were completely accidental) that the only person who noticed was watching slow-motion replays on a 6 foot TV...

That's not what happened in Lexi's case, nor in Chella Choi's case.

5 minutes ago, GolfLug said:

To draw a parallel, IMO this move is equivalent of removing driving speed limits because law enforcement does not have a way to ticket every single offender.

On first glance and with little consideration, that seems like a somewhat appropriate parallel.

A more appropriate parallel might be that there's a video camera that can issue tickets, but only if you're the only car in its frame otherwise it gets confused. That means only some of the cars going fast can get tickets, but it's still an accurate, correct ticket, as solo cars going the speed limit, or multiple cars going the speed limit, aren't ticketed. It gets us closer to the "truth" but is still not perfect (some cars speeding aren't caught), which seems preferable to me over just not putting up a camera at all and almost encouraging people to speed except for their own eroding self-discipline.

5 minutes ago, GolfLug said:

It's like the guy who whines in traffic court as defense that the police officer picked on him and didn't ticket the other hundreds of drivers that passed in plain sight. That guy won - he doesn't have to even go to court anymore. 

Speed away. 

It's sad.

[iacas]

Alistair Tait: http://golfweek.com/2017/12/19/commentary-stopping-tv-snitches-will-not-end-need-for-in-game-fixes/

Tour pros will spend eight hours a day working on all aspects of their game yet can’t find 10 minutes to read the rules. It’s not as if they don’t have enough down time on flights, in courtesy cars and in hotel rooms. As European Tour chief referee John Paramor once said, even 10 minutes a day learning the Definitions would go a long way toward increasing their knowledge and stopping violations.

Imagine a banker who didn’t know the banking code? A lawyer who didn’t know the law? Yet most tour pros seem quite happy to live in ignorance even though their livelihoods depend on the 34 rules that govern the game.

The European Tour once set up regular rules seminars to teach players. The tour had to cancel them because players weren’t turning up.

[Lihu]

22 minutes ago, iacas said:

Alistair Tait: http://golfweek.com/2017/12/19/commentary-stopping-tv-snitches-will-not-end-need-for-in-game-fixes/

Tour pros will spend eight hours a day working on all aspects of their game yet can’t find 10 minutes to read the rules. It’s not as if they don’t have enough down time on flights, in courtesy cars and in hotel rooms. As European Tour chief referee John Paramor once said, even 10 minutes a day learning the Definitions would go a long way toward increasing their knowledge and stopping violations.

Imagine a banker who didn’t know the banking code? A lawyer who didn’t know the law? Yet most tour pros seem quite happy to live in ignorance even though their livelihoods depend on the 34 rules that govern the game.

The European Tour once set up regular rules seminars to teach players. The tour had to cancel them because players weren’t turning up.

Excellent article.

I still can’t believe people making a living doing something do not know every rule perfectly. 

[iacas]

31 minutes ago, Lihu said:

Excellent article.

I still can’t believe people making a living doing something do not know every rule perfectly. 

They don't have to know EVERY rule PERFECTLY.

But too many don't seem to know even the basic stuff.

[Lihu]

Just now, iacas said:

They don't have to know EVERY rule PERFECTLY.

But too many don't seem to know even the basic stuff.

True, at least that. Still amazed with jaw on floor. 

[rehmwa]

57 minutes ago, iacas said:

The European Tour once set up regular rules seminars to teach players. The tour had to cancel them because players weren’t turning up.

So that's telling.  Seems if the players didn't want to get training on it either: didn't want to bother, or already thought they knew the rules.

The next obvious step for the tour should have been some kind of certification requirement needed for a player to keep his card.  This would be simple - even an on line testout.

If they can require and administrate drug testing, why not a knowledge test?

(normally not necessary, but if they consider the penalty structure itself not sufficient to 'motivate players to be proficient, then they should be duty bound to add a proficiency requirement then....)

[iacas]

1 minute ago, rehmwa said:

So that's telling.  Seems if the players didn't want to get training on it either: didn't want to bother, or already thought they knew the rules.

The next obvious step for the tour should have been some kind of certification requirement needed for a player to keep his card.  This would be simple - even an on line testout.

If they can require and administrate drug testing, why not a knowledge test?

(normally not necessary, but if they consider the penalty structure itself not sufficient to 'motivate players to be proficient, then they should be duty bound to add a proficiency requirement then....)

The thing is… the PGA Tour is player-run. I don't know what the structure of the European Tour is, but on the PGA Tour the players would never really vote for that to be a requirement.

[Fourputt]

4 minutes ago, iacas said:

They don't have to know EVERY rule PERFECTLY.

But too many don't seem to know even the basic stuff.

This^^

Too many times the rule that is breached is in a very common procedural situation, something we all deal with regularly on the course.  Things like Tiger's gaff on 15 at Augusta where he didn't seem to be aware that the requirement to drop in the same spot means exactly that.  DJ touching the sand in a bunker.  Or Lexi spotting the ball nearly an inch away from the correct place, and then seemingly not even accepting the ruling afterward.  Just baffles me.

[Lihu]

23 minutes ago, Fourputt said:

This^^

Too many times the rule that is breached is in a very common procedural situation, something we all deal with regularly on the course.  Things like Tiger's gaff on 15 at Augusta where he didn't seem to be aware that the requirement to drop in the same spot means exactly that.  DJ touching the sand in a bunker.  Or Lexi spotting the ball nearly an inch away from the correct place, and then seemingly not even accepting the ruling afterward.  Just baffles me.

I'd even accept them having to ask a RO to double check stuff. Seems like a more professional thing to do anyway.

Edited December 20, 2017 by Lihu