My Top 10 Rulings

Mak Lok-lin, fresh from his latest golfing disaster, remembers the times when the Rules (or the interpretation of them) either helped or hindered the world’s finest players

2 Craig Stadler
1987 Andy Williams Open
Torrey Pines Golf Course

At the final hole of the delightfully named Shearson Lehman Brothers Andy Williams Open in 1987, 1982 Masters champion Craig Stadler tapped in his final putt and waved to the crowd, believing his 10-under-par total of 270 may not have caught George Burns, who won by four shots, but might be enough to pip JC Snead and Bobby Wadkins for second place and a useful $50,000 cheque.
However, when he went to the tent to sign for his score, he was told he was being disqualified for signing an incorrect scorecard the previous day. When hearing this, many think of Roberto de Vicenzo missing out on a Masters playoff by not noticing a scoring transposition. However in Stadler’s case, as in many others, the real reason was a ridiculously belated imposition of a penalty. He was being penalized for an incident 26 hours before, during his third round, when he had knocked his ball into mud under a tree on the 14th hole. He resourcefully played his shot while kneeling down, but to avoid staining his trousers, he placed a towel on the ground first.
No one said a thing at the time, or indeed for another day, until someone watching a highlights show spotted the incident and reported it to PGA officials. Unlike every other sport on earth, golf allows anyone with an opinion to suggest that players have broken the rules. In many cases, where video exists, it is played and replayed ad nauseum to determine if a rule has been broken. Again, no other sport would dream of doing this. Finally, there is seemingly no hesitation to go back in time to impose penalties and disqualify players, when there is no suggestion that they, or the rules officials accompanying them, had any idea a rule had been infringed. Again, no other sport would dream of doing this. Golf badly needs a set of guidelines relating to incidents such as these.
What made Stadler’s situation worse was that it wasn’t clear that he had actually broken a rule at all. He was accused of “building a stance”, a two-stroke penalty under Rule 13-3, a rule intended to stop players “manipulating their surroundings so as to improve their footing before a hit.” Keeping one’s trousers clean is hardly improving one’s footing. Craig had the last laugh, however, when he was invited back ten years later to cut down the offending tree.

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