Way to ruin a sports thread with political speeches.
Close finish and win by Adam Scott. I'm still not convinced that 2-stroke penalty on Woods that ended up costing him the win was legit. I don't think anyone else (not named Woods) would have been penalized. Apparently, they heard him comment on his drop being a yard behind the location of the ball in a post-round interview and then went back and penalized him. At the time of the drop, the rules committee said he did nothing wrong. That ruling should have been final at that point. How many other golfers would even be interviewed afterwards? Seems like a bad way to make a ruling because it's not possible with every golfer in the field to make rulings based on something said in an interview. Besides, you can "properly" drop a ball and it could bounce or roll a yard. I'm on Woods' side on this one.
Woods explains penalty, focuses on final round | www.myajc.com
A television viewer called in to the rules committee to point out the violation shortly after it happened, and Fred Ridley, chairman of the Masters competition committee, reviewed tape of the shot while Woods was still playing and determined that he did nothing intentionally wrong.
However, in an interview with CBS after his round, Woods acknowledged that his drop might have helped him gain an advantage. Woods said Saturday that he didn’t think about the proper place to drop because he was focused on the competition and still “a little ticked” at hitting the flag.
CBS golf analyst David Feherty made the public aware Friday night that he thought Woods may have made an incorrect drop, sparking numerous opinions. CBS announcer Jim Nantz called Ridley around 10 p.m. Friday night to point out Woods’ comment. Ridley called Woods’ agent, Leigh Steinberg, requesting a Saturday morning meeting to review Woods’ action.
Woods said he wasn’t aware that “drop-gate” was brewing until he woke Saturday morning to a text from his agent asking him to call. Woods was scheduled to tee off at 1:45 p.m.
“I didn’t know what was going on,” Woods said.
Woods met with Ridley at the Augusta National at 8 a.m. Saturday. After listening to Woods’ explanation, Ridley determined that Woods had unintentionally violated the rules. However, Ridley already had handcuffed himself by determining that Woods hadn’t broken the rules. Ridley said he never considered disqualifying Woods. Instead he chose to penalize him two strokes, which would also have been the penalty for not placing the ball in the correct spot and then hitting it from the incorrect spot.
“I didn’t see anything, and he didn’t tell me anything that would lead me to believe that he knowingly violated the rule,” Ridley said during a meeting with reporters Saturday afternoon. Ridley implied that he made the USGA and R&A, golf’s rulesmakers, aware of their decision and that they agreed with the ruling.
Woods was spared by rule 33-7, nicknamed the Harrington Rule, named after Padraig Harrington and put into place in 2011. The rule gives a tournament organizer the discretion to waive disqualification in certain cases. It was put into place after Harrington was disqualified for signing an incorrect scorecard during a tournament in Abu Dhabi. A viewer watching on a hi-definition TV spotted that Harrington had caused his ball to barely move on the green and called in the violation to rules officials.
After their rounds, various players said they didn’t think Woods intentionally violated any of golf’s rules, and they could understand how the mistake was made.
“(The drop) is a very basic rule that all the golfers in the Masters know,” Duluth’s Stewart Cink said. “But when you get in the intensity of the Masters and there’s a lot going on … things don’t go right in the mind. I think that’s what the case was. Obviously there’s no intention. He just made a little bit of a mistake in error. They gave him a nice break.”