Opinion: Thompson Ruling Undermines Golf

On Sunday April 2, 2017, the world of golf, thanks to the networks of the Golf Channel and ESPN, saw in one day both the best and the worst that the game of golf has to offer. The morning began with the Drive, Pitch, and Putt competition at the most well-known cathedral in the sport, Augusta National. We saw crowned the winners of 8 divisions, boys and girls who will someday be the future of the game hitting shots where Sarazen, Hogan, Nicklaus, Woods, and other immortals have claimed golf glory.

The morning saw the spirit of the ancient game come to life as children hit their competitive shots with sheer joy and displayed a love for a game instilled in them by their mothers, their fathers, and by history. They hit their competitive shots at Augusta National and shook hands with a former Secretary of State waiting just off the 18^th green to congratulate them on their achievement. They showed us an innocence and purity as ardently on display as the color explosion the azaleas bring us each April. They showed us the best of the game.

Later in the day.  the golf world would see the worst of what the game has to offer. The first major of the year, the vaunted Dinah Shore now known as the ANA Inspiration, the LPGA’s version of Augusta, would end in a playoff because of a rules infraction that was emailed in by a television viewer 12 hours after the infraction had incurred.

To be fair, yes, Lexi Thompson’s 3^rd round putt was hit from a different position than she marked it. Yes, it was a tap in that she probably didn’t need to mark. Yes, if we really want to go down this road, she should have incurred a 2-stroke penalty, historically even been disqualified. But this is beyond the pale of examining a simple rules infraction by hitting a putt from a slightly different position, seen in hindsight with the benefit of HD television camera zoom technology and replay.

Taking it a step further, it diminishes the credibility of the officials running the professional events. After all, if anyone can watch and phone in an infraction, then why do these events need rules officials on site?

The simple fact is that professional golf is the only sport that allows for a viewer to phone in an infraction 12 hours after the fact, that a spectator watching a DVR of a tournament after all of the competitors have turned in for the night can retroactively impact the outcome of the event.

That the Rules of Golf even open the door for a television viewer to play a role in the outcome of a professional tournament is a joke. Imagine a viewer calling in on a missed penalty for a Super Bowl? The Final Four? How about the College Football Playoff? Upon further review in Super Bowl XXI, there was missed face-mask penalty on Lawrence Taylor. Someone please call Phil Simms and tell him his Super Bowl ring now must go to John Elway.

One of the great traditions of golf is that competitors police themselves, self-imposing violations and monitoring their fellow competitors in an effort to protect the field from deviant acts. It would make sense, then, for the governing bodies to implement a policy that disallows a television audience to adversely affect the outcome of a tournament.

Yes, continue to allow video review if you like, but the penalties must be administered in a timely manner. Had this been done in a timely manner, Lexi Thompson would have been assessed a two-shot penalty at the end of the third round, known where she stood at the completion of the third day, and played a final round not altered by a retroactive decision on the 13^th hole.

That timeline is what makes this so disconcerting.

The governing bodies in the USGA and R&A have begun discussion of the modernization of the rules of golf to make them easier to apply and understand. That discussion must include how the entities that run and rule on professional, televised events handle scenarios where a television viewer can email in a supposed infraction.

And so we’re left with the scenario in which we now find ourselves and it lacks fairness to both Lexi Thompson and So Yeon Ryu, the crowned winner of the ANA Inspiration. Lexi may not have won in the end, but a competitor at the highest levels deserves to be given all of the information as they compete.  Giving a television viewer the power to adversely affect the outcome of major championships does little to move this great game forward. In fact, it does just the opposite.

Shawn Wills is the two-time winner of the Colorado State Match Play championship and the 1998 Boys Match Play Championship.