Sneak Peek: This story will appear in the Feb. 4 edition of Global Golf Post.
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA | Even after sleeping on it, Denny McCarthy and his caddie, Derek Smith, couldn’t let it go. At least not completely.
A day after McCarthy was penalized two strokes for taking practice swings with Smith standing behind him, he still believed he was innocent. He had never intended for Smith to help him aim his approach shot to the par-5 15th hole during Friday’s second round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open because Smith has never helped his boss aim under any circumstance in the two years they have worked together. And besides, McCarthy stepped away after his initial practice swings, totally resetting as Smith stood to the side.
If McCarthy was somehow guilty, he felt other players at the Phoenix Open were, too.
“I called a rules official over this morning and showed him a couple videos people sent me of other players doing exactly the same thing and I was trying to figure out what the difference was basically,” McCarthy said. “And he said there was no difference. They just missed it.”
That struggle in interpretation led to one of the most bizarre rules sequences the game has ever witnessed: The PGA Tour retroactively rescinded McCarthy’s two-stroke penalty Saturday, essentially conceding that the newly implemented caddie alignment rule, as it is written, is a dud. The intent is fine. The wording is shortsighted.
The Tour will be eternally grateful that McCarthy didn’t miss the cut by one or two strokes, which would have thrown a tornado into the already vicious Twitter storm that developed Friday night. This incident came on the heels of Li Haotong’s controversial two-stroke penalty the preceding Sunday at the European Tour’s Omega Dubai Desert Classic when his caddie, who was standing behind him, began moving away just as Li started to address his ball on the green.
“It’s a new rule, we agree with the rule, just the interpretation is a little difficult right now.” — Slugger White, VP of rules and competitions for the PGA Tour
Both the Tour and USGA issued statements acknowledging that further clarity is needed, signaling that the supposedly simplified rule had accomplished the exact opposite. The new rule was intended to prohibit caddies from lining up players, a practice far more common on the LPGA Tour, but significant confusion reigned among the men trying to decipher the code.
“It’s a new rule, we agree with the rule, just the interpretation is a little difficult right now,” said Slugger White, the vice president of rules and competitions for the PGA Tour.
What the players quickly learned on Friday afternoon as video of McCarthy’s penalty went viral is that a caddie can’t stand behind a player while the player moves to address his shot, regardless of whether the player backs off and then comes back to the ball. The one caveat is that players are allowed to reset on the putting green, a weird twist not widely known.
The current version of the rule figures to be short-lived. In rescinding McCarthy’s penalty, the tour announced that, with support from the USGA and R&A, the rule will be interpreted so that situations such as McCarthy’s and a similar second-round instance involving Justin Thomas that had been brought to the tour’s attention Saturday – as well as future similar situations – will not result in a penalty.
“It’s probably one of the best moves the tour’s ever made,” tournament leader Rickie Fowler said of the decision. “It might be one of the stupidest rules I’ve ever heard.”
Matt Kuchar proclaimed the rule as being terrible. Eddie Pepperell, the outspoken Englishman, tweeted that “if grey areas, cantankerous old men and contradictions are your thing, then take up the game of golf.”
Ouch.
Meanwhile, Thomas wondered aloud why such complications had to exist. A caddie tends to stand directly behind the ball when helping his player assess a shot, but that doesn’t have anything to do with alignment.
“It’s very, very obvious and clear if someone is behind you lining you up,” Thomas said. “I mean they’re there, they’re standing down like this and they give you a yes or a no and then they move away when you’re about to hit the shot.”
All were hopeful the confusion could be simplified to something black and white. If a caddie doesn’t have any intention of lining a player up, there shouldn’t be a penalty. As Thomas said, lining a player up is a conspicuous process.
“Are you lining your player up? Period,” Smith said when asked how the rule should be changed. “Any conversation I’ve had with caddies or players in our group before yesterday were all about intent. We would be able to tell if there was a problem. It’s that simple.”
It’s baffling that golf’s governing bodies went through such a lengthy process to simplify the rules and settled on one that is clearly indefensible in how it was constructed. Having said that, implementing a host of new rules is a learning process for all involved. Give them props for recognizing the problem and being agile, not a word traditionally used to describe the rules makers.
What comes next will most likely fix the temporary mayhem, but golf’s rules problems extend more deeply into the realm of interpretation.
The game should be left in the hands of those playing. You must play by the rules, and your fellow competitors are the checks and balances.
The game should be left in the hands of those playing. You must play by the rules, and your fellow competitors are the checks and balances.
How did McCarthy come to be penalized in the first place? It wasn’t because he was caught on video. A player in McCarthy’s group had struggled with a ruling on a previous hole and an official had come over to be a policeman for slow play. That’s when he saw the infraction.
What if he hadn’t been there?
Golf shouldn’t be like other games where an official must make a reactionary decision. The arenas are sprawling, impossible for any one person or a group of people to view all at once. Smith probably stood behind McCarthy at some other point throughout the day and didn’t even realize it, but this is the one an official caught.
The game should be left in the hands of those playing. You must play by the rules, and your fellow competitors are the checks and balances. But at day’s end, it comes down to intent. The officials are there to educate, facilitate and ultimately resolve confusion, but the players need to be responsible for themselves and each other. That’s not to suggest officials aren’t the final authority on rulings, but their decisions should be made based solely on player input.
If you have to walk back a rules gaffe in such a humiliating way as the PGA Tour did at TPC Scottsdale, nobody wins. Imagine someone flipping channels and landing on a group of panelists discussing how a nebulous rule cost a totally unaware player two strokes. Would that inspire you to play or watch golf?
The game is at its purest and best when complicated rulings aren’t stealing the headlines away from the players. Hopefully the newest and simplest edition of the caddie alignment rule reflects that.