Golf is not a game of perfect.
Mistakes happen. And golfers aren’t the only ones who make them.
At the U.S. Open earlier this month, we now know that a rules official goofed while guiding Rory McIlroy through a free drop during his final round at Los Angeles Country Club.
The incident occurred on the par-5 14th hole, where McIlroy’s third shot plugged in the fescue above a greenside bunker.
Because his ball was embedded, McIlroy was entitled to relief without penalty. That’s what he received. No issues there.
The problem, as Thomas Pagel, the USGA’s chief governance officer, acknowledged in an interview with Sports Illustrated, was that the rules official misidentified the nearest point of relief, leading McIlroy to take an incorrect drop.
Just as not all bad shots are scorecard-wreckers, not all bad rulings have equal consequences.
And in this case, the USGA determined, there were none, as McIlroy wound up dropping very close to where he should have (no more than 18 inches from the proper spot, the USGA said), on essentially the same terrain (a shelf right of the green) from which he would have played had the error not been made. He neither gained an unfair advantage nor suffered an unfair disadvantage, the USGA deemed. The error, that is, had no material effect, on McIlroy’s score.
“He didn’t get a break,” Pagel said.
But since golf is also a game that inspires hypotheticals, it’s only natural for the rest of us to ask, What if?
What if it had been determined that the erroneous ruling did have a material impact? That the improper drop had saddled McIlroy with an unfair burden or supplied him with an unfair edge? Then what?
Let’s tease that question out.
For starters, says Craig Winter, senior director of rules and amateur status for the USGA, once a shot is struck, it counts. It cannot be undone. Nothing in the rules allows for that.
Which doesn’t mean mistakes can never be corrected. The rules offer plenty of guidance on that.
It is not uncommon for tournament committees to review disputed rulings. The USGA often receives inquiries from the organizers of local events, seeking clarity on this incident or that. When certain errors are committed, remedies are available. Say, for instance, a player was granted a free drop from a lateral hazard when he or she should have been slapped with a one-stroke penalty. Upon committee review, the score can be adjusted. In extreme cases, Winter noted, when egregious errors are discovered, entire rounds can be canceled.
But, Winter emphasized, such scenarios bear no relation to what transpired with McIlroy at LACC. They unfold in “an entirely different universe” than a national championship.
“At the professional level, I am not aware of there ever being a ruling that would come close to meriting a round being canceled,” Winter said. Much less at a major.
