Ryder Cupper narrowly dodges rules gaffe, caps it with incredible escape  

The Ryder Cup, like the Masters, brings golf to millions of people who only follow it casually, if that. The beauty of that is it gives golf a chance to spreads its wings, and explain its peculiar ways. Anybody watching two beefy European players, Jon Rahm of Spain and Tyrrell Hatton of England, on the 7th hole in the opening session of Friday’s alternate-shot play got a crash course in how the whole thing works.

Every time a golf ball moves, at all, the rules require some kind of accounting of it, either by stroke, penalty or verbal explanation. That’s the most fundamental part of the game.

On the 7th hole, Rahm hit his team’s tee shot wide and right. Hatton was playing the second shot from literal rough ground — bare dirt, under trees, a stick thicker than a stogie about a half inch from their ball. With a camera staring at the ball’s dimples, Hatton and Rahm, 440 pounds of golfing muscle, squatted over the ball like kids at a beach looking at an exotic star fish. They didn’t dare poke at any of the nearby twigs for fear of starting a Ryder Cup version, and to keep the kiddie theme going, tiddlywinks. Now you’re playing Operation, the three-and-over game where the aim is to extract bones from your patient without getting electrocuted.

Big, big men. A fine, delicate procedure. Hatton was startled at one point, when he nearly set off a firework by stepping on a twig. 

The stakes were so high Rahm and Hatton decided to abort their game of move-the-stick. It really seemed, at that moment, that the nearby stick would compromise Hatton’s swing with an iron.

And here’s the teachable moment for anybody playing serious golf anywhere, and any Ryder Cup viewer looking to understand this odd game: Any movement of the ball must be accounted for. Tiger Woods did not grasp this most basic fact at a PGA Tour event in Chicago in 2013. He tried to move a twig, his ball moved, he didn’t call the penalty on himself; a PGA Tour official, Slugger White, did it for him.

Golf is not a game of catch me if you can.

Nick Faldo, offering live commentary on the USA network, thought Hatton would be hitting a simple punch shot out.

Hatton, buzzing with adrenaline, smashed an iron into the back of the ball. The offending twig snapped in two. The ball found the green. “A little bit of a hit and hope, that the stick wouldn’t effect it too much,” Hatton said later. Rahm putted it up close. The Europeans made an unlikely 4 to win the hole and even the match. Playing the American team of Bryson DeChambeau and Justin Thomas, in the first match of the day, the Rahm-Hatton team won the 8th hole to go 1 up; eight holes later, they closed out the match, 4 and 3.

This is how the game is played. The rules are the starting part. The rules require an accounting for any movement of the ball, whether it’s a 330-yard drive or a half-inch roll deep in the woods. It does not matter if it’s the Ryder Cup or the first round of the Korn Ferry qualifying tournament. The only difference here was the whole golf-loving world was watching. The truth is, every shot should be played that way.