Wyndham Clark had just signed for a one-under 71 in the second round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational last Friday, but he was surprised when a rules official met him at the scoring area, warning him the media might ask about what happened on the par-4 3rd hole.
“I was like, On 3?” Clark said. “I hit it in the middle of the fairway, hit it on the green and two-putt. I’m like, What are you talking about? He goes, ‘It’s your drop.'”
Clark did get some good news immediately after: he didn’t do anything wrong and there would be no penalty, although it was a brief rules controversy that brewed on the broadcast.
Wyndham Clark’s Players heartbreak offers window into golf’s endless quest
Clark hit his tee shot on the 3rd hole at Bay Hill, and cameras showed it bounce in the fairway and come to rest near its landing area. When the broadcast returned, Clark had his ball marked in the fairway and was preparing to take a drop. That drop would be legal as free relief if his ball came to rest in his own pitch mark, but if it landed in a different one and he took relief, he would be penalized.
That’s when it got confusing. Rich Pierson, the PGA Tour’s director of rules and video, hopped on the broadcast to say: “Wyndham’s ball did not embed. His ball bounced and it rolled into somebody else’s pitch mark.”
If that was true, a penalty was inevitable. But six holes later Pierson returned to the broadcast and cleared Clark.
“Using television and our ShotLink cameras, we were able to determine that it did end up in its original pitch arm,” Pierson said. “Therefore there would be no penalty.”
When asked about it at the Players Championship Wednesday, Clark had thoughts: “I have a few comments on this rule in general,” he said.
“They showed me the video, and then it leads me to thinking, well, how are we supposed to know? We were 300 some yards away,” Clark said. “We didn’t see the ball bounce from our distance, and we get up there and it’s plugged. How was I supposed to know? No one told us. So my frustration was that if I did get stroked, how is that my fault when no one told me that I rolled into something, if I did roll into someone else’s pitch mark. That’s one of those rules in golf where it’s like, why are we making this so complicated. I can’t see that, and if the volunteers don’t tell me and I get stroked for something that I didn’t know happened, it kind of seems unfair.
“But I am glad that it was correct because I wasn’t trying to cheat by any means. We just walked up, ball was plugged, took an embedded ball rule.”
Clark finished even par at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, good for a tie for 22nd.
Clark begins his first round of the Players at 8:46 a.m. ET on Thursday, on the 10th tee. He’s grouped with Jason Day and Jordan Spieth. You can find complete round 1 tee times here.