Quote:
Originally Posted by retiredguy123
In my opinion, the video clearly shows that she cheated by moving the ball out of a hole, which was probably a spike mark. The player is not allowed to repair spike marks, or to move the ball from its original location. Regardless of how the violation was detected, I think the ruling was correct. Unlike other sports, golfers are supposed to enforce their own violations.
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I honestly don't think that she did it intentionally. If you look at the video you can see that her hand obscures here view of the ball. It's pretty much impossible to call a penalty on yourself for a violation that you are unaware you committed.
I agree that the rule must be applied equally to all competitors, but I don't think that the governing bodies of these competitions should act upon phone calls, or e-mails from viewers to look at previous rules violations unless it is clear that the action was done on purpose and/or it affects the players score.
One of the big problems with this is that the players who are on television the most are the most likely to be caught by this things. There might have been players that barely made the cut that had some minuscule rules violation in the first round that never got picked up because they weren't on television and then went on to make the cut and finish high up in the tournament.
It's not that it's unfair application of the rules, it's unfair monitoring of players.
Gerina Piller shot 71-75 to make the cut on the number. She then shot 74-66 to finish 35T and win $16,000. How do we know that she didn't miss mark her ball or accidentally touch the sand in a bunker without noticing in the first or second round. We don't know because she wasn't on television during those rounds. If something like that had been caught on television, it might have allowed another player to make the cut. Is that fair to the field?
If you're going to have television rules making then you need to have a close up camera on every player during every shot in the tournament and someone to sit and view everyone play.
Hopefully, when the new rules come out something will be done about this. Until then, unless it's a flagrant, intentional violation that definitely affected the players score, television viewer notifications should be ignored.
Another possibility is to not allowed any penalties, with the exception of signing an incorrect scorecard and penalties that can be shown to be flagrant and intentional, to be applied once a round is completed or once the next round has been begun.