There have been some beauties over the past year or two and while I am posting the most obvious and famous – I’ll throw in an intriguing one that time has forgotten.
Arnie and the 1958 Masters.
Palmer embedded his ball behind the green and felt he was entitled to relief. He asked rules official Arthur Lacey for a free drop, but Lacey said no. Palmer then played two balls under Rule 3-3a, which allows play of another ball if a player is unsure of his rights. The player must state his intention to do so in advance of playing the original ball.
Palmer made a double bogey five with the original ball. He returned to the spot where his original ball was embedded, dropped another ball and got up and down for par. Three holes later Palmer was told the score with the second ball would count. He went on to win by one shot over Doug Ford and Fred Hawkins. Venturi finished two strokes behind.
Venturi now claims Palmer knowingly broke the rules. ‘Nobody, not even Palmer, is bigger than the game,’ Venturi writes ‘I firmly believe that he did wrong and that he knows that I know he did wrong.’
Venturi says Palmer only decided to play the second ball after he made double bogey with the first. Venturi writes: ‘Only Palmer wasn’t ready to give up on the 12th hole just yet. “I didn’t like your ruling,” he said, glaring at Lacey. “I’m going to play a provisional ball.”
‘”You can’t do that,” I told him. “You have to declare a second before you hit your first one”.’ Venturi confronted Palmer a second time in the scoring tent. ‘You’re signing an incorrect card,’ I told him. ‘No, I’m not,’ he said. ‘The ruling was made.’
Venturi claims Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts, Augusta co-founders, confided to him years later that Palmer’s double bogey should have stood.
Palmer dealt with the issue in a book, Playing by the Rules . ‘I heard that Ken Venturi [felt] cheated by my second-ball situation at the 12th,’ Palmer wrote. ‘But I felt then and I feel now that I did what any other player could and should do: I followed the rules in both letter and spirit.’
Tiger Woods 2013 Masters
Woods’ shot on the par-5 15th hole of the second round hit the flag stick and bounced back into the water. He took his penalty drop two yards behind where he hit the original shot, which was a rules violation.
Augusta National reviewed the incident Saturday morning before the third round began and added the two-stroke penalty for an improper drop. Woods had a 73 instead of a 71 and went into the weekend five shots out of the lead.
But they did not disqualify him for signing an incorrect scorecard under a new rule – announced at the Masters two years earlier – that allows a player to stay in the tournament if a rules dispute was based on television evidence.
Dustin Johnson 2010 PGA Championship
Was it a bunker or wasn’t it a bunker? Hundreds of spectators stood mere feet away from Johnson as he hit his approach shot to the par-4 18th at Whistling Straits. The shot went well left of the green, and Johnson failed to get up and down. This forced a three-way playoff alongside Martin Kaymer and Bubba Watson.
Or so it seemed.After consultation with rules officials, it was determined that Johnson grounded his club in a bunker on his second shot.
The Straits Course is known for having a multitude of sand traps, but with so many people blocking his view, Johnson couldn’t determine he was actually in a bunker.
That’s why he ground his club.
Lexi Thompson 2017 ANA Championship
In the middle of the final round of the ANA Inspiration, Lexi Thompson was informed by a rules official that she would be assessed a four-shot penalty — for replacing her ball in an improper spot on Saturday. After officials reviewed the tape, Lexi was assessed a two-shot penalty for putting her ball in the wrong spot, and then a two-shot penalty for signing a incorrect scorecard. She would lose on the first hole of a playoff against So Yeon Ryu.
Phil Mickelson 2018 US Open
Phil Mickelson caused the biggest stir of the U.S. Open when he putted his own moving ball on the 13th green at Shinnecock Hills on Saturday. Mickelson sent a 7-foot bogey putt well past the hole, and a downslope was set to carry it a long way farther. So the left-hander ran to it and whacked it back at the hole like a mini-golfer
The USGA assessed Mickelson a two-stroke penalty, leading to a score of 10 on the hole. He was already 4 over for the day and well out of contention, and his sextuple-bogey set him on the path to a third-round 81 that left him dead last among players who’d made the cut.
